Advantages Of Hydroponics Over Other Farming Methods

21 August 2015
 Categories: , Blog

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Traditional farming requires that a ground be prepared, and then plants or seeds be planted, watered, given fertilizer and maintained throughout the growth period. However, with hydroponics, this process is made much simpler thanks to technological innovations. Plants are grown in containers and are fed with a mixture of water and mineral nutrition. If you're thinking of trying out hydroponic farming, you stand to gain numerous advantages from this technique:

Location is not a problem

Often, farming locations are dependent on availability of enough land space. This makes farming in urban areas almost impossible. With hydroponic farming, you do not need to farm on large tracts of land. It is very easy to utilize small spaces and still enjoy generous crop yields. You can do so by utilizing vertical space in your farming area through layered tiers of farming trays or using vertical poles/pipes instead of horizontal ones.

 In addition to that, one also has to ensure that the land they want to farm on has the necessary minerals to support their crop. With hydroponic farming, you can grow your crops anywhere, be it indoors or in very dry locations. This is because you are not farming on the ground surface but in well-controlled enclosed environments.

Better crop control

Due to its nature, hydroponic farming makes it easy to control how you grow your crops. For example, you can control the exact amount of water you need to avoid wastage. You can also ensure your crops get the exact amount of nutrition they need. You can also control other parameters such as light, weeds and even pH values. This ensures you grow healthier crops with optimum yields.

Maximum water conservation

Considering Australia is such a dry region, farming requires high water conservation to avoid scarcity and to reduce farming costs. With hydroponic farming, you can use less water to grow your crops, as compared to traditional farming. This is because no water is lost to soil absorption or evaporation. Any water not taken up by the roots is drained back to a reservoir and used later. Aeroponics, for example, offers even better values on water economy as water is sprayed onto the plants to further reduce wastage.

The process is fully automatable

Hydroponics can be fully automated to ease human labor and ease the supervision process. This is made possible through use of electronic timers. These timers can be used to control the intervals and durations for watering, lighting and aerating the plants. As long as you have electricity, you can reduce your workload to simple duties such as monitoring your crop and harvesting.

With hydroponic farming, therefore, you get to farm anywhere, using very little water and with the ability to control your crops in every way for maximum yields.