I have always loved gardening, but until a few short years ago, due to marriage, children, family life and full-time work among other things, it was mainly confined to pot plants and the odd tomato or pepper plants.
How many of us have done this? Wish I’d tried potatoes in a plastic bag or as some I have seen recently in a tower of vehicle tires. Now I’m absorbed in doing better each season with so far planted, raspberries and others, cauliflowers, cabbages, onions, you know the sort of thing. We have just shy of a quarter acre and this year I will be getting a cover for my tunnel house and setting myself up in Hydroponics in a big way. In the meantime however, I have enclosed my tomatoes and peppers outside in a clear plastic fence-like structure, with shade cloth across the top for protection from wind and the sun’s fierce rays.
And, like any convert, I am very enthusiastic, if not as yet 100% knowledgeable on the subject. With the modern way it is thought of today, it’s hard to imagine that HYDRO (water) PONICS (ponos- to work), meaning working with water, has been known of since the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Aztec Indians floating raft gardens. Some of these can still be seen, as can pictures of the Hanging Gardens so we do know they existed. On reading a little of the history on the subject wanting to find out a little more, my mind was intrigued by newer, to me, names such as Woodward in 1699, Liebig in the 1850’s, Sachs and Knop in the 1860’s, right through to 1925 when hydroponics began to be practically applied in the greenhouse industry.
It would be so easy to bore on about the history of it all, but now that I have discovered this and so much more, I am fascinated by the thought that, even 2,500+ years ago, gardeners grew things for food or pleasure, using little more than water, possibly mixed with some soil.
Which, for me anyway, raised far more questions than I can even think of answering without a great deal of research. Questions such as how much did the ancients know about nutrients? Did they just use water? Or did they add soil and if so, how much? Or did they use the equivalent of the white plastic tube newer hydroponic, as well as existing hydroponic gardeners can use today?? We see that terracotta pipes were used for many purposes back then, so could they have made pipes with holes in for the plants? How did they protect their plants from the elements? Did they make tents, and if so, how did they bring the light that plants need, inside? Candles? Or what other ways did they find to make use of this area of propagation? Heavens, the possibilities for supposition seem endless.
Hmmm. Over my next posts, I will be exploring as many aspects of hydroponic gardening as I can find, to offer assistance and some enlightenment for the hydroponics beginner and to, hopefully, offer interest for the more experienced.
Comments and suggestions will always be welcome at my website.