BY BETH BURWINKEL | ENQUIRER CONTRIBUTOR

Last Updated: 10:39 am | Saturday, January 12, 2008

With hydroponic gardening, a special mixture - expanded clay, a type of spun granite or silica stone - holds plants in their pots. Roots dangle in water that circulates, thanks to a pump. Generally, lights shine overhead. There is a variety of systems, depending on the gardener's needs.

"The key with the hydroponics is light," says Anne Snow of Cherry Grove, Worm's Way assistant manager. "You're playing Mother Nature indoors."

Florescent lights work well for herbs. But some hydroponic gardeners change lights by season, to mimic the light outdoors.

Others use hydroponic techniques outdoors with natural light.

Snow started her adventure into hydroponics in 2004 with an inexpensive system called the Garden of Ease. It sat on her balcony all summer, using natural light. She grew two types of basil, rosemary and lettuce.

A Garden of Ease system costs about $55 and is a good way to begin with hydroponics, she says.

Hydroponic gardeners add fertilizer to the system's water. Most people change the water every couple of weeks. When Snow used her hydroponic system, she poured the water over her soil garden every time she changed the water.

Hydroponic produce also can be grown organically - organic seeds and organic fertilizers.

Another technique: Take cuttings from plants and start them in a hydroponic setting and move them into soil later.

"A lot of people do both hydroponic and dirt (gardening,)" Snow says.

Rose Sinning of Falmouth is a master gardener who saw her first hydroponic display while on vacation. She grows lettuce, herbs, tomatoes and peppers in her home, using a 3-foot-square system under a 400-watt light.

"It keeps us in lettuce," she says, adding that it takes 24 days from planting to harvesting. Every week she pulls a row of lettuce and plants a new row.

Sinning believes it is less expensive to grow lettuce in her hydroponic system than to buy organic lettuce.

"A pack of seeds lasts a year," she says.

Alan Credlebaugh, president of Dayton (Ohio) Hydroponics, calls it a "fun hobby." Credlebaugh, who learned hydroponics from his mother about six years ago, lists tomatoes and orchids as popular hydroponic plants.

Jason Hendel was working as a chef's apprentice in Los Angeles in the mid-1990s when he got into hydroponics.

After he moved back to Ohio in 1998 he discovered there were few shops where he could buy hydroponic supplies. Four years ago he opened Kissed by the Sun Hydroponics in Evendale.

Expensive or hard-to-find items, such as wasabi, a Japanese horseradish, are popular for hydroponic gardeners, he says.

Link to original article: http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?Dato=20080112&Kategori=LIFE0803&Lopenr=801120335&Ref=AR