Ask anyone what things you need to grow healthy plants – be they flowers, fruits, vegetables, or grains – and they will likely say soil, water, and sunlight. While these are the traditional building blocks of a garden, it may surprise you that one isn’t strictly necessary. You don’t actually need soil since plants can be grown hydroponically. Soil has its own problems, which hydroponic growing fixes while also saving time and money and increasing yields. Find out how hydroponic produce can raise your profit levels.
Hydroponic Produce Reduces Pests And Disease
Pests and diseases live in the soil. From year to year, they are hard to get rid of, and once they take hold, you will have to battle them for multiple growing seasons, more than likely. Plants that are grown hydroponically offer little chance for pests to access the plants, and if a plant starts to show signs of disease, it is far easier to limit the spread than it would be with traditional soil farming. Hydroponic produce is not pest-free (no system is), but the likelihood is far less.
Hydroponic Produce Uses Less Water
While it seems counterintuitive, hydroponic growing uses less water. Yes, it takes less water to grow plants in water than it does in soil – by a factor of 10. Hydroponic produce receives nutrients in water that is applied directly to the roots, rather than having to suck it up from the surrounding dirt, where much of it is lost.
Hydroponic Vegetables Don’t Get Weeds
If there was a magic bullet to not having weeds in your soil, every farmer would jump on it. Unfortunately, in soil, you can’t remove every little opportunistic weed that is already starting there. Your choices are to poison them with herbicide (undesirable for many reasons, including expense) or manually pull them out. Even if you do pull them out, by the time you see them, weeds have stolen valuable nutrients from the soil that could have gone to your plant. When you grow hydroponically, there is little to no opportunity for the introduction of weeds.
Hydroponic Produce Produces Bigger Harvests
Since growing hydroponically creates an easier growing cycle, through the better control of temperature, light, humidity, and other factors, it also creates harvests with bigger yields. This is because hydroponic farmers are able to more closely match the ideal conditions for various plants indoors, and then those plants produce fruits with more consistent quality (so there is less lost produce) ad bigger yields. Additionally, many plants produce more quickly when grown hydroponically (since oxygen and nutrients go directly to the roots without soil getting in the way), so they can produce more in a growing season, and that season is also longer.
BAYWATER FARMS HAS THE RIGHT PRODUCE FOR YOU
Baywater Farms is a family-owned and operated farm servicing Baltimore, Washington D.C., Maryland, Delaware beaches, and the Eastern Shore. We are capable of meeting the demands of your produce distributor, restaurant produce supplier, CSA produce supplier, or wholesale produce supplier while maintaining the integrity and character of a small farm. When you work with Baywater Farms, you work with an experienced, ethical, and local farm dedicated to providing the highest-quality heirloom produce.