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Hello, this month’s Hydroponics gardening article will begin a fully graphically integrated retrospective journey into the most popular automated Hydroponics methods currently being applied throughout the World producing healthy, fast growing crops and ornamental plants. This is the first in a series of six or seven pieces that will demystify Hydroponics gardening processes revealing the basic underlying fundamental principles involved.

The main Hydroponics schemata are; the “raft” or “pool” technique, the wick method, the “ebb & flo” configuration, the nutrient film technique or “NFT”, the drip array style, sub-irrigation, and the futuristic application of aeroponics technology. There are of course many other variations imaginable, and more simplistic methods such as growing plants in troughs or containers and feeding them manually.

One of the easiest of the different types of hydroponics fashions to apply is the raft technique where plants are grown on a floating raft, or other support structure such as rigid plastic or netting, over a reservoir of fertilizer nutrient solution. The plants’ roots are allowed to grow into the solution where they can selectively acquire necessary nutrient ions for biomass production. The nutrient solution is usually aerated using an air pump to increase the available oxygen required for cellular respiration to increases yields.

Here is a basic graphical representation of how the raft system is made up:

The raft system can be advantageous due to its simplicity in construction, but variables such as nutrient solution management control and restricted oxygen availability to the plants’ roots can cause problems.

The relatively high nutrient solution to plant volume ratio involved can be both beneficial and detrimental as the large quantity of fertilizer solution can act to buffer pH, temperature, and nutrient levels well, but monitoring and concentration (TDS or EC or ppm) testing are usually required regularly unless batch dumping is applied frequently which imposes the problem of regulating runoff into the environment.

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