Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I am still in the research stage, I watched Murrey Hallam’s DVD on aquaponics, he said not to plant mint in your aquaponic system because it will just take over everything and block up the pipes.
Is there any other type of perennial plant that will do this?
I want to grow a lot of plants in my future AP system, some of the perennial plants I am worried about are:
Comfrey, thornless blackberries, Raspberries , tarragon, rosemary, strawberries, asparagus, rhubarb, Lovage, Thyme, Grape vines, Kiwi fruit, passion fruit and some dwarf fruit trees.

I would add vietnamese mint ( laksa leaf) gotu kola and lebanese watercress to the list of what not to plant in a growbed. No problem with strawberries, asparagus ( so far) and rhubarb. Haven't tried berries and depends how big your growbed is for passionfruit.

Not knocking it or anything, and if you have lots of grow bed space then perennials are probably cool, but I find the ones that do well tend to get huge and overtake large swathes of growbed that could be used for better food production purposes.

Plants with evasive roots should be avoided at all cost! So if you don't know rather don't try. Its a real mission getting roots out of media.

I guess it depends what you grow and how you train it. I tried passion fruit but it grew much better in a wicking bed.

I think I am going to get pots and turn them into wicking beds for perennial herbs and other perennials and just use AP water to irrigate them from time to time. It will also help to utilize unused space around my growbeds.

thanks.
space is not an issue for me as i have 30 acres .

I would add cherry tomatoes to the list. I found a growbed overflowing one day that had one in and it had completely blocked the standpipe. Cherry tomato plants are close to their wild relatives and are normally beasts of things

I have a small mint plant in mine right now just till the stores start to stock seeds, for as small as it is, I am seeing roots on the side of the clear grow bed. My peepers died off but one plant that was not doing anything. I pulled that out and found that it was blocking most of my water to the standpipe.

The mint I pulled from my backyard a few months ago. Its wild as hell so it might be a issue soon.

Goji berries are prolific growers. Cheap to propagate from slips too

I wonder about this from a biological standpoint. In soil systems root exudates/metabolites drive bacterial and fungal proliferation and ultimately provide nutrient acquisition for the plant (This is where ~all trace minerals come from!). If you wanted to further naturalize your system I could imagine that perennials, whose roots are active and longer lived in the system, would better mimic the terrestrial system ecology. Annuals who may only spend several weeks in a system don't have as much time to build bacterial and/or fungal associations within their root zones. I think keeping water DO as high as possible is real important when trying to build a system ecology. ACT is recommended made at a minimum of 8ppm DO so this seems appropriate for a baseline. This means significant oxygenation is necessary for these bacterial and fungal populations to survive. We use a vertical plastic matrix which has a very high evacuation rate. I think it probably helps to have this feature because gaseous oxygen is spatially very close to roots. Still, there are better medias I can imagine.

Perennials also tend to be better able to utilize ammonium and depending on your pH and system efficiency you may have some of this that the plants could use directly. This may allow you to increase stocking density to some degree(?).

Mint does really well and is able to put on tons of biomass in short order. More aquatic species of perennials like mint are a logical bet in my mind.

-m

I think with a bit of maintenance, things like mint and cherry tomatoes work. I haven't tried mint, but I've got way to many cherry tomatoes growing, and I just need to pull out the roots every few weeks from the stand pipe. Doesn't seem to need much more than that. And with the siphon, channeling isn't a problem.

Fascinating discussion. I was wondering about perennials too. It seems if we have the space perhaps a dedicated media bed for perennials will help the system stay stable during colder weather. I have one media bed location where if the media bed did clog overflow would go back in to FT:

yes mint is ummm...... insane.

also i placed a few pepino plants in a friends large bed- knowing full well how big they can get in soil- they are taking over at atleast the pace mint would.

So if you can either train it over the side or dont mind only having one plant in your bed, Pepinos are great in AP, awesome fruit too (tastes like a cantelope, but can be eaten like an apple and last on the shelf for a few weeks, fruit ripen twice per year).

I had mint in a trough system and was wondering why the media seemed to be falling out of the trough and the water was flowing over the sides rather than out the holes in the bottom of the troughs. Discovered that the root system had filled the trough space to the point it was pushing out the media and had blocked the drainage holes

Mint - delicious nasty stuff that should only be potted with electric probes near any outlets to keep it under control.

Ditto Colum's thoughts about cherry tom's. Ok as long as you keep the roots under control.

Recently I was wondering about planting pepinos in the AP. Given what Yavimaya has said, I'm glad I decided to put them in the ground. Looking forward to the fruit. It's been years

Anyone tried cape gooseberries by slip in the AP?

havent tried cape gooseberries, but looking at the type pf leaf and stem, they would love the constant water and would thrive i think.

I recently saw okra growing in a growbed and producing nicely.
My family call them boogy vegies - try boiling some up and you'll learn why (a bit of vinegar in the cooking water reduces the slimy factor). Some of us like them, some don't. Luverly with some curry and butter!
Definitely on the hunt for seeds for these once the weather starts warming again.
Though I believe it is a perennial, I also read it can grow to 2m (6') in height - a tad tall for the grow bed, so I'll probably have to uproot it when the cooler weather comes again.
Any one have tips on growing okra? Is it too big for ~2m x 1m BYAP/Cheidys growbeds?

Ive grown pepino and they grew well. A friends system is over run with pepino.