Hydroponic Greenhouse Gardening

For the gardener who is looking to make the best use of their newly constructed greenhouse, hydroponic greenhouse gardening is a viable alternative to soil based plant growing.

Greenhouses offer many of the same advantages to the hydroponic gardener with the added benefit of being able to control airflow, temperature and light, which may not be so easy to do in other settings.Numerous fruits and vegetables such as tomatoes, strawberries, peas and welsh onions will flourish in a good hydroponic greenhouse as will exotic flowering plants such as orchids.

Good light control is one of the more challenging facets of hydroponic gardening. Because the medium in which the plant grows is water, algae growth can present a problem if too much light is allowed to get under the surface of the water. However, by virtue of the fact that the amount and angle of light can be controlled with proper use of shades and shutters, this should be a non-issue inside a greenhouse.

However, you also need to strike a happy medium since hydroponic plants, like their opposite numbers grown in soil, need sufficient light to thrive. Although greenhouses do not magically produce more light on their own, they do filter and diffuse it, which in turn keeps the interior warm and more uniformly lit. In addition, they also protect the plants from exterior cold while letting in much needed sunshine.

For instance, in the northern hemisphere, many winter climates have low temperatures and several hours of daily sunshine. In these regions, a translucent polycarbonate greenhouse wall can easily maintain a greenhouse at one hundred degrees Fahrenheit even with outside winter temperatures in the region of fifteen degrees Fahrenheit.

Of course, it is quite easy for temperatures inside the greenhouse to become too hot but that can be compensated for with the use of fans and vents. Proper temperature control is just as important, if not more so, for hydroponically grown plants as it is for their soil-based cousins.

Making use of a greenhouse to keep the benefits and exclude the harm offers the best of both worlds. Without one, the only alternative would be to use the inside of the home although that may present a big disadvantage for some folks.

Unlike inside the home, greenhouses offer superior lighting and watering system arrangements. There can be few folks who would be willing to have high-pressure sodium or metal halide lamp fixtures together with drip irrigation systems running through the spare rooms.

Within a home greenhouse, these elaborate systems can be positioned exactly where they will do the plants the most good. That facet is particularly important in the case of hydroponic gardening, because light and water amounts are more important than in the case of soil-based gardens, which tend to be more self-regulating without special setups.

For the same reason, it is easier to arrange nutrient feeding systems in a greenhouse, which is very important when it comes to hydroponically grown plants. Normal soil based plants will, with some decent soil, extract the n nutrients they need and exclude the rest whereas in a hydroponic setting, you, as the gardener, have to arrange that.

pH control offers the same problem and greenhouses the same solution. It is a lot easier for the pH to shift in a hydroponic garden. Because water is ever present, acidity and alkalinity can change quickly by big amounts. Ions flow more easily in these circumstances. Working in a greenhouse allows the gardener to set up automatic pH control systems to reduce the amount of manual adjustment needed.

Greenhouses can be constructed or purchased pre-made. They come in a range of sizes and make for an excellent investment for anybody interested in hydroponic greenhouse gardening. In addition, many are modular so they can ‘grow’ as your garden 'grows'.