STUDENTS of St Jago Cathedral Preparatory are big on hydroponics.

A group of pupils from the school copped second place in the fourth annual Urban Development Corporation (UDC) Hellshire School’s Environmental Competition and Fair, for their project based on hydroponics — growing plants in water without soil.

According to teacher and project co-ordinator, Nadia Guy, hydroponics can result in big earnings for the nation’s farmers, eliminates the use of chemicals and is environmentally sound.

“We want other Jamaicans to consider this type of plant reproduction, especially farmers, because hydroponics has many benefits to our environment. By planting like this, there is no need for pesticides, unlike planting in soil that attracts pests. Hydroponics also brings a creative and green friendly look to any area,” she said.

Hydroponics is simply cultivating plants in nutrient-enriched water. This can be done with or without the mechanical support of an insert medium, such as sand or gravel. A nutrient rich solution is normally fed to the plants periodically.

As the plants develop, the concentration of the solution and frequency of pumping should increase. A wide variety of vegetables and crops can be grown satisfactorily in water. Automatic watering and fertilising saves on labour, but installation costs are high and fertiliser solution must be tested frequently. The yields are said to be the same as soil-grown crops.

St Jago Cathedral has entered the competition for four years running under the guidance of Guy.

“We are happy to have been placed second. The idea of submitting a project based on hydroponics, was mainly due to ideas we developed from the drought we experienced last year,” Guy, she told Environment Watch.

“The pond took approximately four hours to set up. We used stones, a pump, water, plants and sought advice from a consultant. Within three weeks we saw changes in the plants that were planted,” Guy said.

In their contribution to preserving the environment and it’s species, not only does the school’s environmental club practice hydroponics, but the planting of vegetables, a garbage management system — where they collect food peels and reuse it for fertilisation and the recycling of plastic bottles. The environment club also visits the Hellshire Beach regularly, to make their contribution to coastal clean-up efforts there.

The team from the school that entered this year’s competition, comprised of Guy, the principal Andrea Baugh, assistant environment co-ordinator Edwinsa Smikle and senior school students between grades four and six.

According to Guy, setting up the system was not a real challenge and should be a simple task for farmers who want to set up a similar system.

The benefits derived from a hydroponics system is mainly the elimination of pesticide usage on plants. Planting in soil attracts pests and presently plants grown in an hydroponics system have not been discovered to contain pests.

Guy pointed out that hydroponics also has its drawbacks.

One being that, those who use electricity to operate the pump in the system incur energy costs.

The UDC Hellshire School’s Environmental Competition is open to primary and secondary schools. Schools interested in entering may contact the UDC for information.