Let’s discuss sustainability education and grants! Lori de La Cruz is the Sustainability Project Coordinator at Mountain View College in Dallas, Texas where she provides hands-on learning projects and resources to the faculty to integrate sustainability into their curriculum across all departments. Listen in as Lori talks about her school’s Sustainability Program and how aquaponics plays a key part in it.
What started out as a community garden, the college fortunately received a federal STEM grant and a grant from Wells Fargo that allowed them to expand the whole food venture into building their aquaponics lab in an existing glass greenhouse in their campus.
Learn more as Lori talks about the challenges they encountered with their aquaponics system under intense Texan summer as well as closed loop hybrid systems, pillow stuffing as media for the vertical tubes, and other issues such as fungal infection and not being prepared for the enormous amounts of food that they grew. Other topics discussed are L-shaped tubes and air stones for constant aeration, water testing, off-gassing and other water treatment of city tap water, and the impact of our food system on the entire globe. Lastly, Lori gives us some ideas about grant funding.
Retired veteran Donald Holmes of Old World AquaFarm talks about growing root vegetables efficiently and how an efficient root system works, as well as his unique filter systems.
Donald currently lives on an 11-acre plot of land, 2 acres of which he’s built into the Old World AquaFarm. Aside from root crops, he is growing a couple hundred fruit trees, has a 2,100-sq.ft. greenhouse for research and a 2,400-sq.ft. barn for manufacturing. Established since 2008, Donald has been personally funding the Old World AquaFarm primarily for research and soon, taking on his plan to go commercial!
Listen in as we talk more about self-cleaning filters, systems and automation, fish tank system, "new nitrogen," and the advantage of using a long, narrow fish tank. He also discusses utilizing fish patterns to maximize their growth, efficient use of pumps to avoid clogging, aeration techniques, recycled plastic bottles as biofilter and PittMoss (an environmentally sustainable alternative to peat moss!). On the plant side, learn more about growing awesome tomatoes, honey coating for root growth stimulation, misting system, plastic rafts, and criteria for growing your own plants.
JD Sawyer, founder and CEO of Colorado Aquaponics and Flourish Farms in Denver, Colorado, talks about his business partnership with The GrowHaus, fusing a for-profit aquaponics farm with a non-profit food justice organization. Using what JD calls "business permaculture," Colorado Aquaponics operates Flourish Farms, a large aquaponic farm and workshops space inside the GrowHaus, an old greenhouse converted into a food access hub which is split between aquaponics, hydroponics, and a tropical indoor food forest. Additionally, Colorado Aquaponics donates 10% of the food produced at Flourish Farms to the GrowHaus, which then distributes affordable food baskets to the community, offers cooking classes in their community kitchen, sells to restaurants, provides flexible-use community programming space, composting, permaculture systems, education, and a mushroom-growing lab!
JD also talks about their systems design, what's growing in their farm, and risk management strategies such as decoupled systems and backup systems as well as monitoring systems, sensors, and devices for emergency situations. Learn about how they dealt with the Fish Apocalypse (aka "FishPocalypse") that struck their system! Other topics covered include nutrient solutions for plants (iron chelate, seaweed extract), feed rate, solid waste management, and the 3-stage filtration system and heat exchangers.
Growing in coconut husks: Damian Hinkson is the co-founder of Baird's Village Aquaponics Association in Barbados. Check out this episode and learn how Damian scaled his aquaponics system from a thousand gallons to 10,000 gallons in an effort to promote aquaponic food production to the community. Damian shares about doing aquaponics with very limited resources on an island, use of coconut husks as a medium for plant roots, and some challenges that he had to overcome. He also talks about seeding and how he basically set up the system in a way that prevents him from constantly flooding the system.
In this episode, you will learn more about the 3 categories of people doing aquaponics, circular tanks and sump tanks, drying time for beds, compost teas, molasses, venturis and low-density systems, wicking beds, water lettuce for filtration and more!
Check out the interesting things Damian is doing with no water testing and no aeration yet he still has managed to successfully run a commercial aquaponics system with low operating cost. Plus, know more about Damian's up-coming project to turning his 10,000-gallon system into a 30,000-gallon system!
This is part two of the interview with Damian Hinkson of Baird's Village Aquaponics Association in Barbados. Creating a 10,000-gallon aquaponics system supported by a U.N. grant, Damian openly delves into the topics of building connections as well as various aquaponics resources to help you get to the next level. He also talks about automating aquaponics systems, transporting modular systems, and open source systems. As our conversation flows, Damian shares his insights into solar power and windmills, bio-dome, society's sustainable way of feeding itself, raising fish in an urban setting, organic pest management through aloe vera and fermenting culinary herbs, fermented barley, decoupled systems, treating plant diseases, and rainwater systems.
Living in south of Brisbane, Australia, Murray started doing Aquaponics 10 years ago and up till now he continues to create aquaponics systems for people and give trainings in various places. Check out this episode to learn more about media beds, rafts, hybrid systems, and the challenges in building aquaponics in 3rd world countries.
He talks more about biofertilizers such as compost teas and vermiculture, chelated iron, seaweed extracts and giant kelp powder, growing tomatoes, handling nutrient deficiencies, calcium carbonate, dealing with pH levels, and potash. He also expounds on various systems like the INDY 23 system, decoupled systems, and CHOP 2 system. We further delve into the topics of self-sustainability vs. community sustainability, interdependence vs. independence, protective cropping, growing bananas, Jerusalem artichokes, grains, and fruit trees.
Lastly, Murray touches a discussion on aquaponics as a business, creating multiple income streams, and a few good reasons many commercial aquaponics systems fail plus the main reason small businesses fail and some ways to get funding. Watch out for Murray's webinars soon!
Growing lime in da coconut!!!! In this episode Damian shares with us how people are his driving force to pursue aquaponics, his own definition of it and how it has changed how his community thinks towards farming. He also talks about how he got a grant from the United Nations to create an aquaponics system in Barbados and how he uses coconut HUSKS as his organic media. Learn more about growing lime trees and get a better understanding of how decoupled systems work. Also find out how Damian categorizes people in aquaponics under three types, what beginners need to learn from about aquaponics, funding and setting up community aquaponics, and why Damian thinks farming is not for everyone! For a country such as Barbados that basically imports almost everything in to the island, getting the local people involved in aquaponic farming and getting the word out there are some of Damian's biggest contributions to the island.