YOUR INDUSTRY
HYDROPONICS A FOCUS IN CONTROLLED-ENVIRONMENT GROWING Words by Geoff Lewis. Photos by Trefor Ward
Cody McNaughton with an injection manifold for an inline ’3 part plus ph’ injection system
There is a surprising amount going on in Tirau – a small but growing south Waikato town halfway between Hamilton and Rotorua. Among the activity is PGO Horticulture, a business that combines a mix of garden supplies, electronics and plumbing. Technical director, Neville Stocker, is the second-in-line for the three-generation business and has “absorbed chemistry by osmosis.‘ Son of British immigrants in the early 1970s, it all started with Neville‘s dad, Grenville Stocker who was an industrial chemist working for Dominion Salt at Mount Maunganui. He had access to an atomic absorption spectrograph which could give quick analysis of water samples, and quickly realised how accurate water analysis was imperative in the increasingly popular hydroponics sector.
weather and a defined amount of water can be recycled, with nutrients that have not been picked up by the plants filtered out. Water use is greatly reduced, and nutrient run-off minimised, with many recirculating systems having no run-off. It is far easier to control nutrients and keep plant pests and diseases at bay rather than dealing with the random factors delivered in the natural environment. Being able to control the majority of growing factors in an operation allows for far greater crop yields than can be achieved by other means.
Hydroponics is an agricultural system growing without soil by feeding plants a carefully formulated and monitored solution of nutrients dissolved in water
Hydroponics is an agricultural system growing without soil by feeding plants a carefully formulated and monitored solution of nutrients dissolved in water.
Solar-powered hydroponics systems are currently being studied by Elon Musk‘s SpaceX organisation as a means of growing food for future colonists of Mars too.
A form of closed-system growing, hydroponics holds a variety of advantages over growing in soil and the outdoors. It is not dependent on the vagaries of the
However, in earlier days, Stocker found himself the target of terse comments at times, even having hydroponics compared with ‘black magic‘.
20 NZGROWER : DECEMBER 2021
