Where Does Hydroponics Come From?

Who Invented Hydroponics Gardening?
Plants need essential nutrients to grow, something that we’ve known for a long time. Experiments from ancient Greece regarding the required nutrients for plants, and floating gardens in Babylon and Mexico show us that. However, these nutrients weren’t looked at seriously for a long time. Leonardo da Vinci pointed out some factors in the fifteenth century, and Sir Francis Bacon published on the subject in 1627, noting that plants grew best in impure water.

At around the same time, Jan van Helmont was experimenting with growing plants in water in Belgium, and in 1666, Robert Boyle documented growing plants in water filled vials in Ireland. By 1699, experiments to determine how plants obtain food were underway. Technological advances allowed Nicolas de Saussure to determine some of the chemical composition of plants, and by 1842, a nine element list of nutrients for plants had been compiled.

Around 1850, Jean Boussingault experimented with growing plants in quartz, sand, charcoal and other nonsoil media. Sachs and Knop were the first to grow plants in a culture containing water and a solution of nutrients. They called this practice nutriculture, but it was largely ignored until the 1920s, when William Gericke began experimenting with what we now called hydroponics. He grew twenty-five foot tall tomato vines in a nutrient solution in his garden and made huge claims for the viability of hydroponics in commercial agriculture. However, he would not share his secrets, and eventually left the University of California to publish a book on the subject.

Some of his former colleagues at the university were asked to look into Gericke’s research, and discovered that some of the most excessive claims weren’t really true. The available nutrients limited the amount of growth possible. However, hydroponics do remove a number of problems with growing in soil, such as water and oxygen access. These researchers developed nutrient solutions for plants that are still used in a modified form. Through the 1930s, hydroponics spread, and commercial growers and universities operated several systems.

The technique was used at a Pan Am refueling station in the Pacific, where vegetables were grown in soilless conditions for the enjoyment of the passengers. Government sponsored experiments started up in 1939, with the advent of World War II. Hydroponic units at military bases provided food for troops on islands with no arable land. Commercial use of these systems spread across the world during the 1950s, and the US space program made use of the systems in the hopes that a society could some day be established on another planet or on the Moon.

Plastics were a big help in hydroponic growing techniques, offering better and easier methods for plant production. About thirty percent of greenhouse crops were grown using hydroponic methods by the mid 1970s, and the technique spread to hobbyists and home growers. Technological advances have helped production increase even more, with plants growing faster and more efficiently and systems becoming much easier to make and use. This is one reason why more people are taking up growing their gardens in water.

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