Hydroponics vs. soil

To understand what are the advantages of growing with hydroponics, you must first understand what hydroponics is. Hydroponics is simple. Hydroponics is growing with water instead of soil. Typically, a user adds concentrated nutrients to the water, simulating the fertilizers found in the soil.

With hydroponics you have much more control over your grow than with soil, because simply adding the right amount of nutrients to the water ensures that you will have the right amount of food for your plants. In soil, it can be much more difficult to diagnose when you’re low on trace minerals, because you don’t really know what you were missing to begin with.

However, when hydroponics is used, the nutrients are pre-mixed with the exact amount of trace elements. So by simply adding the right amount of hydroponic nutrients to your water in the hydroponic system, you know that the nutrients have been mixed correctly and that the plants have all the elements they need to survive. If your plants should never start to get sick, such as yellowing leaves due to some kind of nutrient deficiency, all you have to do is drain the water from your hydroponic system and fill it with fresh water and fresh nutrients.

In soil, you would need to look up nutrient deficiencies in a book or guide to find out what type of nutrient is actually deficient or missing. In any case, you can check out the homegrown-hydroponics.com website in the tutorials section for a nutrient deficiency calculator, which will show you what plants suffering from deficiencies of certain types will look like. Based on this guide, you can make corrections. Hydroponics is much easier because you can simply rinse your hydroponic system and refill it with fresh water and fresh nutrients to fix the problem. This is much more difficult on the ground.

Another great advantage of hydroponics over soil is that in hydroponics you can grow your plants up to 10 times faster than in soil. In the soil, your plants have to develop a very long and highly integrated root system to get all the water and nutrients they need from the soil. Your plants need to develop a massive root system in the soil to get everything that is essential for them to grow quickly. So a soil grown plant would see a very large root system below ground, but a very small plant above ground.

Hydroponics is the exact opposite. Because it is so easy for plants to get their water and nutrients directly from the water in their reservoir, the plant can develop a much smaller root system and get the same amount of nutrients, if not more. In a hydroponic system, you can expect to see a plant with a very small root system to get a very large plant above ground. Essentially, plants grow in hydroponics 10 times faster than in soil. This is a great advantage. Plants grown in hydroponics versus soil are not only easier to grow, but also grow much faster.

Hydroponics is also very useful for people who live in parts of the country with extreme environmental conditions. People who live in a part of the country that is either too hot or too cold can make it very difficult to grow your plants. However, since hydroponics can be used indoors, you can regulate the temperature using a heater or air conditioner. Plants like to be at a comfortable temperature just like people. If you can keep your plants around 75 to 85°, they will grow like wildfire all year long. It would be impossible to try to maintain these conditions outdoors, but it becomes very easy when using hydroponics. It is important that your plants do not get too hot or cold during any part of the year or you will stunt their growth.

Hydroponics makes it quick and easy for anyone in the world to easily grow their own plants for food or medicinal herbs. Hydroponics makes growing organic produce available to anyone with a source of fresh water and electricity. Hydroponics is even being developed by NASA through the use of the space station. One day our astronauts will be eating food grown in a hydroponic system, just as you are about to start.

Hydroponics essentially gives your plant everything it wants, but spoon-fed it, the easy way, which makes them grow very fast. If you were to upgrade your hydroponic system using CO2, your plants can grow at even twice that rate. But that’s another tutorial entirely.