Twice the food, half the resources



As a person living in 2018, it’s hard to ignore the growing awareness of climate change. That results in making it of extreme importance to make sure that your greenhouse your planning is sustainable and have a minimum amount of impact on the environment. To plant crops in a sustainable manner means to be growing food in and ethically and ecologically responsible manner.
That is also why choosing Hydroponics as your way of crop production is so suitable as there are many benefits in relation to sustainability.

1.     The use of less space.
Making use of the Hydroponics system has a huge benefit when thinking about the space you are going to use. Because the plants aren’t grown in soil in the ground the hydroponics greenhouse can be build in areas that are unfit and impossible to use for agriculture. The greenhouse instantly makes the area agriculturally viable again.
Vertical farming is also a very effective way in saving space. Instead of doing the usual traditional horizontal way of growing, 4 – 8 plants can be grown above each other to save space. That means it could grow four times as much plants as the normal hydroponics greenhouse.

2.     The use of transport
Because Hydroponic Greenhouses can be built and set up anywhere and within urban centers it leads to reducing the transport needed. The crop can be grown near the place it will be sold and that makes it locally grown as well. The plants also won’t have to go through the suffering of long distance journeys to be transported, which makes it much more beneficial for the plants and the time it takes to get from the nursery to the table is quicker.

3.     Water Conservation
The conservation of water and stopping global warming is almost of equal importance. The Hydroponics system again is very useful in this section as it uses up to 70% less water than the usual greenhouses. There are different ways in which the water containing the nutrients could be carried over to the plants. A very efficient way would be using the ZipGrow system, as it leads to a maximum of only 1,5% water loss per day.
The water requirements you should plan for a hydroponic system using ZipGrow towers is:

 a 50-gallon sump, plus another additional 1 gallon of water per Zipgrow tower.

Hydroponics sump size (in gallons) = 50 gallons + (# towers * 1 gallon)

That would mean that since every tower contains approximately 8 plants, each plant only uses 0.125 gallons of water. This amount of water used is spectacular compared to the amount of water used for normal farming and the amount that gets wasted then. The system can also be set up to recycle the water and nutrients used for the gardening which would also be very useful and beneficial when looking at the sustainability of the system. 
Photo: Assignment Point 
For more info on how the ZipGrow towers work and where you could find them: 
zipgrow

Power 
Natural light or artificial light could be used for the plants to grow. When using artificial light it would be a smart choice to make use of solar power to power your gardening system. Using solar power in your hydroponics system would make it one of the most eco-friendly and in the same time energy efficient gardening systems to use.

 The benefits of this system really does make it the worth it, as you get so much more out of it than the resources you use to make it happen. One thing you can not recycle is wasted time, so best will be to start as soon as possible and get in to the Eco-friendly way of gardening.

 For more information on how hydroponics can help your nursery to use water more efficiently and be green, watch this: 


Comine van Zyl 

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