Hydro History

A 2000 Year-old Tradition

Hydroponics gardening is the most modern method of producing quality vegetables, fruits, flowers and other agricultural crops, but if you think hydroponics is a new concept, you may be surprised by the long history of hydroponics.

Plants first grew in oceans and lakes before moving onto land, so the concept of plants growing without soil and deriving their nutrients from water is as old as "Creation."

Humans have been growing plants in hydroponics gardens for at least 2600 years, perhaps beginning with the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Greek scientists Theophrastus and Dioscorides studied hydroponics 2000 years ago.

In the 11th century, the Aztec Nation created floating gardens in Lake Tenochtitlan in the central valley of what is now Mexico. Aztecs built rafts from shore vegetation, placed soil on top of the rafts, and floated them in the lake with plants growing on the soil. These rafts were called "Chinampas." Plants growing on them sent roots through the soil and rafts; the roots fed off the nutrient-rich water of the lake.

This may have been a first use of a hydroponics process now called aeroponics, in which plants are fed by water rather than soil. Some Chinampas were linked together into co-joined gardens big enough to be classified as islands- so big that people could walk on them!

Early European scientists also explored the idea of using water as a primary medium for plant roots and did other research to figure out how plants grew.

In 1600, Jan van Helmont planted a one-pound willow shoot in a pipe containing 200 pounds of dried soil in Belgium. Five years later, the willow shoot weighed 160 pounds, but there was still 200 pounds of soil in the pipe. Van Helmont could not figure out how the willow got so big, because scientists were not yet aware that plants absorb nutrients through water and air.

A century later, Englishman John Woodward mixed water and soil as a root media. He's credited with being one of the first people to figure out that plants absorb nutrients from soil and water, and some assert that his water-soil combination qualifies as the first hydroponic plant food.

Soon thereafter, other Europeans discovered the function of roots, transpiration, nutrient uptake, carbon dioxide absorption from air through leaves, and absorption of oxygen through roots.

English researcher Joseph Priestly is the creator of the first CO2 enhancement chamber. He found that plants in a chamber filled with carbon dioxide gradually transform the carbon dioxide into oxygen. He also discovered that sunlight rapidly increased this transformation, which was an early indication of what was later called photosynthesis.