Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi there
I have what might be a strange question, BUT I was thinking about maximizing the space use to the extreme. Do you think it would be possible to grow plants like (tomatoes/cucumbers/peppers) in flood and drain buckets in rows spaced 1,8m apart trained to one main stem going up, with some pruning of course. And rows of rectangular growbeds underneath, with the buckets bottom being about 30-40cm over the gravel level.

My sketchup failed to work, so I made some sorry looking thing, just to give you all an idea in case my mumbling and rumbling is not as clear as I sometimes think it is.



The black sticks on the bottom are some kind of stands that raise the bottom of the growbed to about 30 cm. The most common growbed (the red thing) depth is 30cm so it would take us up to 60cm high. Then the upper crop, either just like I tried to show on the above picture, in buckets that are supported over grow beds on some sort or support. There is another idea that I did consider, but I find it somewhat less attractive. NFT pipes/gullies about 2,25 meters over the ground with plants(tomato/peppers/cucumber) growing down.

Do you think that either of those scenarios would provide enough light for the plants bellow in the growbeds to ... successfully grow, or would they just provide to much shade,and the growbeds would not be sufficiently productive. I do realize that such setup would require a specific selection of winter/shade tolerating crops for the growbeds such as salad greens, herbs, maybe broccoli, cauliflower, horse radish, beets, celery.

Well many people simply to two layer planting with the tomatoes and such growing right in the grow beds and they train them up and then plant the shade tolerant stuff around the base of the tall growing plants.

Now your idea there could perhaps work but I think it would just cost you more materials, probably cause you some issues with access, support, being able to reach things and of course the issues with lots of little containers and all the extra plumbing needed.

Now many people add some NFT or DWC or other alternative methods in with a flood and drain system, you just want to make sure you have clean filtered water to feed to those things (like taking water from a sump where all the water has gone through grow beds to filter it.

As to enough sun and stuff. Well it will depend on season and situation. During the cool season with reduced light levels, you probably won't be very happy with the growth of the plants that are in the shady areas of the system. Where I live in summer, some filtered shade is actually very desirable for many plants for at least part of the day.

Unless you need the buckets for the filtration the media in them would provide, I would suggest that an NFT pipe above the grow bed might be more useful that trying to support buckets above the bed. Just make sure you design the system with enough grow bed for the fish load and with a clean water sump or other filtration to take care of the NFT pipe feed.

I like the idea. You can also grow tomotoes, capsicum, cucumbers, peas and other climbers at the very end of the beds and train them onto a trellis off to the side. If you do it on the south side of the beds then they don't shade the rest of the bed

Edit: Woops, that might be on the north side in Poland

The question is, how tight together could you pack em then? I mean what I am asking here about is a kind of community garden, a greenhouse that we are planing to put up along with some friends and neighbours, to produce our own fresh produce. The costs would be divided, and the labour to wash the gravel, pick the produce( OH YEAH that's a chore ), check on everything would not be a problem. Funny thing is, that around here a commercial 30mx10m (300m2) glass glazed greenhouse even with a heating system, with a little know where, you can find pretty much dirt cheep, sure it might need a little sand paper and paint, but hey for that price, I cannot complain.

Well, all right, since I did mention the size of space available, and the reason for that, can someone come up with a sketchup of a nice, tightly packed well utilising the space setup? You can use those already available grow beds since we will be using a VERY similar in size GB, they are 2,1m x 1,2m and 40cm high, and they are in fact also HDPE, and UV stabilized on the outside, not SURE about the inside. NFT gullies would be ordered from somewhere, or home made. The fish tank(s) will probably be ordered, made on our order in any size, out of fibre glass.

Well... let your imagination roam free;) Also a simple suggestion of what in terms of plants could go where, would be a great thing

I did say about the beds, but It is just what I thought would be best, DWC channel or two, or even aeroponic table is not out of the question.


yeah there's that Accustomed to most folks being from Australia, huh?

Provided you can get a good source of PH neutral gravel, the gravel beds would probably provide the most plant space for the trouble (if you do DWC raft beds you then need separate filtration which still takes up space.)

Hum, you might want to look up Growing Power on the internet. They are doing some pretty intensive aquaponic and greenhouse growing in a very temperate climate. Some of the videos show multi layer systems.

yeah I can easily get PH neutral gravel by a truckload at very decent prices. They are something like 1 ton of gravel for something like... 120 PLN(polish złoty) which equals about 40$ and they are available at truckload quantities (20+ tons) in 48 hours delivered to your doorstep.

Good Luck getting out your door if they dump 20 tons on it

But seriously. by the ton (or perhaps 6 tons) would perhaps be an appropriate amount to fill 600 gallons worth of grow beds, give or take some depending on specific weight of the gravel. Lava rock would require less tonnage to fill the same amount of grow beds as compared to say quartz river rock.

From what I hear the best would be one of those river gravel and that is exactly what I could get my hands on pretty cheap.

Well... I was wondering, is it possible to do something a little bit different... instead of buying fibreglass growbeds, dig a hole, put some pond liner on the bottom and fill it up with gravel? I mean, yeah I do realise that it would take a little bit more site preparation, and it would take away the main advantage of raised beds connected with aquaponics,.. being raised But again I am talking here about maximizing yield/m2. I am not asking if it would be possible, couse probably anything a wicked mind can come up is, what I am asking is if anyone has tried it, how did work out and how would that go in terms of winter growing?

Pond liner in hole in ground (that is one of the very few ways I would recommend using pond liner anymore. Keep wood away from pond liner.) However if you dig a hole in the ground and line it with pond liner and fill with gravel, there are a few things you need to sort out.

1, the flow of the system, if the grow bed is in the ground, how are you going to have the water drain out of it?

2, Make sure the top lip of the grow bed is some how enough above the ground that dirt is not going to wash into your grow bed during a heavy rain.

3, make sure any liner used with gravel is really heavy duty or it will get damaged during filling and start leaking.

To deal with 1, I've some times envisioned a system where the sump is filled with gravel except for a space with a pump. When the pump runs the water level in the gravel filled sump/grow bed would drop providing a bit of a drain cycle and the water could flow through a fish tank and to some other grow beds that might be higher up in the system before they drain back to a gravel filled sump/bed. However, I have not actually done this directly in ground. I have done it with a couple beds on the ground with a float controlled pump in them. Just keep wood away from the pond liner if there might be any termites in the area or the liner could get chewed into and start leaking.