Gardening at Home
Gardening is a great way to introduce fresh, local, and healthy food into your diet. Here you can discover how to grow your own food using the resources that you have, whether you own 3 acres or are renting a 2 bedroom apartment in a city.
Growing Food With Hydroponics and Aquaponics One of the easiest ways to grow crops if you don't have the land or the time to plant and tend to a traditional garden. Once set up, the plant will only require a sunny window and occasional water.Hydroponics basically soilless agriculture. The main reason hydroponics is used is to provide agriculture in areas that the soil is ether unfit to grow crops or there is no soil at all. People started really getting into hydroponics during WW2 when the military was trying to find new ways to produce food for the troops. During the 1950's commercial industries started using hydroponics to prevent plant pathogens that are hard to prevent in soil. In fact you would be amazed about how much of the food you eat is grown hydroponically. Nutrients in Hydroponics systems come from fertilizers and can regulate the system nutrients much easier than growing plants in the ground. Another big advantage with hydroponics your system can be as big or little as you want it to be. A system can be place on a windowsill or take up an entire ware house its the only thing that matters is your ambition. A normal hydroponics system can be up and running in 4 weeks.
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Great Sites to VisitFind out your USDA Plant Hardiness Zone and find out what that means for your garden.
Here you can find a guide to growing vegetables in your garden. Where should you put a vegetable garden? Check out these great TED talks about growing your own food. Info on hydro and aquaponics great podcasts about hydroponics Aquaponics is a type of hydroponics that instead of getting you nutrients from fertilizer the nutrients for the plants comes from fish waste. Aquaponics is based around a tiny ecosystem in which the fish waste is used to feed plants, the plants then in turn clean the water. Aquaponics is a much more natural way to grow food then hydroponics but it does have it's drawbacks. For instance instead of just knowing how plants grow you need to also know about fish and about microbes. Though aquaponics is a bit more complicated it dose have it's benefits first the ecosystem setup prevents the plant diseases that eventually find there way into hydroponic system. Secondly along with raising plants in aquaponics you also raise fish these fish can either be used to eat or be used as pets either way don't get attached to the fish early on in your attempt at aquaponics you will probably end up killing dozens of them before you get a true understanding of the system.
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