Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

On a number of occasions members have mentioned that this or that plant is either a heavy feeder or a light feeder...
Some systems are set up where it would be advisable to plant according to how heavily a plant feeds..

Having been an earth bound gardener untill earlier this year I just planted my plants and ensured that I rotated crops, but never gave a thought as to how heavily the respective plantd fed from the soil.

What we need is for all of you out there to let us know which plants are 'heavy' or 'light' feeders (and any other info related to heavy or light feeding)

AM-To give a rule of thumb- preferably green, the complexity of the plant .eg lettuce very simple light feeder(leafy greens)
Tomatoe(fruiting-Heavy feeder)
C1

Heavy feeders - Tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, squash, melons, chilli peppers, capsicum, basically plants with fruit. Peas, Beans...

Light feeders - leafy veg.

okay then... so if I have a bed where the water flows in one end (a flood and dran type of bed) and out the other, would you plant -in any specific order (heavy first/last) or do as most do and just keep them all mixed together...

Personally I would mix them all up... I remember a rather unusual thing that Dr Rakocy said the other week... Their design uses long DW channels, I think they were 30m long and the water flows down one shannel and back up another channel, so it flows a total of 60m before returning to the fish. Someone asked if the plants at the end get less nutrients than the plants at the start and he said that the water at the end of 60m had the same nutrient levels as the water at the start....

yeah, I was wondering if that was possible aswell. Surely the water would have less nutrients as it reached each plant down the track

A constant replenishment of the same amount being taken up would make that possible.

The lettuce will only take what they want, and so if there's enough there for 60 metres of lettuce, and it is continually replenished, they'll all get their fair share.

I still think a heavy feeding bed, (with some lighter companion planting) then into dwc would eliminate the need for filtering solids. I plan to test this theory very soon, well, you know, soonish, like umm, hehe. Greenhouse should be finished tomorrow, not counting stone floor and systems.