History of Hydroponics

HISTORY Of Hydroponics

Plants need certain mineral elements in order to grow.

This well-known fact was first pointed out by Leonardo da Vinci in 1492, the same year that Columbus unknowingly stumbled across the New World. And it is the scientific basis for what we now call "hydroponics" in the twentieth century.

Hydroponics is simply defined as the science of gardening without soil.

Its earliest beginnings can be traced to Ancient China, Egypt, and India. King Nebuchadnezzar II built the hanging gardens of Babylon as early as 600 B.C. These gardens, famous as one of the Seven Wonders, were filled with plants grown in a steady stream of water. Although there is evidence of these ancient water gardening systems, scientific experiments such as Da Vinci's have been the recorded steps toward present day hydroponics.

A Belgian man took the next notable step in the history of hydroponics more than one hundred years after Da Vinci's recorded observation. Jan van Helmont's experiments showed that plants obtain substances from water in 1600. In Ireland, Robert Boyle documented growing plants in glass vials filled with water by 1666. In 1699, John Woodward conducted experiments to find out how plants obtain food. This Englishman cultivated plants in water, adding different types of garden soil to show that certain substances derived from earth are responsible for plant growth. Taking into account the work of Van Helmont, Woodward concluded that it was substances in both the water and the soil that allowed plants to grow. This was an important discovery, and Woodward might have gone on to find out what those substances were had he not been handicapped by the lack of proper equipment.

Progress was slow until more advances were made in the field of chemistry. Then in 1804, the French chemist Nicolas de Saussure conducted crop nutrition. He found that plants are composed of chemical elements obtained from water, soil, and air. He concluded that plants need the mineral substances from these sources to achieve satisfactory growth. Around 1850, another Frenchman, Jean Boussingault, experimented with growing plants in different mediums besides soil, such as sand, quartz, and charcoal. He proved that water was indeed essential to plant growth, because it provided hydrogen. Boussingault discovered that dry plant material consists of hydrogen and carbon dioxide, which is obtained from the air. Now that scientists knew the composition of plants, and what substances were necessary for growth...

...The next step was to eliminate the growing medium and grow plants in a water solution that contained all of the necessary minerals.

This was accomplished by two German scientists in the early 1860's. Sachs and Knop were the first to grow plants in a water/solution culture, calling the process "nutriculture". Interest in the practical application of nutriculture didn't develop until around 1925, when those in the greenhouse industry began to see its advantages. Between 1925 and 1935, there were extensive developments and advances in the field of nutriculture. The most abrupt advancements in the field began in 1929, when Dr. William F. Gericke, a professor form the University of California Davis, tried to transform lab-style nutriculture experiments into commercial crop production. His results were astoundingly successful. Gericke abandoned the term "nutriculture," and called the new method of crop production "hydroponics," which literally translates as "waterworking" from the Greek.

He was successful in growing vegetables, fruits, cereal crops, ornamentals, and flowers hydroponically.

His tomato plants were a record twenty five feet high, and he had to use a ladder just to harvest them. Word of Dr. Gericke's success spread across the country like wildfire. According to author J.S. Douglas, "The American press hailed it as the most colossal invention of the century, reporting... that farmlands had become relics of the past." Dr. Gericke wrote a book about his method, titled Soilless Gardening, and soon everyone wanted to try it. Harris writes, "Every John Citizen was mixing a few cents worth of various chemicals in jars or tins and waiting patiently for the magic spell to begin." During this time, people tried to make money off the new idea by selling useless equipment. But after a while it died down, and more practical research was done. Universities, commercial growers, and nurserymen owned and operated most hydroponic systems in the United States by the mid 1930's. Hydroponics had also spread to Europe, where it was adapted to British conditions at the University of Reading, and the Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd.

Scientific curiosity in hydroponics was revived and government-sponsored experiments began when World War II started in 1939.

The United States Army and the Royal Air Force opened hydroponic units at military bases. These sites provided food for the troops stationed on rocky islands where crops could not other-wise be grown. They realized that "the diet of a fighting man had to include fresh fruit and vegetables."

The commercial use of hydroponics was spread throughout the world in the 1950's.

Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, the USSR, and Israel were just a few of the main countries to which it spread. Today, almost every state in the U.S. has a substantial hydroponic greenhouse industry. They are widely spread in unfarmable areas where crops could not otherwise be grown. Hydroponic systems are definitely useful to smaller countries where any available agricultural land is being used for tourism. It allows them to produce the food they need without sacrificing much of their valuable land. Where a fresh water supply is not available, desalination units can be set up to use the sea water. Diamond Mines Limited owns a large hydroponic operation in the desert of South West Africa at Oranjemund. As a mining company, they produce thousands of pounds of fresh lettuce and tomatoes grown in the gravel and sand left over after mining.

With the development of plastics, hydroponics took another big step forward.

Plastics were used in the place of concrete in the large beds and tanks for holding plants and water, and for all of the necessary plumbing in the greenhouse. According to the Hochmuth brothers, "Plastics have become an essential part of the development of many of the current soilless systems." Today, plastics are used in "almost every aspect of crop production, including providing a barrier to the soil, lining crop production troughs, holding soil and soilless media..." With the incorporation of plastics into the hydroponics industry, it has grown at a very rapid pace. In the early 1970's, soil culture was still the predominant production system. An estimated thirty percent of greenhouse crops were being grown using hydroponics by 1974. Four years later, the figure had doubled, with sixty percent of greenhouse crops being grown in this manner. Plastics have also allowed irrigation systems to become much more elaborate. As hydroponics continues to develop, it becomes more and more automated. The plastic irrigation systems are set on timers to do the watering. In hydroponics, it is essential to keep the growing medium wet, since that is the only source of nutrients. Pumps and timers have made hydroponics systems easier to run, and reduced the operational costs.