Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

are potatoes possible in ap?

i have searched the forums with no posts pretaining

Hi Mathew, Just saw your post on HT so thought I'd come over and say hello, Shin

Generally root crops don't do as well in AP as the tubers get constantly submerged - having said that, I have put in beet root, onions, carrots and garlic to see how they go.

Alternate means is to drip feed those type of vegies and use another type of media such as sand or coco peat

The problem as I see it would be that as potatoes grow they push themselves up and expose themselves to the light which then turns them green and makes them poisonous. The beetroot I have growing has pushed itself above the hydroton in the grow bed but light is not a problem to them.

I have a hi-rise tyre arrangement, which I am hoping will keep the tubers out of the water as Les suggest.
Though I don't have an answer as yet because we are not harvesting for a little while.
I will post our results, the tops have not died off yet!

Pictures we love pictures

would it be possible to grow them in an upsidedown pot arrangment?
i'm thinking a 150mm pvc tube capped at the bottom end and the stem/leaves of the plant haning down outof it and the body of the tube filled with grow bed media.
the water would trickle down from the opening of the tube and exit from an autosiphon at the bottom.
that way the roots would grow up into the growbed and not sit in water at the bottom, and there's no chance of them being exposed to light.

Hey I know the drill...
but not tonight!
Besides this was an experiment that the results were to be given either way.

But potatoes grow off the stem, and that is why it is necessary to mound them up otherwise as someone said (sorry faye ), they go green which is toxic to us!

What we have done is to start at the normal hydroton surface level -place a tyre and fill with hydroton with the seed spud above the water line the roots we expected would grow into the moisture and take up 'its' needs, and as the stem grows, add further tyres/hydroton continuing the process as per usual.
A lot of space is needed to allow tubers to form

would perlite work any better C1?

Don't know BK, just what we had at the time... could be better with perlite.
But last few months seemed to be ok.
The green house is a few K's away, might get a chance in the next few days to get there, for some pics.

coool.......pixrgood

aren't tyres a bad thing with food plants?

wasn't our main concern as we have used the same priciples in soil gardening.
but does bare thinking about!

Not sure Jaymie, but the method C1 is using is one I've seen used by a lot of the old soil gardeners, by one means or another, for ages.