Stewarts Office Plants

We supply many businesses across the South, from Sussex and Surrey, through Hampshire and Dorset to Wiltshire and Somerset. For more information about the services we offer visit our home page, or contact us here. In this blog you'll find news, interesting snippets, stories and pictures of our staff's adventures out on the road.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Soil or Hydro?


Hands up who knows what hydroponic planting is. No? OK...

Hydroponics is an entire system for growing plants in a soil-free medium (normally expanded clay granules). Watering is monitored by using floating water level indicators. The plant actually grows a different kind of root under the normal water level, this explains how wet and dry-loving plants can both be grown in the same water reservoir.

It offers a number of advantages over traditional compost-based planting:
 - Plants seem to perform markedly better, you can keep the same species in lower light in hydro in my experience.
 - There is no danger of soil-borne pests, e.g. fungus fly
 - Plants can go longer between watering, meaning maintenance visits can be less frequent
 - if installed correctly, and if equipped with the right equipment (like giant pastry cutters!), plants changes are very easy.

On the other hand:
 - The plants are more expensive
 - Because they have rigid, vertical pots, it's hard to make mixed arrangements with them, and hard to use them in some funny-shaped pots
 - Because the granules are loose in the pots, it's harder to transport them
 - If the water indicator breaks, you have no way of accurately watering them, and hydro plants do not like incorrect/inconsistent watering
 - Rather a reduced range of plants
 - If not installed correctly, or if not equipped with the pastry cutters, plant changes are a pain!

Stewarts, with the exception of a single contract we inherited, use soil-based planting, as do most other UK companies. Occasionally we are asked to quote using hydro planting, and have no objection to doing so, but it's not something we push without prompting. Hydro was briefly fashionable a few decades back, and occasionally seems about to come back. It is definitely a better system for specimen planting, less so for troughs and bowls etc.

Interestingly, I'm told it is as dominant on the Continent as soil planting is here.

Jonathan