As the population increases and arable land becomes limited, global food security is under pressure.
As a result, many farmers across the globe are using smart agriculture techniques, like vertical farming and hydroponics, to demand for food production.
Hydroponics is simply the cultivation of plants in water. To grow successfully plants require water, air, nutrients, and light so the hydroponics system accomplishes all of these.
With a hydroponics system you could cultivate many plants including:
- leafy vegetables
- fruits
- flowers
- roots
Hydroponic farming can be for family consumption or for profit.
What you’ll learn: Being able to grow hydroponic vegetables for profit will be easy after you read this guide.
How to Grow Hydroponic Vegetables for Profit
Vegetables are a source of some of the most important nutrients essential to the human body.
Growing these vegetables in hydroponics can be a safe and economical source of these nutrients.
Vegetables grown in hydroponics are nutritious and disease and pest-free, without soil, or in ground contact.
But, can every vegetable be grown in a hydroponic system?
Most vegetables do very well in agricultural hydroponics, but some grow better in soil and soil-like media than in hydroponic systems.
Here are several examples of common vegetables that grow well in hydroponic systems and can be grown for profit.
- Spinach
- Kale
- Cauliflower
- Cabbage
- Tomatoes
- Peppers
- Cucumbers
- Asparagus
- Bok Choy
- Lettuce
Root vegetables can also be grown, but they can only be grown with the use of nutrient film technique (NFT) hydroponics systems.
Growing Hydroponic Vegetables for Profit
For the purpose of profit, the steps in producing vegetables with a hydroponic system can be broken down into five stages.
The five stages are:
- Conducting a market research
- Choosing the right hydroponic design
- Choosing a harvest distribution model
- Evaluating the practicability of your model
- Planting the seeds/seedlings
1. Conducting a Market Research
Since you are growing vegetables for profit, you need to figure out who your potential customers will be.
You can now talk to people who are directly attached to vegetables, such as grocery store owners, institutions that would consume a high volume of vegetables and maybe local restaurants, or eateries, and ask if they would buy from you.
Once you engage with them, you will also be able to identify which vegetable is going to be the popular vegetable and would be a high-profit vegetable.
2. Choosing the Right Hydroponic Design
There are several hydroponic designs:
- media bed
- nutrient film technique
- flood and drain
- deep water culture
- drip system
- aeroponics system
All of these designs have the potential for different vegetable growing species.
For example: Root vegetables like carrots are well suited to the NFT, due to the design allows for extra anchorage that is necessary for the vegetable.
3. Choosing a Harvest Distribution Model
Once you’ve understood your target market and selected your preferred hydroponic design, it is time to start planning how your mature vegetables will reach the consumer.
It is important to decide on a distribution model, which can be any of the following:
- Wholesale distribution
- Selling to the customers directly
- A combination of wholesale and direct sales to consumers
- Impact sales
- Establishing your retail store
4. Evaluating the Practicability of Your Model
Developing a plan is easy, but carrying it out is the real headache.
Before you go adding the plants and even tending to your hydroponic garden, speak to the agriculture professionals, distributors, community members, and peers farmers about the viability of your model.
You want to make sure the model you pursue will yield you the true profits and not leave you in a vicious cycle of growing vegetables that will never sell.
5. Planting the Seeds/Seedlings
Once your plan has passed the feasibility assessment/ test, you can start your hydroponics farming.
Once you place the seeds or seedlings in the media/grow bed, it is time to grow your seeds or seedlings until they have roots and shoots.
It will be best to start very small so that you do not suffer from the overwhelm of the new system. Once you have been able to establish and maintain the conditions for growth, you will be to begin adding plants and ultimately making more profits.
To grow vegetables in a hydroponic system you will need several things to get you started.
These are:
- grow medium
- grow lights
- Water quality measuring kit
How to Grow Spinach In a Hydroponic for Profit
Spinach is a popular leafy vegetable for growing well hydroponically.
It grows fast, needs few nutrients, and takes up little space.
The best hydroponic design to grow spinach is the NFT system. However, the raft system and media beds work fine as well.
Simply add your spinach seeds into your grow media and keep your temperature between 64 to 69 degrees Fahrenheit.
If the temperature gets above 79 degrees Fahrenheit, your seeds could go dormant, and will not germinate.
It is important to plant the seeds as soon as you buy from the seed store because the seeds could go dormant from long term storage.
This will cause uneven germination or no seed sprouting at all.
Once your seeds have germinated into seedlings, they will need at least twelve hours of light. Sunlight through any window, or artificial grow lights in your home will work.
Works Well: pH of 5.0 to 6.0. Spinach will mature in about 30 to 40 days.
How to Grow Lettuce In a Hydroponic for Profit
Lettuce cultivated in a hydroponic system is more nutritious, faster to maturity, and has ready-to-nurture nutrients in the right ratio.
It is also free of soil-borne pests and diseases so it gets to you fresh and crunchy.
Lettuce will be successful in most hydroponic designs, including:
- NFT
- media bed
- aeroponics
- drip systems
- flood and drain system
- raft system
Nonetheless, the NFT system is the most appropriate method for medium to large scale lettuce cultivation for profit.
If you are growing lettuce on a media bed, you should utilize Rockwool as the growing media.
Don’t accidentally over supply the media with too much water because they may interrupt the oxygen flow to the roots and cause root or stem rot.
For optimal lettuce growth, it is generally optimal under:
- Temperature: cool temperatures around 68 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit
- pH: nearly neutral, between 6 and 7
Lettuce takes about 30 days to mature.
How to Grow Cabbage In a Hydroponic for Profit
Although cabbage takes in more nutrients than most green leafy vegetables, cabbage is a very common food product, so there is potentially a good chance of selling a crop to make a profit with hydroponics.
It’s worth remembering that cabbage is a reasonably large & heavy vegetable, which presents another challenge while growing on some types of hydroponics.
For instance, if you decide on a different approach (vertical hydroponics), growing cabbages would be quite difficult.
The best option for cabbages would be media bed or flood and drain.
Optimal growth conditions for hydroponic cabbage:
- Temperature – between 65 -75 degrees F
- pH – cabbage grows well in slightly acidic to a neutral pH of about 6.2 – 6.6.
Cabbage matures between 65 – 100 days.
How to Grow Cucumber In Hydroponics for Profit
Cucumbers have a quick growth cycle and don’t require a lot of nutrients to develop. They are a good option for hydroponic vegetables for profit.
If you have the right nutrient mix, you can grow and harvest your cucumber in about 50 to 70 days.
Cucumbers are climbing plants, which means their fragile stems need something solid to grow around and produce fruit.
A trellis is the most often used support for cucumbers. A trellis can be just a wall or any backing with support attached to it for your climbing plants.
The best hydroponics method for cucumbers is to grow them in bubble buckets, drip systems, and flood and drain methods.
You can grow hydroponic cucumbers well in the following conditions:
- Temperature: indicates that the ideal temperature range for germination of cucumber is between 80 and 82 degrees Fahrenheit. Not long after germination, the seedlings will thrive at temperatures between 72 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit.
- pH: hydroponics cucumbers like to stay in a pH range between 5.8 and 6.0.
Wrap Up
Growing hydroponic vegetables for profit takes some planning and research before you get too deep into the planting stage.
Before you plant your seeds or seedlings, you need to identify the market (prospective buyers), identify the best design for hydroponics, establish a harvest distribution model, and determine whether the business model you have identified is feasible.
Once you determine what model and design works best for your conditions, planting the seeds or seedlings is all that is left to do.
A few examples of good vegetables that could be grown in hydroponics include lettuces, kale, spinach, cabbage, cucumber.