HYDROPONICS
Anyone who has seen a cutting grow in a jar of water on a windowsill can tell you that plants don't actually need soil to grow. What they need are water, light, nutrients, and a place to physically anchor. Hydroponics is a way of growing plants based upon this idea: give plants water and dissolved nutrients at the same time; give them a perfect growing environment; give them a good place to anchor their roots, and they will grow happily, verdantly, rambunctiously, and beautifully.
As an added bonus, if you can collect the water that you use to grow the plants, you can reuse it...the plants will take what they need and the rest just recirculates until they use it.
A result of all this is that hydroponics uses, in general, about 90% less water than traditional agriculture to grow food for us humans. No nutrients (fertilizers) are ever discharged into the environment. Plants, not having to fight with one another for access to the limited nutrients in the soil, can be grown much more closely together. And, because this often happens in greenhouses, no pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides need be used. Sounds fantastic, right?
It is.
NO-TILL SOIL CULTIVATION
The first step to starting a spring garden is breaking out the tiller to loosen the soil, right?
Not so fast.
Tilling actually obliterates soil structure, rendering homeless the beneficial organisms that make up the food soil web. At Verdegreens, we know how to leave things alone. We construct soil beds that are never tilled, leaving intact the structure of the soil and allowing the multifarious worms, beneficial bacteria, and fungi that dwell therein to convert otherwise unavailable nutrients into readily available food for plants.
We literally built our soils over a span of many years, using a combination of compost and composted vegetative matter from the vegetables we grow to create a rich, black soil that allows us to produce the broadest selection of root vegetables, leafy greens, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, and other nutritious vegetables. The first rule of soil cultivation: know when to leave things be.
Grab a FarmBox and taste the difference.
