Care for Hydroponic plants

For lazy or busy people, hydroponic planting is one of the easiest and most hassle-free way to grow plants. Virtually any plant that can grow in soil will grow well the hydroponic way. For some plants, the hydroponic way may even result in faster or better growth.

Pix 1: Hydroponics plants can be kept indoors as long as it recieves sunlight. However, keep away from direct rain water.

Some of the hassle-free advantages of hydroponics include:

1. You can re-cycle the growing media because they are in-organic. If you use Leca, brick shards, styroform peanuts, marbles, etc, simply wash, sun-dry and re-cycle for the next growth.
2. No watering needed. The plants roots grow direct into water so all nutrients and water are on call at all time.
3. No fertilising needed. Just add the right proportion of liquid nutrients.
4. No weeding needed.
5. No necessity for direct sunlight although it will help. You can use artificial lights or even silver foil reflectors to re-direct sunlight.
6. Can be grown indoor. In fact, one reason why hydroponics is popular with city and apartment dwellers is because it grows well indoor and require minimal care compared to a outdoor garden.
   

Getting started with home hydroponics

Gosh. The news today is all about Lehman Brothers going bankrupt and AIG being bailed out. Lots of financial giants are falling....and the stock market had nose-dive this morning.

Who cares anyway. I don't play the financial market.

I'm more busy with my first DIY home hydroponic adventure. I attended a community talk on hydroponics a couple of days ago and had bought a couple of DIY home hydroponic kits. You can either buy one of such kit or make your own hydroponic kit. Here's what inside an ideal hydroponic kit:

Pix: A typical DIY hydroponic home kit

1. Styrofoam Box
2. Net Pots
3. Growing Media - Leca, Vermoculite
4. Plant seeds
5. Leafy Nutrient Solution
6. Measuring Cup

If you don't buy or can't find such a kit, you can assemble them yourself using familiar items around the house such as plastic bottles, packing peanuts, paper cups etc. For your information, I bought the kit you see in the picture for less than US$8.

Why Hydroponics?

Modern life is stressful. The world is creaking under the burden of growing enough food to feed it's fast growing population.

Some farming conglomerate or even farming individuals become greedy. They cut corners. They introduce DNA-altered compounds. They use harmful pesticides. They induce quick-growth artificially.

We never know nowadays whether the vegetable, meat or fish we eat have been genetically modified, chemically treated or growth artificially induced. True, we can buy organic food - but they tend to be very expensive and not affordable to everyone.

Even as I write this - the world is still recovering from the shock of massive use of harmful chemicals - melamine - in the production of infant milk formula in China. This harmful chemical has already caused the death of 3 babies and affected the health of thousands of other babies. Due to a modern globalised economy, this tainted milk formula may have also affected babies in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

How can we ensure our daily food is safe?