Growing your own food is a great way of making sure you eat healthily. When you cultivate plants, you have control over the level of pesticides, if any, so you can safely assume your produce will be much healthier than many others. Even better, you can take cultivating your own food one step further and grow your plants indoors, in hydroponic gardens. There are several good advantages to doing it, the most important one being that you’ll eat cleaner, chemical-free, organic food. This is something many people pay a lot of money for.
Hydroponic gardening allows you to grow food indoors, without the need for soil or special conditions. The plants are cultivated in a water-based solution that provides them all nutrients needed for their growth. Instead of the typical soil, the roots of the plants are supported by clay pellets, perlite, peat moss or other inert medium. Since these plants enjoy an endless supply of water and nutrients, they usually grow faster and produce bigger crops than those cultivated in traditional gardens or pots. As these plants don’t need soil, their root systems are less developed than the ones of traditional plants. This allows them to direct all their energy and the nutritional intake towards the development of the plant itself, rather than its roots.
Unlike traditional gardening, hydroponic gardens don’t require intense physical labor. You don’t need to remove the weeds, because there aren’t any. Everything that grows in your gardens is what you’ve planted in the first place. No foreign seeds can land between your plants, growing faster than anything else, and suffocating them with their vigorous roots. You are only going to harvest the foods you’ve grown, without effort.
Having your own indoor garden means that you can always have a fresh supply of herbs and spices for your favorite dishes. You won’t run out of basil or thyme ever again. All you need to do is to carefully plan what foods you intend to grow, in order to secure a steady supply of ingredients for your meals.
Once you’ve set your garden indoors, you won’t have to worry about natural disasters that may ruin your crops. You’ll know for sure that you’re going to enjoy the results of your efforts to the full. Besides, your food will be there exactly when you’ll need it, so you won’t have to get out of the house to buy what you may have forgotten during your last trip to the grocery store.
As hydroponic gardens take less space than traditional ones, they can be your only choice, should you live in an apartment or a house without a proper yard. Not everyone can afford the luxury to live in a big house with a garden. However, even if you have the tiniest kitchen in the world, you’d still be able to cultivate and grow your own herbs, lettuce, arugula, kale, tomatoes and many other vegetables. With the prices of hydroponic systems becoming lower and lower, more people have access to this sustainable food growing method.