Fruit and vegetables are an indispensable part of a healthy diet.
However, buying them from a store means that you know little about how they were grown. It’s hard to tell if they contain traces of pesticides, or if their production was harmful to the environment.
Growing your own fruit and veg is a fantastic alternative. Not only does it put you in total control of your diet, gardening also has huge mental health benefits.
Hydroponic gardening especially is a great option. It works in limited spaces and takes minimal effort.
Most importantly, though, it produces much higher yields than traditional gardening. Here’s why.
1 – Targeted Feeding Systems Allow Concentrated Nutrient Application
To begin with, hydroponic gardening is much more nutrient-efficient. Specialized feeding techniques make it possible for you to inject high-quality fertilizer directly into your plants’ root systems.
This allows you to have healthier plants and be more mindful of the raw materials you use to grow them. It also boosts your overall yield and minimizes the amount of space your setup uses.
2 – Lighting Systems Enable Year-Round Cultivation
Another reason why hydroponic gardening helps you grow larger quantities of healthy fruit and veg is modern lighting equipment.
Over the past decade, we’ve seen an indoor gardening renaissance. Consequently, many different high-quality lighting systems are available on the market.
LED lighting especially has given a serious boost to the yield increase in hydroponics compared to traditional gardening. It can provide photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) – light at the right wavelength for plants to grow – around the clock, all year.
As a result, you can grow vitamin-packed veggies and fruit even in the dead of winter.
3 – You Have Total Control Of Your Growing Environment
Finally, one serious benefit of hydroponic gardening is that you have total control of what happens to your plants.
Basically, you create a microclimate for them from scratch. That allows you to optimize factors such as air circulation, air pressure, humidity, temperature, as well as CO2 and ozone levels.
This means that you can create the perfect conditions for whatever plants you want to grow – whether it’s leafy greens for a smoothie or strawberries for your dessert.
Plus, these controls are usually automated and in some cases even remotely accessible.
This takes the pressure off when it comes to gardening. You don’t have to take continuous care of your plants. Even if you want to go away for a spontaneous trip, you don’t have to worry about finding someone to look after them.
Conclusion
Growing your own fruit and veg is a fantastic way of boosting your physical and mental wellbeing. Hydroponics allows you to do so efficiently, with a minimum of stress and a maximum yield.
In fact, hydroponics is much more than most people imagine. Progrow, a hydroponics specialist explains: “Most people think of hydroponics as strictly hydro grows (NFT – nutrient film technique, DWC – deep water culture etc.) where water is the growing medium instead of using a substrate, but due to modern advances in potting aeration methods, you can achieve similar results using hydroponic nutrient delivery techniques, but with a more robust substrate such as coco coir, or even soil.”