Feeding Your Plants

Healthy plants demand ample supplies of nourishing foodstuffs and where these are deficient or unbalanced flowers and vegetables will grow slowly or not at all. The symptoms of food shortage are well known to scientists and experienced gardeners. It is the job of hydroponics to ensure that crops receive optimum quantities of plant nutrients, in the right proportions, throughout their useful lives. In the preceding chapters we have learnt the basic facts about soilless gardening, what the system sets out to achieve and how green plants grow. In addition, we have also discussed the various kinds of containers suitable for home hydroponics and the aggregates or growing media that can be used to fill them and provide support for roots. Now the time has come to talk about the mineral salts or fertilisers that supply the essential plant nutrients. It has already been explained that when a correctly balanced chemical mixture or formula is dissolved in the proper amount of water it forms a nutrient solution capable of sustaining crop growth. Several hundred different formulae have been developed by different scientists and institutions concerned with soilless cultivation over the years, but they all have the same object: to supply plants with the vital food elements, such as nitrogen, potash, phosphorus, calcium, sulphur, magnesium, iron and other minor or trace nutrients. Today, it is generally accepted that the actual choice of mineral salts for fertiliser mixtures is of little significance, provided a balanced concentration of the necessary elements is assured. Of course, care must be taken not to include incompatible chemicals in a formula or to choose those that might give rise to undesirable effects. Given these guidelines, what then becomes of importance in practical soilless home gardening is the local availability of the nutrients and their cost. Fertiliser salts are normally cheaper than laboratory grade nutrients, therefore it pays to employ ordinary agricultural or horticultural brands. Moreover, as will be explained below, since these commercial grades contain many of the minor elements such as manganese, boron, zinc, and copper as incidental impurities, it is




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