History of Hydroponics

Experimenting with plant nutrients began over three hundred years ago. An English scientist, named John Woodward, experimented with plant nutrients. He wanted to know whether plants got their nutrients from the soil or the water. He began with plants in water and slowly added soil to the water each day. He discovered that the plants improved in size and health. He concluded that it was the soil, and the water which provided the nutrients for the plants.

However, his findings contradicted those of the farmers. Farmers believed that the soil only provided stability for the plants to root on to. This belief was based on their experiences with droughts. Without water, the crops died, no matter how rich in nutrients the soil was.

This was the beginning of many more experiments on plant nutrition. Discoveries and new wonderings which followed Woodward's investigations, led to what we now acknowledge as the science of hydroponics.

Today, many of the different methods of hydroponic gardening comes from the ideas of Dr. Gerike, a plant professor at the University of California at Davis. Dr. Gerike became famous with producing tomato plants 25 feet tall through his method of soilless gardening. In fact, Dr. Gerike was the person who named the science of soilless gardening, "hydroponics."

Hydroponics, growing and cultivating plants without soil, has been in existence since ancient civilization. The Egyptians, Inca Indian tribes, the Aztecs, and the Babylonians are examples of ancient civilizations which practiced hydroponic gardening without even realizing it,way before the word "hydroponics" was ever thought of. Although many of us think of hydroponics as a relatively new method in agriculture, our ancestors, in their efforts to always improve their technology in farming, have already been working and learning whatever their gardens could teach them, including soiless gardening. There, however, remains a lot be learned in the science of hydroponic gardening. Because of its low cost and easy workload, hydroponics captures the interest of many gardeners. New methods in hydroponic gardening are always being explored and will continue to be studied by other gardeners.