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7 Game-Changing Benefits of Hydroponics · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello and thank you for joining me for another episode of Hydroponics Daily.
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  Today I'm going to be talking about the benefits of growing hydroponically.
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  I've done this podcast a bit back to front.
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  I've been talking about the benefits last and I've talked about how you grow first.
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  So if you're into your minds about growing hydroponically or you want to know
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  more about it, this is the episode for you.
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  I've got seven good benefits, advantages of growing hydroponically.
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  Now the first one is the one that's most
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  often talked about and that is that you get more crop per
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  unit area this is because your plants don't
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  need to go foraging around for nutrients and water it's right
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  there in the fertigation solution in the inert media so
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  you you're providing this inert fertigation sorry
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  this fertigation solution in an inert media and so
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  you don't have to produce as big a root system and
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  the plants don't have to work as hard to get the nutrients they don't
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  have to break them down and rely on fungi and
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  the biology to break it down it's all there so this
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  means that you can get really massive increases in yield things
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  like aeroponics as we've talked about in the past these are really high yielding
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  and if you think about it in cut flowers you can
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  get 60 plants per square meter which is
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  crazy you would never get that anywhere near that in soil
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  if you're growing some like chrysanthemums so you
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  get vast increases in yield that is why most people
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  grow hydroponically that's why you get really large
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  commercial greenhouses all the tomatoes
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  and cucumbers grown in the uk now are all grown
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  hydroponically because the yields just mean that anyone growing in soil would
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  be blown out of the water in comparison second massive advantage for hydroponics
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  is that you can get out of season production so you can go crops out of season
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  under artificial light, artificial heat.
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  There's no soil, so you don't have to warm the soil or anything like that.
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  You just have a warm fertigation solution and you can grow out-of-season produce.
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  So if you think about strawberries, they used to say around 2005,
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  if you could grow, to 2010, if you could grow strawberries for Christmas,
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  it was a license to print money.
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  And now, everyone eats strawberries at Christmas in the UK, and we don't even think twice about it.
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  You go back 10, 12 years, that was not a thing.
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  That was maybe a thing for people who went to Marks and Spencer's and bought
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  five strawberries in a tray for a fiver.
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  But it was not the common thing. Now, it is very common for strawberries,
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  because they're all grown hydroponically, either in Spain and the hydroponics,
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  or the UK, or Holland, or somewhere like that, Italy.
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  So now that's hydroponics has massively taken
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  that on okay and the third reason for
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  growing hydroponics and the reason commercial growers do it is an
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  absence of soil-borne diseases now i mentioned in
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  the just now chrysanthemum growers you will
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  not find a chrysanthemum grower now that doesn't grow
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  hydroponically because they used to grow in the same soil every
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  year and the pest diseases built up and
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  built up to the point where either they moved to hydroponics or
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  they went bust most of the uk chrysanthemum growers
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  went bust so if you are growing a
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  crop that suffers with really bad soil-borne diseases
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  then then hydroponics is the answer now
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  for something like hops that's really difficult because hops
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  grow you know six seven meters tall but for something like raspberries and strawberries
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  that has certainly been the case and now if you went back 15 years in the UK
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  most strawberries were grown in the soil now you'd struggle to find a strawberry
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  farm other than a pick your own strawberry farm.
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  Catering to the general public, picking their own as a source of,
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  as a pastime, you would not find a commercial strawberry farm growing in soil.
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  They're all growing in cocoa, on gullies, in the air, in tunnels.
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  And the same for raspberries. Raspberries are now grown in cocoa in pots.
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  Blueberries are all grown in pots for this reason. And it's also,
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  the main reason is to prevent soil-borne diseases.
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  There are loads of diseases in strawberries, raspberries, blueberries that build up in the soil.
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  And if you can grow hydroponically, you can remove that completely because you
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  can rejuvenate your growing media.
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  You can flush sterilizing agents like peroxide and other sterilizing agents
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  through the system, some non-pesticidal ones.
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  So that's another really good reason for growing hydroponically.
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  The fourth good reason is the optimization of
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  your fertilizer treatments so you can provide a
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  liquid that contains all every essential
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  nutrient and you don't need to worry about lockout well you
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  do need to worry about lockout but if you do it correctly you won't get
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  any lockout whereas if you're growing in soil and you
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  provided hydroponic fertilizer to soil you
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  would still get lockouts of calcium and phosphorus and you
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  would get iron being locked up unless it was
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  very well chelated and so hydroponics allows
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  you to give the correct fertiliser at all
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  times and monitor it as it goes around the system so if
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  it's a closed loop system you can monitor the different nutrients
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  depending on the the automation you've got and
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  you can you can adjust and up regulate it
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  and down regulate it depending on the ph the ec value the actual you could even
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  measure the nutrients in there other factors that can be measured so you can
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  you can measure a whole lot more than you can in a soil borne system another
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  major advantage of hydroponics that's not mentioned very often is a lack of contamination.
