1937 is attributed to William Frederick Gericke for his earliest modern reference to hydroponics. He grew tomato vines about 7.6 meters high in his backyard in a mineral nutrient solution. The earliest examples of hydroponics come from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the floating gardens of China. people used these techniques thousands of years ago.
Although the general theory behind hydroponics remains the same, modern technology has allowed us to grow plants faster, stronger and healthier. Hydroponics Has Been a Resurgence Recently. Popularized in the 1940s and solidified into growing culture in the 2000s, hydroponics actually began much further back in our ancient history. Let’s explore a brief history of hydroponics.
The first known record of hydroponics supposedly used was around 500 BC. BC. It was located in the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. King Nebuchadnezzar II. built this miraculous building as a gift for his wife, Queen Amyitis. In the middle of any rotating hydroponic garden, there may be a high-intensity grow light that simulates sunlight, often with the help of a mechanized timer.
Here, too, numerous support programs for hydroponics became common, with enormous investments being made in hydroponic cultivation systems. No involvement of pesticides and herbicides, growth rate twice as fast as traditional agriculture, nutrient solutions with perfect pH eliminate soil worries and the list never ends why hydroponics are currently needed. The rice not only grew better in flooded fields, but also became more resistant to pests – all thanks to its hydroponic element of the flood and drainage cycle. Hydroponics is a type of horticulture and a subset of hydroponics that involves growing plants, usually crops, without soil using water-based mineral nutrient solutions in aqueous solvents.
Plants are commonly grown hydroponically in a greenhouse or in closed environments on inert media adapted to the controlled agriculture process (CEA). The main advantage of the NFT system over other forms of hydroponics is that the plant roots are exposed to an adequate supply of water, oxygen and nutrients. Building on Jan van Helmont’s earlier work, John Woodward created the world’s first hydroponic nutrient solution in 1699, after concluding that plant growth that benefits from nutrients in water was more accessible than soil. Hydroponically grown plants occupy only 25 percent of the area used by traditional soil cultivation for the same harvest.
The US Air Force made small, 120 square foot hydroponic grow beds that eventually produced a weekly yield of 90 lbs of fresh produce each week. Since hydroponics require much less water and nutrients to grow produce, it may be possible in the future for people to grow their own food in harsh environments with scarce water. As the world population continues to grow, hydroponics become a more viable replacement for traditional agriculture. Before the ancient Chinese used hydroponic methods to grow rice, there was archaeological evidence that it was first grown in the soil at the beginning of rice cultivation.
So don’t be surprised if in the years to come, every edible thing you see is hydroponic in origin and your high-rise neighbor is a successful farmer. One of the earliest hydroponics successes happened on Wake Island, a rocky atoll in the Pacific Ocean that was used as a gas station for Pan American Airlines.
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