Hydro from the Greek meaning ‘water’ and ‘ponos’ from the Greek meaning ‘work’ gives us the meaning to work in water. Hydroponics is the growing of plants without soil. The plant nutrition, instead of being supplied by the soil is supplied by water soluble nutrients dissolved in the water. This gives this method of growing many advantages over growing in soil.

Contrary to what many suppose, hydroponics didn’t begin with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon – there were no compound chemicals available then and, at best, the Hanging Gardens were a series of cleverly constructed water channels down which the water flowed thus watering all the plants in soil-based systems from top to bottom. Rather, it began in the USA during the 1930s as an outgrowth of the culture techniques used by plant physiologists in plant nutrition experiments in that country.