Hydroponic Vegetables

A lettuce, a tomato and a cucumber want quite different things from life, and they go on wanting them when their roots are hanging in water. This book takes them one at a time. Each vegetable gets its own guide to growing it hydroponically, from lettuce and leafy greens to tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, so you know what a crop needs before you plant it rather than after it sulks.

Five short grounding chapters come first: how the main systems work and which suits which crop, mixing and reading a nutrient solution, light and temperature, raising seedlings for a water-based system, and keeping roots white and systems clean. Then the book goes crop by crop. Every crop chapter follows the same pattern, opening with the key figures at a glance and working through cultivars, the right system, spacing, light, temperature, EC and pH, training and pollination where they’re needed, harvesting for regrowth, and the problems you’re likely to meet.

Where growers and trials disagree, and on feeding strength they often do, you’re given the range and the reasons, so you can start in the middle and adjust to your own plants. Timings run mostly in days and weeks rather than months, so they hold good wherever you garden.

Crop by crop

• Lettuce of every type, with a first Kratky crop step by step, a weekly production line, and a proper look at tipburn and bolting
• Spinach, kale, Swiss chard, pak choi, mizuna and other Asian greens, rocket, watercress and lamb’s lettuce
• Tomatoes on a cordon: stringing, side-shooting, lowering and leaning, pollination, and disorders from blossom end rot to greenback
• Cucumbers, with all-female and seedless types explained and the main training systems compared
• Sweet peppers and chillies, including two-stem training set against leaving the plants unpruned
• Aubergines, courgettes, dwarf beans, peas and pea shoots, strawberries and melons
• Basil and other herbs, and which of them sit happily alongside lettuce
• Celery, spring onions and radishes, and why most root crops are hard work in water
• Microgreens, most of them ready in one to three weeks from sowing
• Planning several crops in one system, keeping a succession going and cutting for regrowth, with a troubleshooting table that takes you from symptom to likely cause

Who it suits

If you’re new to hydroponics, start with the leafy greens. They’re quick, compact and forgiving, and a bucket of lettuce will teach you a good deal about EC, pH and roots in six weeks. If you already grow this way, the crop chapters offer trial cultivars, attributed feeding targets and detailed training for the fruiting crops, which need more light, more space and rather more attention. The awkward crops get an honest account of what is known and what isn’t, so you can decide whether the experiment is worth the room.