SO YOU WANT TO START GROWING WITH HYDROPONICS, BUT YOU’RE NOT SURE WHERE TO BEGIN?
⭐ I have good news! You are in the right place! ⭐
This is your one stop shop for everything hydroponics!
Hi, I'm Charlie. I'm a hydroponic grower who, like yourself, started from the very beginning with no knowledge or guidance regarding hydroponics.
I've made mistakes (and still do), I've built my own systems, bought pre-made systems online, read hobby books, read academic literature, and even trained with commercial professionals.
I'm here now to help anyone and everyone who wants to learn about and practice hydroponics but just doesn't know the right way to start.
The good news is, there is no right way! The only right way is to take action towards your goal, and if you are reading this, you have already done that, so congrats!
What I can help you with, though, is demystifying hydroponics and giving you all the advice I wish I'd had when I started.
Many people will tell you hydroponics is expensive and complicated, but it's not. Or I should say it doesn't have to be.
The truth is all hobbies can be expensive and complicated the deeper you go, but hydroponics can be as simple as a jam jar, some water, and a seed.
WHAT IS HYDROPONICS? 🤔
Even if you are here on this page, you may not know exactly what hydroponics is.
Short answer:
Growing plants without soil
💡
There you are! Nothing more to say, go off and start...
I'm joking, of course, but this is certainly the easiest way to understand what hydroponics actually is.
Hydro = water 💧
Ponos = work 👷
You probably have loads of questions, and they will all be answered I promise. But trust me, the best way to learn about hydroponics is with baby steps. Information overload is a killer, and the end of many curious growers' journeys.
Why grow using hydroponics? 🤷
You might be wondering, why exactly should I bother using hydroponics to begin with? It's a completely logical question. We have plenty of space outdoors to grow plants, and we've been growing plants in soil for millennia. Why change the formula now?
My usual response to these questions is: Do we have enough space outdoors to grow? Maybe you live in an apartment; maybe you don't have access to a garden; maybe the environment you live in doesn't have enough water.
Similarly, just because something has been done the same way for a long time doesn't me it cant be change or improved upon!
None of this is to say that hydroponics needs to replace soil growing; quite the contrary, they can both complement each other and coexist.
So let's have a look at several benefits hydroponics can offer:
Water Efficiency 💧
When growing hydroponically, water is often recycled and reused depending on the system. This means that water doesn't leach away into the soil.
Think about when you water soil plants, a large amount of the water used will soak into the ground, and only a small percentage actually makes contact with the roots of the plant.
Hydroponics is generally considered to use 90% less water than soil-based methods to grow the same volume of crops.
Effective Use of Space 📐
Many hydroponic systems can be stacked vertically, meaning that a hydroponic garden can occupy a small surface area footprint but increase its total growing capacity by using all the vertical space above. It's like having a multi-story garden!
Total Control 🎮
One of the factors that attracted me personally to hydroponics was the aspect of total control over all aspects of the growing experience. I chose how much light the plants got, the content of the nutrients I fed them, the temperature or the room they were in, the amount of water the received.
Of course you can control many of these aspects with soil based growing but I was able to achieve all of this in the most unlikely of spaces such as a cupboard.
Only through hydroponics was I able to grow an entire lettuce crop within my tiny work at home office (see below!)
Just have a go!
Ultimately if you are wondering weather or not hydroponics is for you the best course of action you can take is to just get started and try it.
If you decide that its not your style of growing, thats not a problem. Like I've said it's not a war between soil and hydro, they coexist and both have their places. Hydroponics will still be here if you change your mind.
However, if you do decide to jump in and start your venture into the amazing wold of hydroponics, you are certainly in the right place!
I recommend you beginning your journey by clicking the button below which which will take you to the best place to start 👇