Our Process of Growing

Thinking Outside the Soil

It’s Farming & Gardening at its Best!

The "Story of Hydroponics" - The true definition of Hydroponics is "to grow without soil". This means that plants can send their roots into any number of mediums, except soil.

Hydroponics is often times misunderstood to mean "plants grown in water". While this can be true, that type of irrigation is actually quite inefficient. The most widely accepted method involves drip irrigation into a medium called "Rockwool".

Rockwool is produced by a process similar to making cotton candy. A particular mixture of sand and rock is melted at 1600 degrees Celsius and then turned into fibers by spinning the mixture to form a woven mat or cube. The tomato plants are planted directly into this growing medium.

As the irrigation water passes through the fibers of the Rockwool, nutrients are absorbed more efficiently than if they were simply allowed to stand in water or have water pass over the roots. This type of spoon feeding into this medium does several things that cannot be replicated in the soil by nature as Rockwool is very water absorbent, yet airy, not dusty and easy to use.

So, why hydroponics?

First, it is a completely sterile environment. There is almost no chance that soil borne disease can attack the plant or transfer themselves to the fruit or the person consuming it.

Any food product that is grown with animal waste as its food source can easily be contaminated with deadly e-coli bacteria among other things.

Hydroponics is not organic, but is mostly naturally grown with the exception of commercial fertilizer. All plants reduce fertilizer to its chemical elements to be utilized.

Tomatoes grown in hydroponic environments have no need for herbicide application because of the complete absence of any foreign seeds in the planting medium.

Within a Greenhouse environment, there is not much pest pressure of any kind in this environment.

Second, the taste of tomatoes is totally determined by the pH of the environment they are grown in.

When you grow tomatoes in your garden, the same tomato variety will vary in taste depending upon the pH of the soil, the irrigation practices, rainfall, humidity, sunshine, temperature, and many other factors; almost none of which the gardener has control over.

In the Greenhouse, the Grower can control many of these variables so that the fruit will taste the same from one part of the house to the other and from one week or month to the next.

If a hydroponic tomato does not taste as good as a garden tomato, it is because the Grower lacks either the equipment or the experience to balance the pH to make that happen.

At Garden Fresh Vegetables, we contain our crop within the building. We can keep out most of the pests that would destroy the tomatoes in your garden.

Hydroponics allows the Grower to use mostly a natural pesticide program: Good bugs are used to kill the larva of the pests that damage the plants and fruit. This prevents the bugs from building immunity to pesticides and causing greater damage in the succeeding generations. Bumble bees are used to pollinate as a further example of using nature to produce the desired end products.

In summary, hydroponics:

• Uses the efficiency of commercial, conventional agriculture
• Combines it with the “natural process” growing of organic
• Creates a sustainable and economically priced, great tasting product and
• Yields are more than 10 times conventional growing methods per acre with less inputs