Hydroponics Nutrients Facts

Hydroponic gardening is the term that means a special technique of growing plants indoors without soil. It has acquired a certain amount of popularity in the recent years as it is pretty inexpensive and very effective and provides healthy crops of vegetables and fruit.

As there is no soil needed the plants get everything necessary from a water solution with nutrients. This technique requires minimal equipment and the roots of the plants are placed in the water. The plus is that no piece of land is actually required – actually, a small hydroponic garden can be grown at home.

One more real advantage of such a technique is that it allows controlling the amount of nutrients that plants get. Moreover, such factors as sunlight amount and low temperatures as well as rains are not longer a problem. Hydroponics nutrients control everything in the process of growing. They are able to give everything that a fruit or a vegetable may want and no pesticides are needed to protect them from various threats. Moreover, with hydroponics nutrients one can grow fresh plants all year long.

There are 16 basic mineral nutrients that all the plants require to grow well no matter if they are hydroponic or soil grown. First of all they are macro nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium and sulfur. Plants need quite a lot of these ones. Besides, there are micro nutrients – they are boron, chloride, copper, iron, manganese, sodium, zinc, molybdenum, and nickel. Their amounts are much smaller and still they are essential. In the system all these hydroponics nutrients are provided to plants from water.

It always depends on a plant how much nutrient it requires. On different stages of growing the amount of nutrient also varies. The younger the plant the weaker the nutrient solution; the older it gets – the stronger the solution is prepared.

Besides the concentration of the hydroponics solution there is also pH level that should be taken into consideration. In other words, acidity should not be more than 5.8-6.3 but also not less. Some very slight variations are also possible; however, it is better keep to the requirements.

Certain advantages of hydroponics nutrients system have already been mentioned. However, there is one more. With the help of hydroponics nutrients fruits and vegetables grow much faster. Actually, it is proved that they grow twice as fast as the plants grown in soil. The thing is in the hydroponics nutrients – they are already provided to plants; while the ones growing in the soil have to spread their roots in search of these nutrients and this takes time. Hydroponic plants have no such necessity and therefore all the energy is directed into the growth.

It is possible to create hydroponics nutrients at home as it is not really very complicated. However, in order to avoid mistakes and make sure everything is all right it is recommended to buy ready concentrated hydroponics nutrients that are widely available as concentrates in the shops. The thing about ready nutrients is that they lower the risk of under or over fertilizing the plants. Besides, pH levels are considered.