Hydroponics Today Latest articles from Hydroponics Today (http://www.hydroponics-today.com) http://www.hydroponics-today.com 2010-07-30T15:15:14+01:00 text/html 2008-06-12T03:38:14+01:00 http://www.hydroponics-today.com June 11, 2008<br />You've heard of the factory chicken. Now meet the factory vegetable. Grown in their millions in trays of nutrient-enriched water inside a heated, artificially-lit greenhouse large enough to house ten football pitches, they are as far as you can get from 'natural' home-grown food.<br /><br />But this week, workers are putting the finishing touches to Britain's largest hydroponic greenhouse - an astonishing construction in white steel and glass. <br /><br />By the time the site is complete in 2010, another six massive greenhouses will have been constructed, providing a home to more than 1.3million tomato, pepper and cucumber plants - grown hydroponically, without soil.<br /><br />Kent is often called the Garden of England.  When this village of glass is complete, it will be more like England's factory.<br /><br />At a time when people are increasingly concerned about industrial-scale farming, this latest, monumental step in the steady, insidious creep of factory farming is a controversial one. <br /><br />Fresca, the company building the complex on the Isle of Thanet with a consortium of Dutch growers, argues that the new site - called Thanet Earth - will help meet the demand for homegrown food all year round.<br /><br />But real food campaigners say nothing can replace the taste of vegetables and fruit grown outside in proper soil.<br /><br />The scale of the £80 million project is mind-boggling. When complete, its seven greenhouses will sprawl across 220 acres of Kent countryside, occupying the same area as six London Zoos. <br /><br />Each greenhouse will be 1,240ft long, centrally heated and fed by its own private reservoir.<br /><br />Conditions will be monitored and controlled by computers. Plants will be grown year round, suspended in vast rows from the 26ft-high ceiling.<br /><br />A staggering 2.5 million tomatoes will be cropped every week of the year; 560,000 peppers and 700,000 cucumbers will be picked weekly during a shorter season between February and October.<br /><br />This massive harvest will boost Britain's salad crop production by 15 per cent - reducing reliance on imports.<br /><br />To enable production on this industrial scale, the science of hydroponics is utilised.<br /><br />Similar techniques were used to create the ancient Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the floating gardens of the Aztecs in Mexico.<br /><br />But the scale of these modern factories is unprecedented. Indeed, this is the closest that farming gets to assembly-line agriculture.<br /><br />Steve McVickers, chief executive officer of Thanet Earth, said: 'Vegetables have been grown without soil in water before. What's new here is the scale. This is the biggest greenhouse site of its kind in Britain.<br /><br />'The advantage is that it gives you a clean growing medium. You get no soil-borne diseases . . . and you can exactly control the nutrients, light and temperatures the plants get.' <br /><br />Given the right conditions, the produce grows two to four times faster than normal. The plants will be grown in beds, on mats of rock wool - a natural, absorbent fibre made by melting rock and blowing air through it, a process much like making candyfloss.<br /><br />The beds will then be placed in a system of guttering suspended from the greenhouse ceiling on metal cables and hanging at waist height to allow easy harvesting.<br /><br />A cable drip will feed each plant with water, and nitrogen, phosphate, potassium and magnesium.<br /><br />In the greenhouse, every inch of metal is painted white to reflect as much light as possible. The floor is covered with white plastic to reflect sunlight.<br /><br />The plants receive the same amount of light and are kept at 28C throughout the year.<br /><br />In winter, the greenhouses are warmed and illuminated artificially. In summer, shades block out the sun if temperatures get too high.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23494026-details/Welcome+to+Thanet+Earth:+The+biggest+greenhouse+in+Britain+unveiled/article.do" target="_blank" title="Welcome to Thanet Earth: The Biggest Greenhouse in Britain Unveiled">read more</a> ... http://www.hydroponics-today.com/welcome-to-thanet-earth-a27.html You've heard of the factory chicken. Now meet the factory vegetable. Grown in their millions in trays of nutrient-enriched water inside a heated, artificially-lit greenhouse large enough to house ten football pitches, they are as far as you can get from 'natural' home-grown food. But this week, workers are putting the finishing touches to Britain's largest hydroponic greenhouse - an astonishing construction in white steel and glass. By the time the site is complete in 2010, another six massive greenhouses will have been constructed, providing a home to more than 1.3million tomato, pepper and cucumber plants - grown hydroponically, without soil.