Producing Healthy, Higher Quality Plants with Soilless Gardening
Soilless gardening is simply growing plants without the use of garden soil. This type of gardening is also referred to as hydroponic or aeroponic gardening. When plants are grown by of soilless gardening techniques, the roots of plants don’t exert all of their energy trying to search for required nutrients as is the case when gardening with dirt. Instead, these roots are given a constant supply of nutrient solution, resulting in smaller root systems and more abundant plant growth.
There are several methods that can be used in soilless gardening. One of the simplest includes the passive technique where you determine when and how to water the plants. For instance, the ‘wick’ method is a form of passive soilless gardening in which the plants are housed in Styrofoam trays that float on top of the nutrient solution.
The roots of these plants simply soak up this solution as needed. Other soilless gardening techniques include the use of pumps and/or timers. The flood and drain method, for example, involves the flooding of individual pots or growing trays with nutrient solution which is then drained back into a designated reservoir.
What Types of Plants can be grown?
Nearly any type of plant, from garden vegetables and fruits to herbs and a variety of flowers, can be grown using soilless gardening methods. Soilless gardening is an easy, effective alternative for growing plants without the use of soil, providing healthier, high-quality plants and yielding greater harvest results.
Preparing Healthy Soil
If you’re getting ready to go on a new garden venture, you need to prepare your soil to ideally house your plants. The best thing you can do in the soil preparation process is to reach the perfect mixture of sand, silt, and clay, you can buy these items from places such as Homebase garden supplies. Preferably there would be 40 percent sand, 40 percent silt, and 20 percent clay. There are several tests used by experienced gardeners to tell whether the soil has a good composition. First you can compress it in your hand. If it doesn’t hold its shape and crumbles without any outside force, your sand ratio is probably a little high. If you poke the compressed ball with your finger and it doesn’t fall apart easily, your soil contains too much clay.
If you’re still not sure about the content of your soil, you can separate each ingredient by using this simple method. Put a cup or two of dirt into a jar of water. Shake the water up until the soil is suspended, then let it set until you see it separate into 3 separate layers. The top layer is clay, the next is silt, and on the bottom is sand. You should be able to judge the presence of each component within your dirt, and act accordingly.
