Hydroponics at Ledgeview Gardens
Hydroponics is the future of growing. There seems to be a constant battle within politics about how we are going to feed the world. Some think the answer is GMO’s, some think it’s going to be an uptick in small family farms producing enough food for a small community. While there are many different options, when it comes to producing vegetables in a clean, sustainable practice, we found Hydroponics to be the best.
BENEFITS OF HYDROPONICS
There are so many benefits to growing hydroponically, but the most impressive may be its space and water efficiency. Within our system we are able to produce an equal amount of tomatoes as someone growing the same fruit on 20 acres of soil. This space efficiency means we can save vast amounts of water, labor and time by using this high tech growing system.
Hydroponics is not the same as it used to be, and a lot of people have a pre conceived opinion of its quality and produce value. Those opinions have been formed over the years due to the low quality fruit available in the grocery stores. We have made it our mission to educate people about the quality potential from locally grown hydroponic produce; locality makes a significant difference in taste, texture, consistency and shelf life. Most grocery store produce is grown in other states or countries and must be shipped many miles to the various stores in the chain; in order to endure this long trip the tomatoes must be picked well before they are ripe. But don’t let the red color fool you, these tomatoes are packed in large shipping trailers and gassed with an ethaline gas(what tomatoes and bananas naturally omit) to give them the appearance of an unblemished vine ripened tomato.
Our produce is picked at the peak of ripeness to ensure quality, taste and consistency.
A true vine ripened tomato, as everybody knows, is the highest quality, and most awarded fruit in anybody’s garden, and that goes for us too! Our produce is picked at the peak of ripeness to ensure quality, taste and consistency. Nutritional value is among one of the most widely asked questions about hydroponic produce. Hydroponics is quite different from soil grown produce; in our hydroponic system we make the food for the plants in bulk by mixing water soluble, earth mined, natural nutrients into large tanks of pH adjusted ground water. By doing this we ensure that each plant gets exactly what it needs to produce the highest quality, nutrient dense fruit it possibly can. And boy does it taste good!
More times than I can remember I have been told our tomatoes remind people of when they were little kids walking through their family garden with their parent or grandparent and eating a fresh, warm tomato right off the vine!
And nothing is better than that!