Hydroponic Strawberries Are Bigger And Taste Better
There is nothing more delicious than a homegrown strawberry, and did you know that hydroponics is a great way to get the best-tasting and most nutritious strawberries possible? Although it was originally believed that growing hydroponic strawberries was impossible because of the plant’s aversion to having ‘wet feet,’ growing strawberries using this method is now becoming more and more common.
Better Growing Conditions
One of the reasons for the rise in popularity of hydroponic strawberries is that hydroponic gardening often requires a good deal fewer pesticides than soil gardening does. With today’s awareness of toxins, people prefer to eat fruit that is as organic as possible. The pesticide previously used on strawberries, Methyl Bromide was banned in 2005 because of its adverse effects on the environment, so strawberry growers were forced to find alternative solutions to their pest problems, one of which was growing the strawberries through hydroponics.
Growing strawberries hydroponically not only allows gardeners and farmers to grow their fruits with fewer if any, pesticides, but it also produces healthier and better-tasting crops in general.
Not only hydroponically grown fruit and vegetables produce up to three times faster than soil-grown produce and also have a higher abundance of product.
How to Grow Hydroponic Strawberries at Home
To grow your hydroponic strawberries, you will need to first take cuttings from a mature strawberry plant. You will then want to place the cuttings you take in Perlite until roots appear so that the area where the roots are to grow will remain humid.
Once roots appear on your strawberry cuttings, you should dip these roots in a microbial mixture and wrap the plant in a plastic cover. Refrigerate the plastic-covered strawberry cuttings for four or five months to simulate winter weather conditions, and then remove them from the fridge and place them in a hydroponic system, allowing their roots to hang down in the nutrient solution. This solution should maintain a PH level between approximately 5.8 and 6.2, and the temperature of the room in which you are growing your strawberries should be somewhere between 680 F and 780 F during the day and should not drop below 550 at night.
Ideal homemade hydroponic setups for strawberries include the ebb and flow structure, or the NFT system.
When the flower of your plant opens, brush it lightly so that the pollen spreads to the stamens and pistils of the flower. Then all you have to do is maintain your hydroponic system with its nutrients which will continue to nourish your plant and wait for your delicious strawberries to ripen!
