Aquaponic Gardening
In the interest of full
disclosure, I'm not really a believer in aquaponics. My gut
reaction is that it's not sustainable in most situations, so it annoys
me that it's being marketed as a green agriculture solution. Part
of this may be a blind spot because I don't like seafood (although I do
love fish ponds), but mostly it's just a knee-jerk reaction not to use
electricity to grow things if you don't need to.
On the other hand, Mark
has been intrigued by hydroponics ever since he was a kid, imagining
austronauts growing their food in water, and he loves the idea of a
more sustainable form of hydroponics. So I decided to hunt down a
book and read more about it.
Aquaponic
Gardening by Sylvia
Bernstein is a good beginners' guide to the subject. Even though
her arguments for sustainability didn't win me over, she did present a
very good explanation of how to set up an aquaponics system, including
a fascinating look at the ecology involved in growing fish and plants
together. The book has some flaws, but as best I can tell it's
the main contender in a very new genre. I'll write about some of
the top points in this week's lunchtime series, but I recommend
checking out Bernstein's book to learn more if you actually want to set
up an aquaponics system.
| This post is part of our Aquaponic Gardening lunchtime series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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The Urban Farm Guys show how to make an IBC solar powered aquaponics setup in their video It might be a bit more sustainable- and you can use your solar panels too.