Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Sorry if this has been asked before but I was wondering what plants would be recommended for starting out in AP, plants that are easy to grow and do well...
In a media bed...
Constant flood...

Right now you could put in chard/spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, beetroot, and tomatoes if in a greenhouse/under a transparent cover with no danger of <5C temps.

Cos lettuce goes very well and can handle the nitrates if they get a bit high better than some other varieties.
You can do a pick as you go.

Asian greens go pretty good - pak choy particularly (but also bok choy and others as it gets a bit warmer).

If you can contain it celery goes well - you can pick as you go and leave the root crown in place.

As does mint - but you don't want mint in a mixed grow bed - a bucket/tub/planter on side.


baby spinach (english spinach) does well - and baby spinach goes as an alternative for salad leaves.
Parsley is good (grows a bit slower than dirt pots but means it doesn't tend to bolt as much).

cucumbers/zuchini and peas/beans either go or they don't. Worth trying and seeing what happens.
Snow peas particularly.

If an open system wait a few more weeks before going with tomato seedlings.
(grosse lisse go fine - the common Australian one at Bunnings etc)


personally I find beetroot go better in my wicking beds than media AP.

I am trying leaks and spring onions at present but slow in both wicking beds and AP
(but my side of house area lacks decent period of winter sun).

** if starting out I would tend to suggest seedling punnets from Bunnings or similar garden place.
couple of dollars and save waiting for seeds to emerge. Just wash dirt off roots and put in AP.
then add seeds around gaps as you pull stuff out. At 30-50c plant much cheaper than buying veg and results in half time .
As you are washing out anyway look for punnets with multiple seedlings in cells.
6 or 8 cell punnets are fine and usually $2-$3 - and you often get 10+ plants.

Thanks guys, do you (or anyone for that matter) know how onions, potatoes and other underground veges go in media beds?
Would they work in a constant flood scenario or better with flood and drain?

Onions are ok in media but potatoes are no good. Best in dirt gardens. Beetroot grows well. Carrots will grow but don't go as well as in dirt. On the most part underground veges don't go as well in aquaponics


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I've had great results with onion and garlic in gravel media,F&D. Carrots had multiple branching roots, so I'd
call them a fail.

I do my first AP with tomotoes and still waiting them to grow.

I'd imagine the gravel would be very difficult to move for a large expanding root veg like a potato and is probably why the carrots fork off.
I wonder though if a wicking bed with it's water supply from the FT would be a benefit. Because the water supply is constant or in my case every 10-15 min the scoria layer could be just 50 mm deep with weed mat leaving 250 mm of potting mix to grow root vegies in.
My bath tub wicking bed experiment is going great since the seedlings reached the wicking level about 100 mm below the surface. I used pond water to fill it and hand watered for the first couple of weeks.

Pete.

My larger system has a number of WBs irrigated by circulating AP system water, which works very well. I posted a photo in that thread last week showing the celery and broccoli.

Tubers such as turmeric, ginger, earth apples etc do fine in gravel.

Spinach and Rocket are easy, just sprinkle some seeds in and wait for the magic

Strawberries are great can get them for under a dollar each on gumtree, just whack them in and they'll be happy as long as you're not running salt

Radishes go well for a root crop

I planted a coriander seedling from bunnings and it's trippled in size in the last month or so, despite me regularly hacking bits off of it.

Herbs are a great thing to have fresh, and a rip off to buy in the supermarket

After I wrote that I then wondered if the nutrients from the soil leech back into the water and affect the fish - what do you think?
How deep is the gravel in you wicking beds?

Pete.

Guna, do you think veggies grown in wicking beds grow quicker than conventional beds?

Pete.

I keep my WBs on a separate circuit to the rest of my system, as there was too much "other stuff" in the soil of the WBs- see my large system thread for how much gravel etc and other details about gravel depth etc, rather than me having to repeat it all here, from p2.

We are debating removing the soil from some of the WBs and topping them up with gravel, as many plants do a bit better in the gravel GBs.