If you have heard of hydroponics or other methods of growing plants without soil and want to try it out at home, you can. Sometimes people get a misconception about hydroponics in reality it is really not as mysterious and complicated as it seems. A simple hydroponics system is easy to care for and set-up at home. There are materials you can buy or some you may be able to find around the house.

Hydroponics are most often times associated with the productions of food plants. This is a great way to have fresh vegetables year round but hydroponics are not necessarily limited to food plants. Many houseplants lend themselves well to hydroponics culture.

The dirt or soil that you use to grow plants in a traditional method is substituted for a growing medium (full of nutrients the plant needs to grow) in hydroponics gardening. Using hydroponics means there is no soil the plants are grown in a liquid, which is the growing medium. The growing medium is fed directly to the roots by method of a drip-feeder. The system can be completely automated and the gardener can control how many drips the roots receive in a specified time frame. The more of the growing medium the faster the plants grow.

Since the system can be automated, the amount of time and energy that is required to maintain a hydroponics garden is less than with a traditional garden. Because the system is automated the biggest requirement is that the gardener assures that the systems contains enough water and growing medium is present in the right amounts. With this taken care of then the plants can be left unattended for a longer period of time.

A home-based hydroponics garden can grow vegetables or houseplants year round. The concern about soil borne pests and the composition of the soil are not an issue with this type of gardening. You still will need to pay attention for leaf attacking insects but it will be a lot less of a problem with out the soil for the insects to hide and hatch in.

Another bonus with this type of gardening is how fast you can have mature vegetables indoors (by increasing the amount of growing medium).

The types of plants that are best for hydroponics are ones with thin spider-like roots. Plants that have a bulb root system are still best grown in the traditional soil method inside a pot or outside. When you are ready to begin, germinate the seeds for your plants like you normally would. When the seed has started to sprout and has approximately 2-5 millimeters of growth it is ready to transplant to the hydroponics container and begin
growing.

There are many great tutorials; books and resources on the Internet that can give you complete instructions and sources for formulas and growing mediums. The best thing about this type of indoor gardening is that you can start small with a simple system. As you experience success you may quickly get bitten by the hydroponics bug and expand to a bigger more sophisticated system. The choice is yours but I would suggest at any rate you give hydroponics a try.