Aeroponic Gardening: Efficient or Extra?

Life as a farmer can be tough. Though a rewarding experience, running through the daily operations of the homestead can be as difficult as any business management. Because of this, looking into technology that makes life easier for the folks feeding the world is essential. With that, let’s dive into the next system for growing plants in this series; Aeroponic Gardening!

What is Aeroponic Gardening?

Aeroponics is a method of producing plants from utilizing high oxygen exposure and finely misted, nutrient rich water. While some mistakenly equate aeroponics to hydroponics, the two are completely opposite in theory and practice. The main difference between the two methods resides on two factors-medium and growing chamber. For hydroponics, you are beholden to some form of soil-less grow medium (coco coir, clay pebbles, etc.). Aeroponics differs, as it essentially is medium-free. The second point of contrast comes with the growing chamber for the two methods. Aeroponics suspends the roots of the plants in an environment rich with oxygen, while supplementing with misted nutrient water. Hydroponics suspends the roots in nutrient water and supplements with oxygen through bubbles. The two methods are similar to the classic Chinese philosophy of yin-yang, as they use the same materials, but manipulate them in different ways. Now, let’s explore how the two methods stack up with effectiveness.

How Fast Do Plant’s Grow?

The two methods of soil-free growing are known for their high yield rates compared to the traditional method of creating produce. Yet, aeroponics tends to slightly outperform hydroponics for a few reasons. With hydroponics, you typically run 2–6 plants per square foot of horizontal space (imagine a box with the dimensions of 1x1x1 ft.). The plant’s roots rest in the growing chamber, filled with nutrient water. Plants can unevenly source the nutrients necessary for their growth due to competition from the neighboring plants. This can be avoided partly by performing root maintenance on some of the larger plants, but still has a randomized effect concerning each plant getting enough of the nutrients it needs. With aeroponics, a higher rate of nutrients are absorbed per plant, since competition is eliminated by the mist hitting each plant’s roots individually. This, coupled with high oxygen concentration, makes for rapid plant development that exceeds the growth rate for hydroponics. While this is a great feature of aeroponics, some downsides still exist in the system.

Pro’s and Con’s

Generally, aeroponics is an effective and efficient way to grow crops. However, there are some downsides to this method. Let’s examine these!

Pro

• No soil needed
• Lessens chance of disease, lessens stress on plant due to lack of medium
• Control over every variable in the growing process
• Customize, can adjust system to your unique needs
• Explosive growth due to high oxygen exposure to the roots and precise nutrient delivery

Con

• Constant cleaning and disinfecting of the growing chamber
• If one part of the aeroponic system breaks, the whole system dysfunctions
• Very technical; need adept understanding of the machinery to build, operate, and fix
• More expensive start-up

Now that we have these pros and cons in mind, let’s look at building a system!

How do you Build a System?

Building an aeroponic system can be confusing, tricky, and frustrating. To alleviate this, let’s look at two common system and break it down!

High-Pressure System vs. Low-Pressure System: These two methods are very similar. The main difference comes in the disbursement of the nutrient water. For a high-pressure system, the water is pressurized to the point to where the liquid is atomized, making the mist very fine (and more absorptive). Low-pressure systems do not reach that level of pressurization, making the nutrient water droplets larger. Both systems will work great! Let’s see the steps for building these.

Low-Pressure System: To start, you need to set up a basin for your plant’s roots to hang in (the basin can be any container that fits the size of the required materials). Next, you need to provide your nutrient water to your plant’s roots. This can be accomplished by attaching mister heads to tubing that lines the walls of basin (for the LOW-pressure system, a fountain pump will suffice). Next, you need a net cup (support structure for the plant) to hold the plant and its roots. You will need a plant tray that separates the crops from the dark basin. Lastly, you need a light source to feed the plants. Make sure the basin is light-proof and close to air-tight to prevent pathogens from growing inside the chamber.

High-Pressure System: To start, you need to get a specialty item to reach the level of pressure necessary for atomization of the nutrient water. This can be done with an accumulator tank, which is a pressurizer. The accumulator is responsible for pressurizing the nutrient water into the misting heads, which then sprays the roots from top to bottom. If you want to reuse the water, you can add a collection tray to get the nutrient water back into the system. Other than that, the materials are like the low-pressure system. You need a dark, semi-air tight basin to hold the roots, a light source, net cups, and a plant tray.

Now that we’ve examined the two most common forms of aeroponics, let’s discuss how aeroponics can be used to help everyday people and farmer’s alike!

Environmental and Humanitarian Benefits

The aeroponic method of gardening is also a green powerhouse. Estimated water reduction from this method is 98%, with an additional 60% less fertilizer being used, and boasts a reduction of pesticide usage to zero, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for the U.S.A

For humanity, aeroponics has many of the great qualities of hydroponics, but to a greater extent. Aeroponics uses even less space than hydroponics, and uses less water due to the process of misting rather than submerging. This can be a game changer for savvy farmers, who could utilize the small space requirement and incorporate that into a modern, indoor farm.

Aeroponics: Efficient or Extra? SOLVED

When researching this topic, one may look at the long list of items needed, the difficult assembly, and the process of maintenance with dismay. It can be overwhelming to build a machine like this, especially if you don’t fancy yourself mechanical inclined. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that the juice is worth the squeeze with aeroponics. With so many benefits, like low resource usage, rapid growth, and little space requirement, aeroponics is a great way for more advanced gardeners to level up their grow-ops.