Hydroponic/Soil combo growing

December 6, 2009 5:12 AM

Is there any method to combine hydroponic gardening with conventional soil gardening?

I've been a soil gardener all my life but wanted to try hydroponics. I want to use a DWC system.
It seems pretty easy compared with other methods.
I'm thinking that having one half the plants roots in soil and the other half receiving nutrients from the hydroponic solution might be better.

posted by boby to Home & Garden (4 answers total)

Why are you thinking that? If you have sufficient minerals and oxygen available in the water, there is no need for soil. Soil provides the same thing (as well as anchorage of plants).
posted by Red Loop at 5:56 AM on December 6, 2009

Ditto to the above. Doing what you suggest eliminates many of the benefits of hydroponics. Consider the function of soil in a garden, and how soil not only can become nutrient poor, but can sometimes become oversaturated with other nutrients. What you're suggesting is a nutrient drip into a soil bed. You won't get the same nutrients back after a cycle, since you're running it through an organic filter.

The clay pellets will do the anchoring work.
posted by Weighted Companion Cube at 6:24 AM on December 6, 2009

Response by poster: Ph balance was a concern of mine. That seems to be a big concern in hydroponic systems. I thought the soil would keep the Ph more balanced.
posted by boby at 7:25 AM on December 6, 2009

What they said. Nutrients in soil are often stored in forms unavailable to plants and microorganisms and released slowly and steadily in an available form. Hydroponic solutions contain small amounts of nutrients in available form, and you keep the nutrients at a steady level by recharging the hydroponic solution. If you added hydroponic nutrients to a soil, I'd worry you'd get a giant pool of slime. In my research, I need to grow plants in Turface MVP, a fired monmorillonite clay pellet. I fertilize my plants using Osmocote, a slow-release full-spectrum fertilizer capsule. It's a primitive form of hydroponic growing, I suppose, but I can keep my plants like this for years. My worst problem is moss.
posted by acrasis at 9:05 AM on December 6, 2009