It Takes a Year

You know that old saying, "It Takes a Year"? It's logic does seem to hold water (pun intended) when relating to taking on a new job and figuring it out, especially when the work is cyclical, as it is with the Biomimicry of nature in Aquaponics, as well as nature, itself. William Ackerman's acoustic album (music for meditation), "It Takes a Year" which relates to the seasons in nature seem like an appropriate soundtrack for this blog entry. Turn up your speakers. Here's the title track from it:

Pretty tune, huh? Anyway, as I reflect on my year experimenting with Aquaponics, I've come to realize that my systems are best designed for short-lived cool weather crops. The vegetables seem to grow more slowly after they become fully mature, as their roots don't uptake nutrients from their food as well when they get old - much like what happens with a human or animal's body when it ages.

In my last blog entry, "Extending the Growing Season", I wrote about transplanting Swiss Chard, Parsley and Rosemary from the outside garden to my soil-free Aquaponic systems in my indoors office. The Swiss Chard and Parsley quickly rebounded from transplantation shock and grew at a decent rate for a month or so. But, little did I realize that when I brought them inside, I also introduced aphids (aka "plant lice" into my systems. Yuck!

While aphids are tiny, they reproduce like crazy and do a lot of damage in a short period of time. They suck the juice from a plant, thus stunting growth. Aphid saliva is evidently toxic to plants as well.

Aphid populations can be kept under control by spraying the plants with water. There are organic ways to treat them which are non-toxic for fish (like chili and garlic sprays or introducing ladybugs which eat aphids). It's imperative not to introduce insecticides into Aquaponics, as they are toxic to fish but also get into our food supply as well. Murray Hallam has some helpful aphid control suggestions here at his Practical Aquaponics blog.

So what did I do? I harvested all but the Rosemary, as the aphids didn't touch it at all. The oil from Rosemary is medicine; no wonder they didn't like it.

To prevent harm to the fish with ammonia buildup, I simply took a bag of activated carbon which I would typically use in my aquarium, and put it under the water outflow on top of the growbed. This ensures that the water pumped from the fish tank to the growbed gets purified (what the roots of the Swiss Chard and Parsley were doing), and the fish don't experience a harmful ammonia spike.

Back to the cyclical nature of Aquaponics - it's time to plant some more lettuce seeds and start all over again!