In looking up active hydroponics, I came across a couple of aeroponic builds which seemed to have a lot of added advantages (less water and fertilizer solution). Does anyone have some experience with these sort of systems, if so what are the added difficulties, problems, etc?
hydroponics and aeroponics are a broad topic. What are you looking to grow? Do you you want passive or are you willing to use electricity? My experience with aeroponics are that they are expensive to make if you make it so you can have sufficient veggies to grow and the electricity isn't cheap. Also for good nutrition you have to do alot of liquid inputs for pure aeroponics. if you google Hydroponics and/or aeroponics followed by 'site:www.survivalmonkey.com' you will find a lot of posts on here about hydroponics etc.
Aeroponics - Wikipedia Aeroponics is new to me.....had to look it up. It seems to have a number of advantages, but I doubt that the method would have much of an uptake among preppers, relying as it does on fairly specialized technology and infrastructure. Aquaponics and traditional forms of small scale crop production that aren't overly reliant on commercial / manufactured equipment are more likely methods of getting food on the plate. Aeroponics seem heavily reliant on a reliable source of uninterrupted electricity, which is likely to be problematic in a grid down SHTF situation. At best, for the prepper, aeroponics might be a supplementary method of food production for specialty high value crops that could form part of a trade good portfolio.
I was looking to nutrient dense vegetables and tubers, so yams, cauliflower, etc. Electricity is less of an issue, I have ~100sqft of solar panels, which is more then enough to run a series of small pumps at interval. You're right about fertilizer though. Getting any amount of purified minerals or nitrates from the environment is probably beyond my setup. But I have seen the other hydroponics systems on the board and its looking like maybe a passive system is more feasible.
this guy uses the Kratky method which is actually 3 different ways but if you watch his video's he tells you how to mix your fertilizers and minerals for optimal results. HydroPonic off grid Gardening | Survival Monkey Forums How to build boxes Fertilizer mhpgardener