Hydroponics: Soilless Production of Crops

Raising plants in a non-soil situation allows for more plants in a limited amount of space:

• Food crops will mature more rapidly and produce greater results.
• Water and fertilizer are conserved because they can be used again.
• Plants don't need soil as much as they require the reserves of nutrients and moisture.
• Soil quite often tends to leach water and nutrients away from plants, making the application of correct amounts of a fertilizer very difficult.
• In hydroponics, the necessary nutrients are dissolved in water, and this solution is applied to the plants in exact doses at prescribed intervals.
• Until 1936, raising plants in a water and nutrient solution was a practice restricted to laboratories, where it was used to facilitate the study of plant growth and root development.
• In that year, Dr. W.F. Gericke, working in the laboratories of the University of California, succeeding in growing twenty-five foot tomato vines in large basins containing water and nutrient solutions.
• It was Dr. Gericke who invented the name for this discovery.
• Formed from two Greek words, hydroponics can be roughly translated as meaning "water working".
• Between the time of his discovery and the onset of American involvement in World War II, Dr. Gericke and a number of other scientists were able to develop hydroponics from a concept into a sophisticated, successful system.

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