Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I see so much of what grows well, but standing in my local mc Bs today I was choosing seeds to use and wondered what wont grow? What is the general rule of thumb? I'm planting seeds today to hopefully get ready to transplant next week when my new system is up and hopefully running.

Oh and I will just slip in this question, any tips on easiest way to grow seedlings for AP?

Try growing things out of season and you will find out what doesn't do well.

The easiest way to grow seedlings is to

step 1. Sprinkle seeds

step 2. Ruffle the media surface with a flat hand

step 3. Gently water with a watering can with a shower rose outlet - possibly with a capful or 2 of seaweed extract diltued or even worm juice and voila

step 4. 5 days later look out for sprouts

step 5. take photos and post on the BYAP forum

Bugger, I'm fresh out of voila, Faye. Do you have some in stock down at BYAP?

From what I have heard, spuds grow poorly in grow beds.

For you PLJ we have plenty of voila -

As potatoes are a crop that you dig up at the end of their season (growbeds are not ideal for digging) and for best results you would mound them up around their stem. So really not ideal for a growbed, I tend to think they are not the best use of a growbed space being that they are a longer term crop and to be honest I haven't bothered to try.

Some root crops can be tricky in gravel (blue metal) media.

Yeah I'd concur with faye on my recent experience:
Transplanting small seedlings - hassle - removing soil and a slight transplant shock - getting roots low enough etc.

Sprinkling seeds - great!

If you want some fun seeds try Rocket, Radish, Asian Greens - they come up in 3-5 days.

Yeah... radish are crazy fast germinators... and ready to eat in a fortnite...

cactus would be one to avoid in a regular aquaponics system.

Another to avoid in AP and dirt would be mint, use a pot

I was planning on using 14 mm scoria. Won't the seeds get lost I'm the system? Should I think of a different media? I am getting it shipped next week so don't want to get 3 ton of something I will regret.

Grow beds come tomorrow, will definitely spend time on the pc tomorrow night posting...

Hydroton clay balls are 8-16mm... and people often use 20mm blue metal.... seeds seem to grow just fine either way...

I have expanded shale in the 1/2-1" size (12-25 mm) and I have had some issues with small seeds, especially round ones (like mustards/other brassicas) falling through. Lettuce seeds being more grass like stuck pretty well near the surface if the media was wet. Larger seeds have done much better.

One of my next round of modifications is to add another growbed and scoop the top 2 inches out of the existing beds into that one, then top them all off with 1/4-1/2" (6-12mm) shale. You may want to try that for sprinkling seeds (I can't actually say that it works yet though).

i have used small piece of tissue paper just under the surface of the clay and put my very small seeds on that.Keeps the seeds together and the tissue disintergrates after a while

sprinkled some radish seeds last Sunday and had lots of germination Wednesday and Thursday!

Thanks, I have wondered about doing something like that, but didn't know if the paper would cause an issue. I guess use the "septic safe-fully biodegradable" kind?