HYDROPONICS BASICS
Rarely do we daydream of less-than-perfect soil. We fantasize about our rural retreat — a picturesque cabin equipped with solar panels. We own a well with pure water, a stocked trout stream just a few paces out the backdoor, and a mature woodland with excellent hunting. We have a milk cow and two stands of honeybees, and every plant in the vegetable garden is green and thriving.
In reality, few locations have garden soil that doesn’t need some adjustment. We’d be lucky if the only requirement is 100 pounds of lime to raise the pH or perhaps organic matter applied to the top. But it’s not always so simple. What if the land on our dream acreage has thin (or nonexistent) topsoil? Maybe we’re too far from a quarry to have reliable access to lime. Maybe the only affordable real estate on the market is reclaimed surface mined land. The land could be rocky, heavily compacted, and not likely to be tillable without a few years of prep work.
Hydroponic production may be the best (or only) solution for growing vegetables in scenarios like this.
According to the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization, global food production will need to increase by 70 percent by 2050 in order to provide for a projected 9.1 billion people. Plus this growth must happen as more and more cropland is lost to urbanization and as tighter regulations are placed
