FOUNDER'S SECRET Secret Love: I love vegetable gardening, especially with help from the science of hydroponics. Vegetables are prolific, seasonal, tasty, colorful, and nutritious. Now you too can enjoy effortless hydroponic vegetable gardening. But, as a dedicated hobbyist, the most pleasure I get is watching them grow, and do they grow. As I change the nutrients mix, or add organics, prune, inter-crop, pollinate, tie up vines, alter the orientation to the sun, protect them with shelters, keep them bug free, etc., they respond as happy puppies respond to a new bone or a game of fetch. It's a wonderful and very satisfying experience. Happy Customers: Tough-Guy Labor Lawyer - A few years ago, the wife of one of my customers wrote me an  interesting letter. Her husband was a tough-guy labor lawyer. I had my doubts about his real level of gardening interest. Well, I was wrong and so was his wife. He completely changed his attitude about most things including his temperament. He found a hobby he loved and it showed. He now spends most of his spare time with his garden, not that it needs it. He visits his garden before breakfast to say "good morning" and after dinner in the evening to say "good night." Visually Impaired Couple - Another amazing story concerns a visually impaired couple. After working with them laying out the 3' by 6' gravel garden unit orienting the plants to the ends and sides of the unit, they found they could do almost everything by feel. I was truly impressed. I shared with them the things I had learned and documented from years of research and experience (an advanced form of the published works I am now promoting). The Braille Institute read the works and recorded them on tape. It was exciting for me to see how excited and successful they were growing their very own vegetable garden. Everything is possible with a little ingenuity. Other Happy Customers - While I am writing about happy customers, I should include school teachers and their students, senior citizens, apartment dwellers, and homeowners with inadequate space for a conventional soil garden. The overall space requirement ratio for hydroponics vs. soil with comparable food production is conservatively about 7 to 1. In other words, a 3' by 12' hydroponic vegetable garden (36 sq. ft.) can produce as much as a conventional soil garden of 250 sq. ft. It's incredible, but true. (See for yourself.) If you are very patient and like to exaggerate just a little, you can almost watch them grow. It is effortless and fun, to say nothing of the healthful food it produces. Now do you see why I love growing vegetables without soil, the effortless way? Research - Scientific Studies: It's hard to believe it has been over 20 years. Horticultural Concepts - In the beginning, much of my time was spent researching horticultural concepts regarding vegetables. I read every book available on hydroponics; most of which included little more than the mechanics of growing without soil. I studied the nature of plants from seed germination through reproduction. How plant nutrition and how human nutrition gained from power packing nutrients including organics into the vegetable growing process became an important element in my project. I also studied the most prevalent diseases and insects attacking vegetables and how to control them. Experience - Practical Applications: I then put down the books and moved from the library to my back yard and from my back yard to founding a business, AquaPonics, Inc. of Santa Ana, CA ( later sold). By experimenting and conferencing with customers I was able to add practicality to my knowledge base. Reference Tables - Over 20 reference tables were developed, i.e. Commercial Sources for Nutrients, Organic Nutrient Sources, Mineral Elements and Organic Substances needed in Human Nutrition, Storage Techniques, Insects Harmful to Specific Vegetables, and many more, needed for an in-depth knowledge of hydroponic vegetable gardening. My published works (see below) include all these tables plus many charts, over 40 professionally drawn illustrations and over 30 photos to illustrate some of my own techniques and helpful tips. Tips for Growing Individual Vegetable Plants - Other valuable information about specific vegetables was accumulated and documented in listings and tables, i.e. Recommended Temperature Ranges; Seed Propagation; Working with Seedlings; Harvest Timing and Methods; Pruning; Inter-cropping; Recommended Distances Between Plants in Gravel Culture; and, Critical or Difficult Growing Factors. Plant Layout Diagrams - The vegetable layout diagrams are very useful tools for me and I think you will agree. There are diagrams for every season with two alternate orientations to the sun for each. They show my recommendations for how much space to give each plant and a layout of where each vegetable should be planted and when. My published works will describe how to maximize space utilization and get the most of what you want, with examples.

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