What's the best Grow Medium for Hydroponics?

So what's the best sterile grow medium to use for hydroponics? This is something that has to be answered on a case-by-case basis. It has to do with what your crops are, what your climate’s like and what type or style of hydroponics system you're setting up. But with that said, here are some ideas.

Natural Materials

There are a range of organic natural materials to use for sterile grow media for plants. There's something called rockwool that works pretty well, in addition to large clay pallets. There's also something called coco coir – it’s made from coconuts - and then there are minerals like vermiculite and perlite that are mined for gardening use.

Choose according to drainage

Depending on what your hydroponics setup looks like, you want water to drain a certain way. If you have hydroponic drip tubes that deliver water very precisely, you may not need as much drainage, but if you're using a kind of tray table design or other design where you flow water in and flow water out of a space, you may need adequate drainage for that type of project. Some growers suggest using something like perlite that drains fairly quickly. Its chemical makeup is porous and so it is able to accommodate the faster drainage of water. Other items like clay pallets will hold water more.

Use a mix

In some cases, growers will use a mix of the above ingredients. They may use 50-50 perlite and clay pellets, either mixing all of the stuff together, or putting a layer of one element below another.

Getting material and plant pots

You also make sure you have the right volume of sterile plant media in order to support your hydroponics garden project. In many cases, plant pots are relatively small and you may need to specifically find elements to fit into their design. Make sure the form for your sterile media fits the space that it is going to be used in.

From finding the right plant media, to purchasing the best lights and irrigation equipment, hydroponics can be a complicated business. Get help from Dealzer with over 5000 pieces of equipment and a lot of information and resources on our website. Check out our social media forums, blogs and everything else that we used to help first-time hydroponics growers benefit from a ‘crowdsourcing’ of grow knowledge.