What if you could grow a garden of plants and vegetables inside your home without soil? Enter hydroponics gardening, a popular method of farming and growing plants that relies on water instead of soil, and will be the subject of an upcoming talk sponsored by the Easton Garden Club on April 12 at the Easton Public Library.
“More and more people are looking at hydroponic gardening because it’s not as restricted as gardening, especially in the Northeast,” said Easton Garden Club President Susan Slagle.
Christian Heiden, founder of Levo International, will lead the talk at the library from 12:30 to 2 p.m. It is open to the public. Self taught in hydroponic technology and design, Heiden started the Hartford-based Levo International as an idea for an Eagle Scout project in 2016 to grow food hydroponically in Haiti. Today, the non-profit has expanded around the globe and the U.S. to create hydroponic farming communities. In Hartford, it teaches residents how to grow food in hydroponics and provides them with the equipment and supplies.
“Hydroponics is gardening plants without soil, you grow them in a nutrient rise water solution and it’s a closed loop system so what it does is it saves up to 90% of the water it uses 75% less space and it grows 25% more per plant,” said Heiden.
Hydroponic gardening is something that any home gardener can do. At Levo International they use a simplified version of hydroponics that consists of easily accessible materials like PVC pipes and buckets.
In addition to sharing his story about Levo’s development, Heiden said he’ll cover a range of topics surrounding hydroponic farming during his talk.
“We’re going to talk about some of the technical aspects, how to build and run hydroponic systems, and talk about the programs we run around hydroponics in the city of Hartford and around the state of Connecticut with neighborhood farming initiatives,” said Heiden.
Slagle said the garden club is excited to share how hydroponics works with the Easton community.
“This is the first time we’ve had anybody talking about hydroponics so it’s kind of a new topic for the club but it’s really interesting,” said Slagle.
The talk is open to the public. The Easton Garden Club accepts new members and meets once a month on Wednesdays. Visit https://www.eastongardenclubofct.org for more information.
