Start a Hydroponic Farm Business

Hydroponics is a method of growing plants without soil, using mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent. This business grows and sells plants, vegetables, grass, and other forms of greenery to businesses and individuals.

Hydroponic Gardening – Grow Organic Plants Fast

Hydroponic Gardening In this video we talk about hydroponics and how you can grow crops such as lettuce fast and easy. This gardening method is changing the world and how they grey plants and vegetables. Hydroponic gardening is done by putting pre germinated plants into pipes with constant flowing water.

Overview
Hydroponics is a modern and popular way of growing plants in special water solutions. Using this method, you can grow your plants without soil. To replace the soil you will need the substrate, which serves as a support for the root system, and a water solution which serves as a source of all necessary nutrients. Needless to say that for each plant a water solution is selected individually.

A Beginners Guide: Hydroponic Nutrients

Nutrient management is the crux of a healthy hydroponic system.

What Can You Grow With Hydroponics?
Almost anything. Since you replace a soil with a special water solution, you can grow even a giant apple-tree hydroponically. But it doesn’t make sense, does it? Here is the list of the most common and demanded plants that you can grow using this technology:

• Mushrooms;
• Strawberries;
• Green onions;
• Wheatgrass;
• Tomatoes and cucumbers;
• Basil,

and many others.

Equipment needed
In order to start your hydroponic business, you need to buy a grow system. It’s not that expensive, but it’s really difficult to do it yourself. Buying will be a better option. In case you want to do it yourself, this is what you will need:
– A nutrient tray;
– Pot holder trays;
– Propagation pots;
– Coconut coir;
– Nutrients (huge list of chemicals, it depends on what exactly you’ll be growing);
– Poly pipes;
– A water pump;
– Lighting (in order to simulate a sunlight, you will have to buy at least 10 powerful LCD lamps).

This is what a typical hydroponic farm looks like:

Growing Time
It’s commonly known that hydroponic plants grow faster in comparison to traditional farming. In many cases, a growing time can be reduced by half.
This is because plants grow in ideal conditions and always get as many nutrients and water as they need.
Watch the video below “Hydroponic Vs Soil Experiment” to compare growing time while using these two different approaches.

Hydroponic Vs Soil Experiment – 6 Weeks Growth Comparison

I have two plants that didn’t seem to be growing as the rest of the others. After six weeks in the cups, they remained about an inch tall while all the other plants have taken off. I decided to use these subjects for experiments. The experiment took six weeks.

A study found hydroculture compared to traditional farming in terms of crops yield per area in a controlled environment was roughly 10 times more efficient than traditional farming, uses 13 times less water in one crop cycle then traditional farming, but on average uses 100 times more kilojoules per kilogram of energy than traditional farming.

Capital Required
In comparison to traditional farming, hydroponics requires less space to start and is less a time-consuming process. Yield might be twice as high. It’s merely impossible to imagine a drought or heavy rains while growing hydroponically. Your plants always get as much lighting as they need. However plants grown this way is not as cheap to grow like they would be on a traditional farm.

A cheap hydroponic system starter kit starts at R1000. You will also need to buy seeds and chemicals for water solutions (this requires at least R200-R300). And of course, plenty of water is a must. This kit is not enough to start a sustainable business, it’s more for home consumption and a good introduction to the process.

If you consider it a business, think of buying a big system, which starts at around R10 000 for a commercial system.

Where to grow
Hydroponic farming requires less space than traditional farming to get started, for commercial purposes the best place to use is a greenhouse. But a lot of people run smaller operations from home. You also get portable greenhouse walk-in tunnels which is smaller than a greenhouse but better than just doing it from anywhere.  A 3m tunnel will cost around R5000 and a 4.5m around R6000.

Here is an example of a small indoor system

How To Get Started In Hydroponics

Here’s the links: 1.5″ Grodan Cubes I use to start seeds: http://amzn.to/2ybQZfG 2″ Net Cups that fit the cubes: http://amzn.to/2kBOWfZ pH Up: http://amzn.to/2yAIFaz Aqua Flakes A & B: http://amzn.to/2ybUT8b In this video I will show you how to get started growing plants hydroponically, indoors in your home.

Where to sell
Selling at fresh produce markets will allow you to fetch the highest price for your product. But if you are producing large quantities selling into retail shops is the best option. Supplying restaurants is another option to look at.