There are some really amazing products involving the use of fish to grow organic vegetables. This kind of growing system is referred to as aquaponics. Check out some of the products offered at Earth Solutions. They have a huge range of great ideas and resources to help homeowners unlock their organic gardening potential in some pretty innovative ways.
Aquaponics tries to recreate the natural eco-system between plants and friendly bacteria to create organic vegetables and fish. The idea is that nature does a better job at fertilizing plants than chemicals do. There is no need for artificial fertilizers, filters or even dirt. The waste from fish (aka fish poop) is basically ammonia. This ammonia is transported from the fish tank into a bog of rocks where the vegetables grow. The bacteria living on the rocks and plants use the ammonia as an organic fertilizer. This process also cleans the water by removing the ammonia.
This cleansed water is then cycled back into the fish tank which allows the fish tank to stay clean without the use of any filters or cleansers. The cycle repeats itself every one to two hours on a timer. So the nitrogen and water in the fish tank are no longer thrown away as waste. Instead, they are used to fertilize the plants. And the water from the plants isn’t wasted either because it’s filtered back into the fish tank. What an ingenious way to get great tasting, healthy organic vegetables and fish which can also be eaten when they get too big. Definitely worth checking out how you can get your own aquaponic system. Earth solutions has products ranging from $15 to $3,000 that are definitely worth checking out.
Their website puts it this way: “Aquaponics is the merging of hydroponics (growing plants without soil) and aquaculture (the farming of fish and/or shell fish); and because one systems waste may be another’s sustenance, putting the two together creates a permaculture relationship. Permaculture is a permanent agriculture system that relies on renewable resources, and is molded after natural ecosystems working together.”
I was amazed at how easy aquaponic gardening is, I reckon i’m now producing roughly five times the amount of plants in half the time.