We are visiting our home away from home on an island in the Bahamas. Being in the middle of the Abacos, all food and supplies that are needed have to be flown or shipped in. As our community began to grow, club management decided to start a garden right on property to provide the fresh produce.
The head gardener, Anton Thompson, grows and provides to the kitchens all the lettuces and herbs, and many of the seasonal vegetables and varieties of fruit. He currently manages an orchard of about 100+ trees (including limes, mangos, bananas, coconuts and papayas), several dozen planting beds and 72 hydroponic towers. The hydroponic towers each have 36 holes for planting with each tower being in rotation for harvesting.
Hydroponics is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, not soil. Although hydroponic gardening has been around for several hundred years, the study of “solution culture” really began at the University of California Berkeley in the late 1920s. This new technique was important for growing food where there was no healthy soil. Today, hydroponic growers use this efficient method to tightly control the production of ultra-premium foods anywhere in the world regardless of growing seasons and temperatures.
