Best 2020 - Success Without Soil - How to Grow Plants By Hydroponics

Best 2020 ✔ Success Without Soil - How to Grow Plants By Hydroponics. 

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Charles C. Gilbert My father, Charles C. Gilbert, got enthused about hydroponics--growing plants in sterile sand, gravel, or vermiculite and fed by liquid fertilizer--while serving during World War II in the Pacific, where the U.S. Army established hydroponic vegetable farms. After Japan surrendered he was stationed in Tokyo, and outside the city he saw the army building a glass greenhouse that covered 232,000 square feet--over five acres--more than twice as large as any in the world.Soldiers longed for fresh vegetables, but they were forbidden to eat local food, grown under centuries of "unsanitary and primitive fertilizing practices," Dad writes in Success Without Soil. This allusion to the use of human excrement was in contrast to the hydroponic plants grown in "sterile gravel and pure water."Upon my father's discharge, he returned home to La Jolla, California, and set up a greenhouse. With two friends, he started a business in San Diego selling a hydroponics fertilizer. He wrote and published his guidebook to promote the sale of his Nutrient Formula. Soil-less-grown plants out-yield those grown in soil by ten times, the book reports. Perfect soil is rare, Success Without Soil observes, and much farmland is so worn out and abused that the crops produced are unfit nutritionally. "It is necessary to fertilize, cultivate, irrigate, rotate, pray and perspire," Dad writes, "in order to keep good soil fertile or to improve worn out soil." Furthermore, diseases lurk in soil and often kill tender seedlings.As an adult I finally read Success Without Soil from start to finish for the first time, impressed with my father's information-packed little book, as well as his sentences, and his expertise. Dad's authorial persona is confidential, humorous, and self-deprecating, but he obviously put a ton of work into this groundbreaking popular guide.It is still referenced around the web, almost seven decades after he published it. I found this reference, for instance:"Mr. Gilbert was one of the first to commercially exploit the popularity of hydroponics at the time by marketing the first nutrient solutions to commercial and hobby growers.--Progressive Farming Media Kit Volume 1 Hydroponic Gardening: A Resource Guide For Understanding, Teaching, or Writing About Hydroponic Gardening."Success Without Soil got a lot of publicity when Dad first published it--the book and his Nutrient Formula mail-order business were written about in Forbes and featured in Mechanix Illustrated. I imagine it's still sought, quoted, and read because of Dad's enthusiasm and because its explanation of the basics of hydroponics endures.I have published a complete review on my web site, http://richardgilbert.me/

Best Charles C. Gilbert  

Charles C. Gilbert  My father, Charles C. Gilbert, got enthused about hydroponics--growing plants in sterile sand, gravel, or vermiculite and fed by liquid fertilizer--while serving during World War II in the Pacific, where the U.S. Army established hydroponic vegetable farms. After Japan surrendered he was stationed in Tokyo, and outside the city he saw the army building a glass greenhouse that covered 232,000 square feet--over five acres--more than twice as large as any in the world.Soldiers longed for fresh vegetables, but they were forbidden to eat local food, grown under centuries of "unsanitary and primitive fertilizing practices," Dad writes in Success Without Soil. This allusion to the use of human excrement was in contrast to the hydroponic plants grown in "sterile gravel and pure water."Upon my father's discharge, he returned home to La Jolla, California, and set up a greenhouse. With two friends, he started a business in San Diego selling a hydroponics fertilizer. He wrote and published his guidebook to promote the sale of his Nutrient Formula. Soil-less-grown plants out-yield those grown in soil by ten times, the book reports. Perfect soil is rare, Success Without Soil observes, and much farmland is so worn out and abused that the crops produced are unfit nutritionally. "It is necessary to fertilize, cultivate, irrigate, rotate, pray and perspire," Dad writes, "in order to keep good soil fertile or to improve worn out soil." Furthermore, diseases lurk in soil and often kill tender seedlings.As an adult I finally read Success Without Soil from start to finish for the first time, impressed with my father's information-packed little book, as well as his sentences, and his expertise. Dad's authorial persona is confidential, humorous, and self-deprecating, but he obviously put a ton of work into this groundbreaking popular guide.It is still referenced around the web, almost seven decades after he published it. I found this reference, for instance:"Mr. Gilbert was one of the first to commercially exploit the popularity of hydroponics at the time by marketing the first nutrient solutions to commercial and hobby growers.--Progressive Farming Media Kit Volume 1 Hydroponic Gardening: A Resource Guide For Understanding, Teaching, or Writing About Hydroponic Gardening."Success Without Soil got a lot of publicity when Dad first published it--the book and his Nutrient Formula mail-order business were written about in Forbes and featured in Mechanix Illustrated. I imagine it's still sought, quoted, and read because of Dad's enthusiasm and because its explanation of the basics of hydroponics endures.I have published a complete review on my web site, http://richardgilbert.me/