Fish pond ideas, a cute swing table, solar power and our seedlings…

Aqua-whatics?

I know – it sounds very similar to hydroponics. And it is, except instead of growing lettuces and whatnot in water with artificial fertilisers, you connect your lettuce beds to a fish pond and let the fish do the fertilising for you.

I started getting interested as we were putting together the most recent issue of Green Ideas. Our clever gardening writer Janet Luke did a piece on her own little aquaponic set up, and the whole system seemed so elegantly self-sufficient – her fish feed and water her plants, which in turn purify the fish’s water  – that I knew I had to give it a go.

Especially as I had half the set-up already.

You might remember how, a while ago, I made two cute little ponds by sawing the top off an old wine barrel (the bottom part holds goldfish, while the top part has been our tadpole and frog pond).

It only took an afternoon – and a reread of Janet’s article – to put our goldfish to work growing veges. I reckon it’s a charming little water feature too!

Well, it might be when the plants grow up and hide those daggy plastic containers. What do you think?

It’s a bit hard to tell how it works from the picture but, basically, a little overflow pipe takes water from near the top of the wine barrel and spills it into the tray on the first step below. When that fills up, another overflow pipe fills the second tray, which in turn fills the bottom tray, where a solar-powered pump pushes the water all the way back to the top of the barrel, from where it splashes prettily down amongst the lotus pads.

It’s not quite finished in this photo, though. In aquaponics, you don’t grow your plants in soil – instead you use a clean growing medium like gravel. So after I took this picture I filled the three trays with a mix of gravel and river stones then sprinkled in loads of basil, lettuce and coriander seeds  – and they’ve already started sprouting!

I’m hoping that before the warm weather has done its dash I’ll have enough basil for at least one batch of pesto. So fingers crossed – and I’ll keep you posted. And if you want me to do a little step-by-step piece and a video on our website, let me know by email and I’ll put one up.

Oh yeah – one more gardening update. Last month I wrote about our new planter boxes and worm farm at work – and I can report that both are going great guns!

We connected a little rain-collecting barrel to the patio roof, and the combination of regular watering and all the hot weather has seen our seeds shoot up. Those are little kale plants in the foreground, and we’ve been feasting on lettuces and microgreens already. Meanwhile, the worms have been feasting on our lunch scraps, which means no more stinky food rotting in our rubbish bins (and less waste from us in general) – especially as a very kind reader, Tere, has just donated an unused bokashi composting bucket to our office. Thanks, Tere!

Greg Roughan
 Editor, Green Ideas magazine

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