Hydroponika w domu.pdf

This could be considered a fairly accurate definition of the term

"hydroponics." In its more advanced stages, hydroponics can be a

complex art indeed, but the purpose of this book is to describe a series of

methods that will make hydroponics work for you. It will describe how

to make or where to buy a hydroponic system, how to plant it, how to

maintain it, how to correct common problems, and where to get

supplies. Two of the greatest benefits of hydroponic gardening are the

freshness and high nutritional value of the vegetables and herbs that

can be grown. For these reasons, you will also find recipes from famous

chefs who use hydroponically grown produce in their own kitchens.

What this book will not do is give a lengthy history of the subject,

or a great many personal anecdotes that do little good in helping you get

results from hydroponics. Presumably, results are the reason you bought

this book. By following the procedures listed here you will be able, for

example, to raise several crops of garden vegetables per year at a fraction

of their supermarket cost.

With the exception of a cursory knowledge of how hydroponics

came about, most readers couldn't care less about the long list of

people who have experimented with hydroponics, or when. Nor do

most readers care that some nutrients can be "locked in" under certain

conditions and are therefore unavailable to the plant. These things can

be found in the books listed in the bibliography. Here we will be dealing

with only some of the hundreds of formulae where all the nutrients are

available to the plant. In other words, I will not be giving you a lot of

superfluous scientific information. If anyone feels that I haven't given

enough background or scientific information, then they'll have to

consult other books, because Hydroponics for the Home Gardener is

written expressly to give you the facts you need.

Is It Worthwhile?

Gardeners love hydroponics, because almost anything can be grown

and there is no back-breaking work: no tilling, raking or hoeing. There

are no weeds to pull, no poisonous pesticides to spray. No moles or

cutworms eat your roots, and most insects leave your clean and healthy

plants alone.

Hydroponics is ideal for the hobbyist home-owner or apartment-

dweller who doesn't have the time or space for full-time soil gardening.

In late spring and summer, your portable hydroponic unit can be put

outside on a porch or balcony where natural sunlight helps produce

tremendous yields of anything from lettuce, to cucumbers, to zinnias. In

winter, the unit can be moved anywhere inside the home, even into the

basement, where your plants will flourish and continue to produce

under artificial light.

Plants love to grow in hydroponics, because their roots don't have

to push through heavy, chunky soil to compete for nutrients. Instead, a

hydroponic system distributes nutrients evenly to each plant. What's

more, plants need air to breathe, and, unlike soil, a porous growing

aggregate lets air circulate freely around them. Consequently, every-

thing grows quickly and beautifully.

Hydroponic plants grow faster, ripen earlier and give up to ten

times the yield of soil-grown plants. These clean and pampered plants

produce fruits and vegetables of great nutritive value and superior

flavour. Many of them, especially hydroponic tomatoes and cucumbers,

are sold in the gourmet sections of supermarkets at considerably higher

prices than ordinary vegetables. The point here is that you can grow the

same vegetables for considerably less money than it costs to buy the

pulpy supermarket variety.

History

Hydroponics is at least as ancient as the Pyramids. The Hanging

Gardens of Babylon, which are listed as one of the Seven Wonders of

the World, used a crude form of hydroponics. The world's rice crops

have been grown in this way from time immemorial. In 1934, however,

a University of California professor adapted this time-tested technique

to other crops. The results were twenty-five foot tomato vines that had

to be harvested with ladders. Modern hydroponics was born and it has

been advancing ever since.

During the Second World War, Allied soldiers ate hydroponic

vegetables grown on their air and naval bases in the South Pacific.

Today, hydroponic installations help feed millions of people; they may

be found flourishing in the deserts of Israel, Lebanon and Kuwait, on

the islands of Ceylon, the Philippines and the Canaries, on the rooftops

of Calcutta and in the parched villages of West Bengal.

Half of Vancouver Island's tomato crop and one-fifth of Moscow's

are hydroponically produced. There are full-fledged hydroponic systems

in American nuclear submarines, Russian space stations and on off-

shore drillings rigs. Large zoos keep their animals healthy with hydro-

ponic green food, and race horses stay sleek and powerful on grass

grown hydroponically year round. There are large and small systems

used by companies and individuals as far north as Baffin Island and

Eskimo Point in Canada's Arctic. Commercial growers are using this

marvellous technique to produce food on a large scale from Israel to

India, and from Armenia to the Sahara.

Why Hydroponics For You?

Have you noticed lately that there's something missing in supermarket

vegetables? It's flavour. As in many modern foods, flavour has been

traded for the convenience of the producers. Large-scale farming and

marketing do, of course, provide vast quantities of food for the world's

burgeoning population, but it is important to remember that whenever

quantity is stressed, quality suffers. Consequently, the flavour and

nutritional value of your meals are reduced.

One major reason for these losses is the types of seeds developed

for "agribusiness." These seeds are chosen for fast growth and high

yields. The vegetables and fruits that result have tough skins for

machine harvesting, sorting and shipping. Flavour and quality are

secondary concerns. In addition, many vegetables — especially to-

matoes — are harvested unripe to ensure safe shipment and a longer shelf

life in the store. In fact, attempts are now being made to develop a

hybrid, package-fitting square tomato.

In pioneer days, more often than not, towns and villages grew up

where farmers tilled the soil. They were good farmers and chose the best

soil. These towns and villages are our cities of today; still expanding,

still gobbling up valuable farming land. As prime agricultural land

disappears, as growers' costs keep rising, as transportation costs increase

on a parallel with energy supplies and as supermarket boards of directors

become more and more concerned with profit margins, we are going to

see our food costs increase to the point of absurdity. The Victory

Gardens of World War II were planted to raise unavailable food, and it

seems realistic to say that in the near future millions of people will be

using hydroponics to supply themselves with affordable vegetables and

herbs of a quality that stores will not be able to match.

these substances down into their inorganic parts (chemicals, if you

like), so that the plants can feed on them.

