3 Years into the Aquaponic Garden Experiment

After 3 years of gardening with aquaponics I am so completely beyond hooked on the idea it’s a little bit nuts.  Everything’s going to be just fine though, we know what to call it so therefore … we can find a cure!
 
Obsessive Compulsive Aquaponic Disorder, it’s real and I have it.  Okay maybe it’s not really real type real but it’s pretty real all the same.  If it holds water I will, at one time or another, ask myself how it would work for an aquaponic garden.  Is it deep enough?  Does it hold enough water?  Would the fish like it?  Oh ya, I've got O.C.A.D. and I'm proud to say it!  Have you got O.C.A.D. yet?  Go ahead, it’s just gardening … just give it a try!

Seriously though, after these last 3 years of testing theories and trying new and different foods just because they would grow in the system, I really think there is something to this aquaponics thing.  My garden is not the biggest or prettiest or fanciest or most expensive or any of that crap but you know what it is?  It’s proof that anyone who really wants to garden with aquaponics can do it with very little expense or knowledge.

From about 1 year into Aquaponic Gardens
(the fish pump was a bad idea)

When I first got involved with aquaponic gardening, about a year or so before the YouTube channel started to document everything, my system didn't even have a pump.  I had some old coffee cans with little drain hoses into a wading pool from the neighbours.  Very kind of them.  If I went into the garden area I would refill the cans and they would slowly drain back into the pool.  No pump, no power.

As primitive as that system sounds, it worked.  It worked well enough I  have spent the next 3 years finding out just how much I could grow and how little I could spend.  In that time, this little aquaponic garden has produced foods I can't even pronounce and herbs with flavour depths I'd never imagined from what I was used to.

The truth is, the experiment is over and now things are getting a little more serious.  Hard to believe from me I know but all the same I’m gonna try.  I set out to find out if it works and it does.  Simple as that really.  What now?

Now it becomes about getting other people into aquaponic gardening & spreading the word.  Now it’s about bringing back the idea of ‘Victory Gardens’ which so many of us all over the world would benefit from.  Now it’s about inspiring others to find new places to turn into aquaponic farmland when it was just industrial wasteland before.  Now things are just getting started to get growing.  Now it’s about insuring that as many families as possible start their own little aquaponic gardens and feel the freedom that growing your own food can provide.

What now for you?

Best regards,
JT Bear.