Aeroponic (no medium, misted roots)
Also known as: Aeroponics, High-pressure aeroponics, Low-pressure aeroponics
Properties
| pH effect | not applicable |
|---|---|
| Water retention | not applicable |
| Drainage | not applicable |
| Oxygen to roots | very high |
| Bacterial surface area | not applicable |
| Reusability | very high (essentially permanent) |
| Cost tier | high |
| Weight | very light |
How it affects the system
- Highest possible root oxygenation: roots hang in humid air and are intermittently misted, with the plants spending almost all of their time in air, which supports very fast growth when run correctly
- Pump failure or clogged nozzles kill plants within minutes to hours, since there is no buffer reservoir or medium moisture
- Calibration-sensitive: fine hydro-atomized droplets of roughly 5-50 microns are used for true high-pressure aeroponics, and performance falls off outside that range
- Difficult retrofit: most hobbyist aeroponic setups are purpose-built tower or chamber systems rather than adaptations of other hydroponic methods
System compatibility
Works well in:
- aeroponic
Avoid in:
- media bed (ebb and flow)
- NFT channels
- deep water culture (rafts)
- drip
- wicking bed
- soil bed
Care notes
Currently not a supported system in the garden planner, since it sits outside the dwc/nft/vertical/drip/media-bed/wicking/soil-bed enum. It is listed here as reference material, and future planner work may add aeroponic as a system option. It is realistic for advanced hobbyists with a high-pressure pump, accumulator tank and timer-controlled solenoids. NASA has funded aeroponics research, partly for controlled-environment and space-agriculture applications.
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