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  Now this includes biological and chemical contamination.
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  There are a lot, not to say there's a lot, but there are occasionally reports of.
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  Human disease is being picked up from fresh produce is because
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  they're not it's you think about leafy vegetables
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  they're not cooked before they are
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  eaten and so they may be washed but
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  if you get dirt on them or something happens in the field you can
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  get biological contamination e.coli listeria these
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  are major problems real headaches for field-grown vegetables
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  the main issue for field-grown vegetable farmers
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  is auditing and making sure that they
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  don't get contamination of biological contamination in
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  the field from like spray from manures
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  or spray from the soil landing on the leaves and things like this this
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  is their major headache whereas in hydroponics that's far
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  less of an issue because you're not getting that there's no no soil
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  around for that contamination or there shouldn't be and.
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  Then there's the other thing of chemical contamination now this
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  is a particular issue in courgettes and this
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  is from a colleague of mine who who who told me
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  this and i looked into it and it was true that there
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  was a there's an insecticide called dieldrin and dieldrin
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  was used from the 1940s up until the 1970s and
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  it contaminates soil so it stays around in the
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  soil it's persistent extremely persistent and when
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  courgettes are grown in fields that they previously.
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  Used to grow courgettes and it
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  contains this dieldrin then they have to be thrown away
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  because they pick up so much dieldren from the
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  field that they are cannot be
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  sold in the european union and so courgettes can't
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  be grown in anywhere where this this insecticide has been used and
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  when the and where the courgette hits the ground it can actually
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  pick it up on its skin so that there's a reason
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  to grow go back to courgettes i've actually got a
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  customer in spain who's growing loads of
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  courgettes at the moment and he works on a
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  biological bacterial product and it's seen really good yields and
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  bacteria is a major issue and so biologicals
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  is a major issue in coordinates as well another advantage
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  that's not often thought about is that it's lightweight so you
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  don't need to carry if you're growing somewhere that's not directly in the soil
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  you don't need to lump soil around so if you're growing in your loft if you're
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  a hobby grower you don't need to lump loads of soil into your loft or your spare
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  room or your conservatory or you know things like this if you live in a flat
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  condo then you don't need to worry about this.
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  Other issues where lightweight is an advantage if you're going up into space
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  if you're going to antarctica if you're on a cruise ship if you're these are
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  all places where you might want to grow crops fresh produce and you lightweight
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  is a really big advantage and.
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  Think about it on the there's lots of people talking about growing
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  crops on the roofs of supermarkets i
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  think it's not a very good idea because in reality
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  you've got a lot of auditing and a lot of different crops to grow to
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  fulfill what people want from a supermarket but it
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  would certainly have to be lightweight if you're going to grow a farm on
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  top of a supermarket roof because these are you know
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  metal clad shell buildings these
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  are not you know victorian brick or even
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  concrete buildings most of the time so lightweight is our
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  sixth advantage for hydroponics you can get it up
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  on the roof you have a green roof if you've
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  got a flat roof you could grow on a flat roof as long as it can hold the weight
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  and you certainly couldn't do that with soil it would just
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  weigh too far too much got a funny story my sister
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  is a doctor and i'm a doctor but i'm a
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  doctor of plants she's a doctor of humans i know nothing about
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  human biology i mean i know absolutely nothing some
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  of the stories i could tell you are embarrassing she's a
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  doctor of humans and she knows nothing about
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  plants and she once had a hanging basket or one
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  of those baskets you put on the side of your house and she
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  thought that grown media and compost was the same as soil
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  so she filled it full of soil and this thing
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  just crashed down off her house because of
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  the weight of the soil so she should have been using cocoa
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  or peat she and a lightweight.
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  Hydroponic fertigation system would have been better and so
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  yeah hydroponics the sixth advantage is lightweight and the
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  seventh and final advantage of hydroponics is that
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  it is flipping cool it looks brilliant it's
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  really interesting to do some of the systems you
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  can get just look amazing if you're if you
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  just like you know a bloke that wants
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  to mess around with stuff as a hobby messing
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  around with pipes and pumps and circularity
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  systems and you know metal objects and electronic
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  probes and automation and just that
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  that makes hydroponics cool it is a cool thing
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  compared to growing in the soil i don't care what you say and if
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  you're so soil growers hydroponics is cool so
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  they're the seven advantages one more crops per
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  area two out of season production increasing
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  massively what you can charge for your crop absence of
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  soil borne diseases which makes some crops just uncommercial
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  nowadays optimization of fertilizer treatments five
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  lack of contamination whether that's biological or
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  chemical six super lightweight compared to
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  soil-based systems and seven it's flipping cool that's been hydroponics daily
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  for today and tomorrow we'll have another episode might do it on the history
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  of hydroponics everyone talks about it starting in the hanging gardens of but
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  that is absolute nonsense and i will tell you the real story about where hydroponics.
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  Originated from tomorrow thank you very much for listening.