Imagine being able to save 80% of your water needs to grow your crops and increase your yields perhaps as much as 3X, sounds pretty cool right?  Well, that is what Hydroponics can do but there was a catch which made it non organic, but now there is a solution.

Hydroponics uses a system which pumps water around with a nutrient rich soup which feeds the plant the minerals and nutrients they need to grow, with the addition of lights hydroponics can be done indoors. 

Let’s talk about that soup! When I was studying Plant Biology at University, I used a hydroponic system to grow wheat in different substrates and I was supposed to try to kill the wheat with different Bacteria’s, but it did not work, the wheat just kept growing. The main point was that I had to go to the Chemistry lab and weigh out a bunch of chemicals and make a nutrient soup that the plant would feed from and it worked, but how is this different from us spraying artificial fertilizer on an agricultural field? It's not different, right… so scratch hydroponics as a bad idea as it's no different to Big Ag, but hang on a moment… news flash!!! Now you can use compost teas in your systems and not have to use artificial chemical soups… now we have something to talk about!!

So let's go back a moment to soil, healthy fertile soil is full of microorganisms and these guys help feed plants, many minerals in the soil are non-soluble and a plant drinks water full of nutrients and minerals to feed itself, but if the nutrients are non-water soluble the plant cannot access them, here is where the microorganisms come in, they convert the non-soluble minerals and nutrients into a form the plant can uptake and the plant gives them starch in return a win win mutualistic relationship.

Now in modern Agriculture we skip nature and just feed the plants a couple of minerals and nutrients that the plant needs to produce growth but we ignore the other minerals and nutrients that the plant would receive in a normal environment meaning we have plants lacking in minerals, which means the animals and humans that consume that food are also lacking in nutrients... you see the issue right?

So, until recently, I saw hydroponics as a system missing nature.  Happily, I got chatting to one of our Facebook group members and he has enlightened me into the world of hydroponics and compost teas.  Compost teas contain the living elements that feed plants the full spectrum of nutrients, giving us well nutritioned plants and therefore well nutritioned people.

We will be producing more information on this and I will send you a link soon.

Have a great day.

Russell