Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66005 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

From Booklist
Ripe, juicy tomatoes in winter; lush, exotic blooms all year long. As an alternative to traditional, soil-based gardening, hydroponics offers many attractive advantages, but perhaps none is as alluring as its ability to provide a perfect, balanced, nutritive environment for a wide variety of vegetable and floral crops. With the potential to yield large, healthy harvests in a controllable, pest- and weed-free atmosphere, hydroponics appeals to those intermediate or advanced gardeners seeking environmentally, economically, and technologically innovative methods for propagating and raising plants. An acknowledged authority with more than 25 years' experience, Bridgewood examines the nutritional requirements and explains the diverse methods of hydroponics in an accomplished and accessible guide. Beginning with a concise overview of its history and basic methodology, Bridgewood then offers in-depth background on supporting topics such as nutrient solutions, hygiene, and greenhouse unit construction and maintenance. Explicit line drawings and detailed color photographs further aid in clarifying techniques and procedures. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Les Bridgewood has been gardening without soil since the early 1970s. He regularly contributes to gardening magazines including Practical Hydroponics & Greenhouses.

Customer Reviews

Excellent; consice but packed with information
After reading 5 or 6 other books on hydroponics, this book is by far the best. It is packed with information, good drawings and pictures, and the results of ongoing research. It explains the different techniques used with hydroponics in enough detail that a beginner can make intelligent decisions about how to proceed. Excellent hands on information. It is filled with tidbits of info that add to your understanding of why things work best a certain way, without overwhelming you with extremely techincal explainations. I found that most books were too simplistic, or else textbooks, on the subject. The author did a good job of finding the middle ground.

An inconsistent book
This is a thin book which you can read in a weekend, and it does a decent job of introducing you to the topic. But it's not very consistent -- some topics are covered in depth, while others are not explained at all. For example, the last chapter uses the word "bolster" (as a noun) repeatedly, but never explains it, and fails to include it in the glossary as well.

In addition, it has a focus on hydroponic growing in the UK -- listing only UK suppliers, and spending a lot of space discussing the particular issues of growing (outside) in the UK. It also spends many pages on what ought to be minor side-notes, like building a particular brand of commercial geodesic greenhouse, or building a system to maintain water level (a neat trick, but it could have been explained in a page or two).

So I found it a useful book to start with, but it's not one I will keep on my shelf.

A Good Source of Information
This book is full of excellent information and should be the first one you purchase if you are interested in Hydroponics. It is well written and concise and shows enough detail to get its point across.