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Four years ago I started building a hydroponic garden. I know, I know, I've heard all the jokes and references regarding Colorado herbs. But seriously, in Wisconsin, our summers are short and inconsistent. I got tired of trying to grow vegetables only to have an early or late frost kill everything. Then we had a couple very dry summers followed by wet falls. It was just a waste of time.
So I built a lean-to on the back of my garage for an open-air greenhouse. This provided a couple benefits. First, it had a southern exposure and protected the growing beds from hard rains and hail. Second, it provided a framework to use for attaching equipment.
For the first two years, this worked well and I learned a lot. One thing I quickly learned is that hydroponic nutrient solution is expensive. I was going through $150 per summer of the concentrated solution. So, I looked into other options and discovered aquaponics.
Aquaponics is the practice of raising fish in tanks and circulating the fish water to the grow beds of a hydroponic garden. This fish waste in the water creates ammonia and bacteria in the water converts the ammonia into nitrates the plants can use for food. Any solid wastes in the water need to be removed but can be spread on a typical soil based garden.
I looked into species of fish to try to raise and found Tilapia. Tilapia are a tropical freshwater fish. They are considered a "sauce" fish. Meaning they take on the flavor of whatever sauce you put them in. Raised in clean, fresh water they have very little flavor at all. They are also a very hardy species and unless you are really trying it is hard to kill them. The one downside I discovered is that they are tropical. Trying to raise tropical fish in Wisconsin, outside, year-round is an issue.
I knew I could not build fish tanks outside. Even with significant insulation around the tanks, some plumbing would be exposed to below-zero temperatures. So, I added a propane furnace to my insulated garage. For the first time in my life, I had a heated garage in Wisconsin during the winter. It was amazing, but that's another story. Holding the garage at 60 F allowed me to use regular aquarium heaters, pumps, and aerators instead of commercial pond products. The entire fish system only uses 1.1KW when the heaters are on and only 75W when the heaters are off. My average daily electrical usage cost only $1 per day during the winter and only $0.28 per day in the summer.
In the following posts, I will show how I built my system. I think it could be helpful for growing a protein food source and vegetables very efficiently.
So I built a lean-to on the back of my garage for an open-air greenhouse. This provided a couple benefits. First, it had a southern exposure and protected the growing beds from hard rains and hail. Second, it provided a framework to use for attaching equipment.
For the first two years, this worked well and I learned a lot. One thing I quickly learned is that hydroponic nutrient solution is expensive. I was going through $150 per summer of the concentrated solution. So, I looked into other options and discovered aquaponics.
Aquaponics is the practice of raising fish in tanks and circulating the fish water to the grow beds of a hydroponic garden. This fish waste in the water creates ammonia and bacteria in the water converts the ammonia into nitrates the plants can use for food. Any solid wastes in the water need to be removed but can be spread on a typical soil based garden.
I looked into species of fish to try to raise and found Tilapia. Tilapia are a tropical freshwater fish. They are considered a "sauce" fish. Meaning they take on the flavor of whatever sauce you put them in. Raised in clean, fresh water they have very little flavor at all. They are also a very hardy species and unless you are really trying it is hard to kill them. The one downside I discovered is that they are tropical. Trying to raise tropical fish in Wisconsin, outside, year-round is an issue.
I knew I could not build fish tanks outside. Even with significant insulation around the tanks, some plumbing would be exposed to below-zero temperatures. So, I added a propane furnace to my insulated garage. For the first time in my life, I had a heated garage in Wisconsin during the winter. It was amazing, but that's another story. Holding the garage at 60 F allowed me to use regular aquarium heaters, pumps, and aerators instead of commercial pond products. The entire fish system only uses 1.1KW when the heaters are on and only 75W when the heaters are off. My average daily electrical usage cost only $1 per day during the winter and only $0.28 per day in the summer.
In the following posts, I will show how I built my system. I think it could be helpful for growing a protein food source and vegetables very efficiently.
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