A Hydroponics-based Agriculture System

[voidbeetles]

Hi!

One of my current writing projects is set in a civilization that has, for thousands of years, lived in a sort of large scifi underground bunker. They have easy access to water, very little access to soil (they're able to compost biomass, add minerals, etc, but that will only get you so far), and no access to sunlight (grow lights will have to suffice) - for these reasons, I imagine that their agriculture system is mostly hydroponics-based. Though I've done a little research on hydroponics, I'm having difficulty extrapolating this information to my worldbuilding, mostly because a lot of the info I've found relates to singular plants without giving a good sense of what fares better/worse compared to others. And also just because I have a hard time wrapping my head around plant cultivation in general, I think. I was wondering if anyone here had any insights! (Or suggestions of topics/resources to look into more!)

The big questions I'm thinking most about are:

• Compared to, say, the modern Western world, would certain foods/food groups be underrepresented or over-represented in this fictional world's cuisine? (for example, I imagine that rice might be the main staple, as flooding rice fields is pretty important to cultivating it... and that potatoes might not be such a good choice, as their "main thing" is growing beneath the soil?)
• What effect would this have on the plant fibers that are most commonly used for making clothes (and other fiber technology like rope)? That is: how would cotton, linen, hemp, etc fare? Would a certain one of these plants be more common? More expensive? Quicker/easier to grow/harvest on large scales? (This question is especially relevant because my protagonist has an interest in textiles.)

Comments

[hamatebones]

I was going to say. Anybody who's watched lengthy outdoor public works in a wet climate has surely seen wild mushrooms growing atop bales of hay. There's a whole gardening method devoted to raising certain crops in hay bales (as cheap raised beds), and for "hay bales" substitute any dried green crop packed densely and securely enough. The hay is kept wet and slowly decomposes, providing nutrients to the growing plants.

Also, I know a dude who does anaerobic composting experiments with vegetable scraps in plastic bags in his apartment: if you keep them sealed/low O2, they're not smelly, and produce results pretty quickly. I don't think dirt shortage will be a problem. Where to PUT all the dirt, and using it efficiently, and not letting lead/arsenic/other bioaccumulate so your humans get poisoned, that's a more complex problem... but that's a problem we deal with all the time today in urban gardening.

[winterbird]

Yessss, I completely forgot about anaerobic composting!! :D