In hydroponics there is no soil, and the plants are fed directly with

the same minerals that healthy organic soil produces. The plant does

not know, or particularly care, whether its mineral food was made by

man or nature. It does care, though, that it is well fed, and a nitrate is a

nitrate whether it comes from a nutrient solution or a dead mouse.

A plant uses two basic processes in order to grow. The first,

osmosis, takes up water and minerals through the roots. The second,

photosynthesis, uses light and the atmosphere for transforming the

water and minerals into plant tissue. Roots need air as well, in order to

breathe, and this is one of the reasons that hydroponics works so well.

The loose, chunky hydroponic growing medium, the aggregate, as it is

called, allows plenty of air to reach the roots. On the other hand,

natural soil often requires a lot of work and time to assure satisfactory

aeration.

How Plants Grow

Some books on hydroponics give the reader a crash course on biology

complete with diagrams. I would prefer that you get your own biology

text, if you feel it's necessary in order to produce good cucumbers. It

seems to make more sense to relate biology directly to hydroponics and

the nutrients that make plants grow.

Each plant is a natural workshop that builds organic matter in the

form of roots, stems, leaves, fruit and seeds. Air and water provide more

than ninety-seven per cent of this matter, while the remainder comes

from plant nutrients. A plant cannot take up any organic substance;

rather it absorbs inorganic mineral salts. That is, the vegetable kingdom

feeds directly on the mineral kingdom.

This is why there is no conflict between organic gardening and

hydroponics. The difference is, however, that in organic gardening it is

the soil that is fed with dead plant and animal matter, not the plant.

Soil acts as a natural fertilizer factory that goes to work on these organic

substances with its soil bacteria in league with weathering. It breaks

Chemicals or No Chemicals?

Hydroponics gives you yet another edge over soil gardeners. They

can't go away on vacations when the good weather comes without

arranging for the watering and weeding of their gardens. If you have

bought or built a hydroponic system that waters automatically, away

you go. If it rains or doesn't rain while you're away, so what?

During winter, your hydroponic garden will produce tomatoes,

lettuce, cucumbers and whatever other healthful green foods you

choose just when their cost is highest and their natural vitamins are

most needed. It's a cheery sight to see your vegetables, herbs and flowers

sitting fat and happy under a growlight, some ready for harvesting,

when the snow is blowing outside. Remember, too, that your planters

and plants will act as natural humidifiers for the dry indoor air of winter.

Come spring, you move your portable hydroponic unit outdoors

again onto a balcony, porch, patio or into a greenhouse to take full

advantage of natural sunlight. Because you have already started your

garden indoors under lights, and because it is out of the range of spring

ground frost, you can get your first delicious hydroponic tomato two

months earlier than your dirt-farming neighbours.

Are chemicals used in hydroponics? Most people would say no, but the

real answer is yes. We will be using a mixture of N2 and O2, commonly

called air, and lots of H2O. To this is added small amounts of N, P and K

(nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium) and balanced trace elements.

The serious point being made here is that the world and everything in it

is made up of one "chemical" or another. What we do avoid in hydro-

ponics is putting the wrong chemical in the wrong place at the wrong

time.

Nothing could be more damaging than what the modern

commercial farmer does when he tries to boost his yield by dumping

inorganic nutrients (fertilizer) on top of his organic soil. His plants may

grow faster for awhile, but eventually his soil dies, because nutrient salts

have inhibited the action of the soil's micro-organisms. After a few

years his soil is little more than something for his underfed plants to

stand around in.

To make matters worse, rain washes a large amount of this fer-

tilizer off the farmer's fields. It enters our creeks and rivers and ends up

in our lakes. It does not poison them, but it does overfertilize them.

Algae and water plants thrive on it, and they multiply on the surface of

the water, blocking light to the lower regions and eventually killing

underwater plant and animal life.

Detergents cause the same problem, because they are such terrific

fertilizers - the more phosphates the better. Grandma really did know

something when she dumped her wash-water on the garden. When you

flush your high-phosphate detergent down the drain into the sewage

system, you are adding to overfertilization and choking marine life.

In the midst of this we are presented with hydroponics, an

environmentally sound growing method where water and nutrients are

recycled until they are used up by the plants. Nothing is wasted, and

nothing ends up in our rivers and lakes. Your healthy hydroponic plants

will tell you that you are doing something right.

Hydroponic Herbs

Not long ago, herbs grew in every garden and were sold by every

greengrocer, but all we seem to use today is parsley as a garnish.

Whatever happened to fresh chives, tarragon, basil and sage? We used

to know that herbs were natural flavour secrets that would give a lift to

the simplest budget dish or the most complex gourmet creation.

Perhaps we have forgotten because we have become accustomed to

dried herbs whose flavours and fragrances have been destroyed by

processing. One of the real joys of hydroponics is the rediscovery of

fresh kitchen herbs. Once you have used them, you'll never want to be

without them again.

Finally, it is worth remembering that for most people hydroponics is a

new and exciting science. There is still much to be learned. Don't be

afraid to experiment, particularly if you find that something in this or

any other book is unsuitable for you. What works for me may not work

for you, and what I believe may not hold true in your particular case.

What this book seeks is results for you, and the proof of any system or

method is what it produces.

Year-Round Gardening

Almost anyone can make things grow outside in summer, but you will

find that your hydroponic plants will both outgrow and outproduce

their soil-bound cousins. This is partly because they don't have to

expend a lot of energy sending out roots to seek nutrients; conse-

quently, they have more energy left for growing.

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