Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi guys,

Imagine that you have a system ready to get up and running, and fish are present as well as some m2 of gravel beds (flood and drain system, similar to "the Book").

What do you then do, like when you obtain heirloom tomato seeds like EB has got, and all sorts of other seeds.

Is there any reason why you couldn't just drop or bury a seed in the gravel, deep enough to make sure that it gets wetted every cycle? Or do you have to grow the plant in dirt first, inside, and then harden it for outside and sun, and finally shake / wash the dirt of and transplant it in the gravel?

I hope to get to this point in some two to three weeks, so I guess I should start looking for seeds and answers in advance.

Karel.

karel, I have a trough with seed raisingmix outside, covered with plastic, that I have early seeds in. Lettuces (about 1000 have come up- look like lawn) capsicums, sugar snaps which I transplanted into my dirt garden, heirloom tommies, celery, cucumber etc, hoping to get a head start on summer. The trough with plastic over it works a treat to heat up the soil. When my system is running, I will just wash off the dirt, and transplant the seedlings. Otherwise, you can just sow the seeds staraight into the beds, like you say, making sure they get wet. Others will have more info, just thought I would drop this quick one...

Hi Roskar:
I have been just sowing directly, but I found that watering the gravel with the fish water when I feed the fish twice a day has helped them stay alive long enough for their roots to reach into the gravel well. Before I didn't do this and when it got hot they would dry out and die because they were too small to reach down into the water. I just a few minutes ago put some more seeds in, basil, little tomatoes, mesclun mix, and four green beans (haven't had any luck with them yet, seeds got slimy and they didn't work).

Hi Roskar. Welcome aboard if I've not met you yet!

I find a seedling tray invaluable. I keep mine inside so I see as soon as plants pop up, then I can select where they go (outside, in a pot, or in the Aqua).

Wash dirt off gently with water and transplant seedlings in your Aqua so the root system barely touches the water line but does touch it.

The smaller the seedling the easier the washing process.

Sowing directly into beds sounds better to me but I'm not there yet.

Another method use, sounds great.....

Put some black pvc plastic over a bed. Underneath will be very warm and humid which seeds and cuttings love. Put seeds under the plastic and poke cuttings through it. They should germinate fast and easily in this environment.

If you look here you will see my growbed where I have sown stevia directly into the gravel, and I have 13 little seedlings now (which is good when you consider that these seeds were all mouldy a little while ago - but not because of aqua, instead because they were packaged while moist...) anyway, coving the bed in plastic trapped the moisture and heat which seemed to aid the whole germination process, so no need to water every day from the top as DD sometimes does

I use a combination when sowing a bed. The very first time I did my large flood and drain system it was a case of mixing together many different seeds in a bowl, then spreading them liberally over the growbeds. Afterwards I washed the soil out of many individual seedlings from bought punnets. These I planted into the gravel and then gave all of the beds a very quick water with the hose. Just a very quick spray to help knock any seeds left sitting on the surface down into the gravel..

Since then I haven't bothered with washing the seeds down into the gravel, I've let many plants go to seed in the beds over time and with no help from me they germinate very well, almost half of the plants in my beds at the moment are self seeded...

This is another great thing about aquaponics, you don't have to worry about crop rotations as you might do in normal soil gardening. I have steel mesh above one growbed to grow plants on, and I have grown tomatoes in that bed continuously for the last 2 years... One of the normal reasons for crop rotations is because of deficiencies in the soil after particular crops, but when your nutrients are constantly cycling through the whole system, any particular bed can be planted to the same crop year after year, as no one bed will experience deficiencies...

Never occured to me about the having to rotate, or NOT having to rotate, crops - aquaponics scores yet another point!

Steel mesh and plastic going over the bed tomorrow, thanks for the ideas!

Might add for good measure that I use the moon phases to plant by.
This makes a huge difference on the germination rate.
Going to find a planting guide.BRB

I just sow and hope for the best

With crop rotation. There's 2 reasons people do this. One is soil amendment.

The other is pests and disease. Once the insects know where the food is they come back. I don't know how this applies as in - how much effect. I do imagine in some cases it means total crop loss in others it won't matter at all.

Depends on what is there, and what wants to eat it.

Good point.

Do nematodes live in grow beds. I guess you could sterilise a grow bed by disconnecting it from the system and flooding it with a solution containing bleach if you get a disease or parasite problem.

true, but I would rather rotate crops that steralise as you would lose all that fantastic bacteria if you did!

Yep,

It wouldnt be my first option as I would rather keep it as natural a possible.

It would really need to be a last option BR, as if you do this then you might as well empty and refill the tank, because as AM stated you will be killing the beneficial bacteria which are as intregal to the system as the fish and plants. I can only try to imagine trying to cycle a 1000L system (mine) from scratch once it had 60KGs of fish in it. Not very likely to be successful IMHO