Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello everyone!

So I'm a student, living in cold wet Holland.
This already makes it a little bit more difficult to set up an aquaponics system!
However, my idea was to create an aquaponics, completely closed - so provide fish feed by using duck weed and colonizing worms or flies, since I would be using omnivorous fish. I would also try, although that might be for later, to include solar panel for energy for heating and such..

The real idea here is to grow medicinal plants alongside my vegetables! So some camomille, sage and other stuff like that.. In advance, No! i will not be growing marijuana! although that might be something to consider regarding how healthy and helpful it could be, but for now i really want to stick with little thing that could cure headaches, stomach-aches, common rashes as well as grow some tomatoes or lettuce!

But so, does anybody have any previous experience growing medicinal herbs alongside vegetables and fish?
Or as a matter of fact does anybody have experience growing medicinal herbs at all?
I am aware that different plants have different requirements and I should group them accordingly, but is there any toxicity i should be worried about or basic guiding principles or advice someone could give me?


Thanks in advance for any reply!
Keep on growing wild!

http://www.herbsfromwales.co.uk/joomla/ ... e&Itemid=1

welshdragon is their user name on here
system thread here http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/vie ... php?t=3528

cheers

Short answer is no.

Longer answer is that I have found that many herbs have a stronger flavour/aroma than dirt grown which may indicate stronger or higher concentrations of active ingredients.

Which could easily be the case.
I saw experiments on TV a few years back, where people tented plants and pumped them with CO2 as per the level that the atmosphere will be in year X, people tend to predict that more carbon automatically means more growth.
But basically the easier growing conditions meant that the plants didnt grow faster, but had more energy spare to put into thier poisons, which is exactly what they did.

I suppose better conditions dont always mean better growth, it can mean better nutrition / defense.

Cool.

That would have a lot of applications/implications for a lot of plant crops

sow thistle (liver and blood detoxifier) grow as weeds in my system.
Mint (for stomach ache) grow like weed too

so it depends what you want to grow