Raised Bed Gardening for Dummies and Hydroponics Garden Secret: 2 books in 1: Beginner Guides to Build a Raised Bed Garden and how to Build and Maintain ... System, including tips and tricks by Garden Richard

Author:Garden, Richard [Garden, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 2-

Hydroponics Gardening vs. Aquaponics

What is Aquaponics

Aquaponic gardening is a system of food production that combines aquaculture and hydroponics. Aquaculture is the process of raising aquatic animals such as fish, prawns, crayfish, or snails in tanks. Hydroponics is the process of cultivating plants in a symbiotic environment, in water.

The different forms of aquaculture include fish farms, Mariculture, algaculture, and integrated multitrophic aquaculture; each one of these systems produces different products and provides different uses. Mariculture is the cultivation of animals or plants that require a saltwater environment. Examples of these types of products include many types of shellfish, finfish, like flounder, and sea plants, like seaweed. This type of system is either set up in the ocean, where the environment is already perfect for the organisms, with large nets or tanks put in the ocean water, or tanks outside the ocean filled with saltwater.

Hydroponics Vs Aquaponics

They sound a lot alike, don’t they? Hydroponics and Aquaponics? They are similar in one way, but vastly different where it counts. Hydroponics means grown in water. If you take the words aquaculture + hydroponics and put them together, you get aquaponics. Let’s look at the two processes in more detail to see why one will be better for you over another.

Ditch the soil. Both systems offer to grow a garden without soil. This represents a considerable benefit. Soil becomes stagnant after years of cultivation, requiring a lot of fertilizer and/or rotation of crops. Merely replacing the soil during repetitive seasons of indoor growth becomes expensive on top of that, the soil is easily contaminated with spores or pests laying eggs, perpetuating all of the diseases from one season to the next. Growing in the soil almost requires an outdoor garden, and living in a climate zone with harsh winters means you can only grow your veggies half of the year. Both systems offer value in growing without soil.

Instead of soil, you’ll grow your plants in a biosystem of specially cultured beneficial bacteria, and your very own circle of life will sustain both fish and plants. This healthy substitute for dirt is simple to produce, and you’ll wonder why you never tried aquaponic gardening before.

Fertilize the water. Both systems require nutrient-based water for plant growth. Hydroponic gardening employs chemical nutrients, which represent constant overhead. You may obtain your growing medium from any number of suppliers, but let’s face it: the uncertain role of chemicals in cancer and congenital disabilities is generating headlines around the world. In aquaponics, you may grow organic vegetables through natural fertilizer produced by fish swimming around the tank. The advantage goes to aquaponics.

Design the right space. Both systems require light and a floor strong enough to withstand some pretty hefty weight. I was clueless. I imagined a sweet little aquarium with plants above it and was shocked to realize a twenty-gallon aquarium weighs a whopping 225 pounds. A concrete floor in the basement sounded smart, but I was hooked on the idea of cute goldfish and had a 14-ft bay window in the dining room, so the scales became my enemy.

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