Guide to Hydroponic Vegetable Gardening

With hydroponic gardening, you can bring an entire vegetable garden indoors. Imagine having fresh, high-quality produce all year long without any digging or weeding, and without losing half of your crop to insects, birds, or deer. Set up a hydroponic garden in your basement or garage and you can make it happen.

What Is Hydroponic Gardening?

In a hydroponic garden, plants are grown using a liquid mineral solution instead of soil. Nutrients are delivered directly to the plants' roots, which makes the plants grow faster and produce higher yields. Because the plants don't have to work for their food, their root systems stay much smaller.

There are many ways to get the nutrient solution to the plants' roots; the simplest is to use the wick method. Plants are placed in one container, and the nutrient solution in another; one end of a piece of cotton rope is placed in each container, creating a steady flow of nutrients to the plants' roots.

Why Grow Vegetables Hydroponically?

Hydroponic vegetable gardening is a natural choice for people who live in apartments or areas with poor soil or harsh growing conditions. Your plants are safe from hot, dry summers and freezing winters. There's no digging through heavy clay soil or lugging awkward, smelly bags of fertilizer around, and you don't need a big yard, or even a patio. Hydroponic gardening is also environmentally friendly, because it uses less water and preserves topsoil.

Hydroponically grown vegetables produce larger crops and take up less space than those grown in soil. They cost less and taste much better than most supermarket produce, and you can have all of your favorites whenever you want, even if they're not in season. You'll find it much easier and more enjoyable to eat your seven daily servings of veggies when they're right at your fingertips, and you've had the satisfaction of growing them yourself.

Home Hydroponic Gardening Equipment

Most of the supplies you'll need for your hydroponic vegetable garden can be found in any home supply store; chances are you have some of them lying around the house already. Plastic storage boxes, old fish tanks, picnic coolers-anything that's watertight can serve as the foundation of your garden.

You'll also need artificial lighting, and something to support your plants with. You can fill small plastic pots with vermiculite or sand, or you can stretch chicken wire or hardware cloth across the top of your container. You can make your own nutrient solution or buy it. A pH test kit will help you keep your plants' environment in balance.

Whether you're looking for a way to help your family eats healthier or simply in the mood for a fun new hobby, your home hydroponic vegetable garden will reward you all year long.