In this episode, Steve Carrell, co-owner of Ponderosa Aqua Farm shares with us highly valuable information on setting up a commercial aquaponics system. Steve owns a construction company while his wife, Missy, is a long-time gardener. A dynamic duo, together they formed the Ponderosa Aqua Farm based in Spencer, Indiana. It was at that time when they started to question what's in their own food that sprung out their decision of living off of only what they ate. Transitioning from an in-home basement system to a commercial system, they went to Florida to attend the course at Green Acre Aquaponics.
While many commercial aquaponics growers recommend to start small, Steve takes the opposite direction believing that you have to have a certain scale in order to sell enough produce in order to be profitable. Listen in to what he has to say.
He also discusses things like underestimating the cost of going commercial (can be pretty overwhelming!) including labor and plumbing, the social impact of aquaponics, market research, as well as growing tomatoes, lettuce, and microgreens and dealing with clogged lines that brought death to their strawberries.
Steve talks about observing fish habits to know if your system is okay and discovering problems along the way. Other points of interest include gravity flow system, swirl filters, mineralization tanks, grow beds, as well as a look into their commercial system consisting mainly of deep water culture raft beds.
We also touch on heating issues, buying the greenhouse from Craigslist, and grow towers which they got from Green River Greenhouses in Indiana. Steve delves more into dutch buckets systems and how they actually work.