{"id":991,"date":"2022-05-20T08:20:39","date_gmt":"2022-05-20T08:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/giliticsmedia.co.ke\/demo\/?p=991"},"modified":"2022-05-20T08:49:26","modified_gmt":"2022-05-20T08:49:26","slug":"have-you-considered-soilless-farming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/giliticsmedia.co.ke\/have-you-considered-soilless-farming\/","title":{"rendered":"Have you considered soilless farming?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Gabriella Nashiva<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you heard of Soilless farming? This a practice that is getting very popular day by day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might ask yourself why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, Soilless farming systems are sterile environments, aid faster growth of produce, save on water usage, and require less space as compared to its counterpart and it\u2019s a controlled environment allowing you all year production anywhere!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Global warming and climate change, a decline in soil fertility, increase in populations yet hunger and food scarcity remain unsolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are just but a few, of the challenges facing food security in Kenya and other nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a nutshell, it offers a solution to sustainable production in Agriculture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing media is simply the material used in place of soil. Growing media has unique properties to sustain growth which include its ability to withstand prolonged watering without collapsing, well-aerated, partially sterile that is free from pests and diseases, and well-drained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vermiculite is a naturally occurring (hydrated magnesium, iron, and aluminum silicate) mineral that expands when exposed to heat: a process called exfoliation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exfoliated vermiculite is lightweight and has poor thermal conductivity. Vermiculite improves seed germination success, encourages root growth as it provides good anchoring for roots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vermiculite is lightweight, despite that it withstands prolonged watering without collapsing. It retains water and releases it according to the plant\u2019s needs therefore minimal root rot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, it promotes consistent release of fertilizers and has the ability to supply magnesium, potassium and other minerals to the soil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vermiculite is well aerated, sterile, has a neutral PH and it doesn\u2019t mold or rot making it suitable as container media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the downside, vermiculite is expensive a 20kg bag of perlite costly roughly 46,000 KES. However, considering the benefits, it has on plant health and growth, it could prove to be cost-effective in the long run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a non-renewable resource and less durable than perlite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perlite has better aeration properties and is a naturally occurring mineral hence improves soil quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pumice retains oxygen when mixed with naturally occurring poorly drained soils improve the soil\u2019s water retention and make it less compact. However, it has less water retention properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a number of growing media or substrates that can be used peat, peat moss, leaf molds among others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you heard of Soilless farming? This a practice that is getting very popular day by day.<\/p>\n

You might ask yourself why?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[45,31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/giliticsmedia.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/giliticsmedia.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/giliticsmedia.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giliticsmedia.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giliticsmedia.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/giliticsmedia.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giliticsmedia.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/giliticsmedia.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giliticsmedia.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/giliticsmedia.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}