Hydroponic Gardening

Most hydroponics starts with a lettuce in a jar, and quite a lot of it stops there. This book starts there too, then keeps going: to flood tables and nutrient film channels, drip lines and Dutch buckets, and to tomatoes, cucumbers and strawberries cropping indoors or under glass without a crumb of soil in sight.

Each home system is taken in turn: how it works, what it suits, how it tends to go wrong, and how to plan, build and run one with ordinary kit from wherever suits you. Alongside the plumbing comes the part that matters most, the nutrient solution. You’ll learn what plants take up, how two-part and three-part feeds are put together, how to read and adjust EC and pH, what your tap water brings to the party, and when to top up or start afresh.

What you’ll find inside

• Kratky, wick and still water culture as a cheap, forgiving start, and why fruiting crops soon outgrow them
• Ebb and flow, nutrient film technique, drip into media, Dutch buckets, recirculating deep water culture, vertical towers and aeroponics in plain terms
• Step-by-step builds for a flood table, an NFT unit, a drip system, a set of Dutch buckets, a raft bed and a home-built tower
• The seventeen essential elements, reading the leaves for deficiencies, and why a plant can go hungry in a full reservoir
• Mixing a batch, calibrating meters, target strengths by crop, and making sense of tap, hard, rain and reverse osmosis water
• Rockwool, coco coir, perlite and clay pebbles, and which medium suits which system
• Pumps, timers and reservoirs, and a plan for the day the power goes off
• Root-zone temperature, dissolved oxygen and how to recognise and prevent Pythium root rot
• Tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peppers and chillies, strawberries, aubergines and melons, with support, pruning, pollination and feeding for each, plus leafy greens and herbs
• Grow lights explained through PPFD and DLI, and the choice between indoors and a greenhouse, with running costs worked out

Who it’s for

If you’ve grown a few lettuces in a bucket and wondered what comes next, this is the next step. Beginners can start with the simple systems and move up when they feel ready. Experienced growers will find plenty to chew on: run-off targets for drip-fed tomatoes, the long-running argument over NFT channel slope, training cordons on a string, and steering a crop with the strength of its feed.

Ranges, not rules

Where growers genuinely disagree, on how strong to feed young tomatoes, how warm to keep the roots or how often to change a solution, you’re given the range and the reasons rather than one figure dressed up as gospel. Most timings follow the plant’s stage rather than the calendar, so the advice travels well wherever you grow.

Soil has had a long and distinguished career. There’s no harm in letting it have a season off.