Growing An Aquaponics System Inside Your Home
Plants growing in the home have been known to have a positive effect on people. Plants are great at producing oxygen and just their beauty is known to lift peoples moods. There is no question why house plants are so popular in most homes. There are some people who are discovering that many plants that grow food will do well in the house.
It only makes sense. If you are going to grow plants, why not grow plants that will create other benefits, like fresh food. They can produce free fresh vegetables and at the same time, decorate your home. Aquaponics allows you to do this very effectively and without the hassles of potting soil, fertilizing and watering.
Aquaponics combines plants with another common home decoration, a fish tank. Fish, like the rest of us, produce a lot of wastes. Fish wastes are full of the nutrients that plants love. In a typical fish tank, the water is circulated through a filter that removes these materials from the water. Otherwise they accumulate to levels that can be toxic to the fish. Plants love these substances, but fish don’t.
So one day someone go the brilliant idea of growing plants in the nutrient rich fish water. That worked great for the plants. But it just happens that the plants do an amazing thing. They filter the water and make it clean for the fish. So with this type of system, the water can be recycled over and over. The fish continually fertilize the plants, while the plants clean the water for the fish.
This is easy to do in a soil free system. Plants don’t really need soil to grow, they just use soil to get the water and nutrients out of it. So if you give them the water and nutrients directly, you can bypass soil and all the work involved, like digging, conditioning, getting your hands dirty, etc.
This kind of system is very common for a greenhouse, or outside if the climate allows. It also works great indoors. An advantage of an indoor aquaponics system is the ability to control the climate. When outside, the weather will determine when and what you can grow. But inside, you control the temperature and eliminate common garden pests. No more slugs, snails, gophers, weeds or any of those things that take the fun out of gardening.
With these systems, you can grow more food in a smaller space. You can alternate young crops with older crops that make a nice contrast that can be quite decorative in your home. And imagine being able to pick fresh organic produce right out of your living room.
