Selecting Plants for a New Aquaponic Garden

Setting up a new aquaponic garden can be a very exciting time!  After getting all of your equipment collected and taking care of putting it all together, the urge to plant in the new garden can become somewhat … overpowering.  You're all ready to go, but what to plant?

While results will be different in EVERY aquaponic garden there are some plants that will do better than others in the beginning in almost every case.  When selecting your starter plants you must think about a few different things.  How large will this plant grow?  How demanding is it for nutrients?  Will it be productive enough to be worth the space in your aquaponic garden?  Is it a fruiting plant or more of a leafy green?

From my experience, and from many other gardens that I have watched grow over the years, it is impossible to resist the temptation to plant either tomatoes or peppers into the garden bed.  I can’t even count how many times I've seen that.  These plants are wonderful, productive and beautiful BUT they require a LOT of nutrients in order to reach their maximum potential.  Often new aquaponic gardeners will plants these before their garden has matured enough to support their high demands and the end result is feeling that their garden wasn't as good, or worse yet that they themselves had failed at aquaponic gardening.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  These plants do amazingly well in established garden beds where the bacteria have really taken hold.  This can take up to a year in some gardens, longer in places where the grow bed is subjected to temperatures at or below freezing.

In that first year you can still grow a wide variety of different plants and see a very healthy return on your garden investment.  Leafy greens and kitchen herbs can be grown to surprising size quite quickly, even with a brand new #AquaponicGarden.  Spinach, kale, chard, watercress and lettuces (which variety depends on your temperature more than your garden) will show you results to keep you very happy.  Growing mint, oregano, sage, thyme, basil and more has never been easier than since I've started my little aquaponic greenhouse.  As I sit to write this, I can’t even recall the last time we had to buy any of those.  In fact there is a rather large box behind me stuffed with paper bags that are still filled with these herbs from last year!

At the end of it all, what YOU are going to plant in YOUR garden is up to you and I wish you the best of luck with your aquaponic adventure!

We need Saltwater Aquaponics

While it may seem crazy at first, I think that saltwater aquaponics is a field of study that needs to be taken seriously.  With all of the damage that has been done to our seas and oceans, something has got be done to preserve those marine species which have kept us alive for so many years..  As assorted fish struggle to survive in the ocean they will encounter: garbage floating in the water, boats out for a cruise, chemical pollutants, dwindling food supplies, extensive fisheries … that’s not even mentioning any natural predators out there.  As a double feature bonus we now have somewhat radioactive ocean waters adding to the risks they face and creating a new danger these fish now pose to us when they are harvested from the wild.  This situation is unacceptable and something must be done.

Aquaponic gardening allows us to reuse the same body of water time and again to grow fish, & plants, in a healthy environment.  The end result being: fresh fish, grown close to market, & of unequalled quality of flesh due to the reduced stress levels and lack of chemical pollutants.  As advanced as we have become, with the internet providing the knowledge of the world at our fingertips, it is almost impossible to think that anything is impossible anymore.  The worlds greatest universities have shared huge libraries of information on the required subjects.

From the world of saltwater aquariums, such as Sea World, we have learned how to maintain correct temperatures, pH, salt levels etc. for large ocean dwelling creatures.  Marine biologists have presented volumes on every stage of life for almost every species of aquatic life they can find.  So in that body of work we have any needed environmental or dietary information for the entire lifespan of the chosen species.  We have available the technology to reproduce anything they could need to live a healthy life while growing quite large.  Once again, thanks to our fine marine biologists, we also have collected quite a list of plants which grow only in ocean water.  Even if we were to grow the plants as a base for biofuel, it seems reasonable to assume that saltwater plants growing in a re-circulating water environment would filter in a similar fashion as leafy greens in a more standard freshwater aquaponic setup.

So, using our available technology and collected body of research it should not be too difficult to create the perfect environment to raise oceanic fish and plants in aquaponic style garden.  Granted, it would take HUGE facilities to even begin such an adventure but at this point, it would be unwise to not start developing this method of farming.  We are at a breaking point for the planet, either we do EVERYTHING we can to try to repair it or we face the very real risk of extinction.  No air, no water, no food … no life.  It’s that simple.

When we take our food production needs away from nature, not only do we have the chance to control what goes into our food supply but mother nature also has the opportunity to reclaim that land.  Left to it’s own devices, the planet could easily erase any trace of mankind and the damage we have caused.  Do we help now or shall we just let mother clean up after we are gone?