How did ancient people get the nutrients for doing hydroponics? Did they use Ashes from a fire?
Question by Jave: How did ancient people get the nutrients for doing hydroponics? Did they use Ashes from a fire?
People say that hydroponics is complicated, but if ancient people could do it, then it must be simple.
How did they isolate the nutrients?
Feel free to answer in the comment section below
5 Responses to How did ancient people get the nutrients for doing hydroponics? Did they use Ashes from a fire?
Leave a Reply
They used less-than-pure water sources. Like lakes, which naturally have plant nutrition in them (if it will grow algae, it will grow other plants). The Mexican “floating islands” were made of mud held together with tree roots, so that gave them plenty of nutrition.
Ishtar
October 1, 2011 at 7:24 pm
They didn’t. Hydroponics was invented in the 1930’s. A container of water rapidly becomes depleted of oxygen, and the ancients had no way of constantly running a pump. Adding nutrients to running water would just send valuable fertilizer downstream.
There were traditional systems using floating rafts on ponds. In these systems, the pond would get manure dumped in it- human or animal. Sorry I can’t remember the name of this system- it was used in Central America and Asia. The rafts would act as sponges for water and nutrients, but still provide a dry, oxygenated medium for the roots.
There is really no need to isolate the nutrients; natural bacteria do a fine job. Aquaponic culture uses fish manure to feed hydroponic plants.
Mathew W
October 1, 2011 at 7:33 pm
You make the mistake of believing that people from a time before our own did not use a scientific approach to things. .
The study of crop nutrition began thousands of years ago. Ancient history tells us that various experiments were undertaken by Theophrastus (372-287 B.C.), while several writings of Dioscorides on botany dating from the first century A.D., are still in existence. So people were well aware of what sort of nutrients were needed to produce crops and flowers.
The beginnings of hydroponics can be traced to Ancient China, Egypt, and India. King Nebuchadnezzar II built the hanging gardens of Babylon as early as 600 B.C. These gardens, famous as one of the Seven Wonders, were filled with plants grown in a steady stream of water. The Aztec Indians also had a system of growing crops on rafts in shallow lakes, you can still see some of these floating gardens near Mexico City. Although there is evidence of these ancient water gardening systems, scientific experiments such as Leonardo Da Vinci’s (who first recorded “Plants need certain mineral elements in order to grow”) were the first recorded steps toward present day hydroponics.
Beulah
October 1, 2011 at 8:25 pm
Ancient people didn’t grow hydroponically, so it’s a moot question.
BobKat
October 1, 2011 at 8:36 pm
There is no proof that Ancient peoples actually did that.It is a modern invention more ot less.They used raft like man made floating squares the river water and animal manure were the fertilizers,probably human as well.Ashes produce pot ash beneficial to most plants.It had nothing to do with isolating anything what worked they simply kept doing.
peppersham
October 1, 2011 at 9:22 pm