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Join the 20 Gallon Challenge. We did!
(Click on the certificate to enlarge.)
Great recipes for the healthful food you will produce, including tilapia, of course! Visit Cookingdude.com and see hundreds of great how-to recipes.
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How Much Can I Grow?  The size and location of your farm or garden will determine which plants grow the best and provide the biggest harvest. You should also choose varieties that stay compact, like a determinate tomato variety. Indeterminate plants might take over the whole place! But part of the fun is experimenting and learning. Many older designs use gravel as the grow medium, and it is a little cheaper. However, we prefer to use expanded clay pellets, which are inert, light weight, and clean. The slightly higher cost is more than offset by the labor and water cleaning cost of gravel, not to mention the huge decrease in weight! Because our People FeederTM modules have the fish tanks underneath the grow trays, a Grow Foods aquaponic system produces more in a given area than some older designs. Our People Feeders come in 2 x 2, 2 x 4, 3 x 3, 3 x 4, 4 x 4, and 3 x 6 foot modules. These can be arranged to fit efficiently in almost any space. For example, we can fit six 3 x 6 foot modules into a 10 x 20 foot greenhouse, as shown below.
For outdoor installations we generally prefer greenhouses,
although they are not always necessary. For home and school use we recommend 6 x
8, 8 x 10, 10 x 12, and 10 x 20 foot sizes. We build hoop houses also in various
sizes. In a 6' x 8' aquaponic farm, you can have three 2 x 4 foot People Feeders that can produce over 1,000 heads of lettuce or other vegetables each year. At the same time you can also produce 150 pounds of fish per year. We generally recommend an 8' x 10' greenhouse (shown in the photo) so that there is more space to work inside. So unless your space is really at a premium, try to accommodate an 8' x 10' foot space for your small Porta-Farm. Because we can level each People Feeder module individually, the ground space for the greenhouse or hoop house does not need to be perfectly level. For a little extra cost, you can produce even more in a 10' x 12' greenhouse! This size greenhouse accommodates three 3 x 6 foot People Feeders, with a 70 gallon fish tank underneath each one. The three grow trays have room for 72 plants each, for a total plant population of 216 plants. This gives a potential yearly harvest of the equivalent of over 2,000 heads of lettuce, plus over 200 pounds of tilapia!
In the 10' x 20' aquaponic farm, you have the room
to grow a huge amount of vegetables,
flowers, fruit, and fish. The 10' x 20'
aquaponic farm can produce 4,000 vegetables and 500 pounds
of fish per year. A 20' x 40' unit produces 34,000 vegetables and 3,600 pounds of fish per year. If you want to get in the produce and fish business, you will want this size or even larger. You're going to need to do some marketing to get rid of everything you can produce! You can make a living with these large installations, or feed a small village. These production estimates are based on one plant every eight inches, which is typical for aquaponic and hydroponic plant production. Lettuce can mature in 35-40 days, giving approximately 10 harvests per year. The time it takes to maturity will depend on many factors, including the age and size of seedlings when planted. Obviously, for most non-commercial production, other plants, like peppers and tomatoes will occupy several spaces each, and will stay in place while the fruit is harvested periodically.
The fish population is based on
one fish per two gallons of water, which is normal
for aquaponics and aquaculture systems. The fish
normally mature to harvest size in six months, but
other factors, including quality of food, water
temperature, and other conditions will cause the
actual yield to vary. We don't recommend growing root vegetables such as carrots, turnips, or potatoes because of the shallow grow bed, or field crops such as corn, soybeans, dry beans, or wheat.
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