Fish and Veggies? What a great idea!

This winter’s cold spell is not doing much for the homesteader in me.  Last year I created several small “greenhouse” areas around our house using old windows I found in the basement as my insulators.  They work great at extended the growing season in the Northeast a few months but it does not help on days like today.  Today the high will only be in the low 30’s and tomorrow even colder.  But how can I grow my own fresh veggies if I can’t grow them in my gardens outside?

There are actually a lot of different techniques you could use to grow your own veggies that don’t require a ton of outdoor space or a greenhouse.  My current favorite is aquaponic!  I was shown aquaponics a few years ago when my lifelong friend invited me to his tech education classroom.  His classroom project was creating a sustainable aquaponics system that could grow vegetables and herbs.  Their goal was to have a bbq at the end of the year.  And they did just that and it was impressive!  The system consisted of one 1,000 gallon tilapia tank, pump, old gutters, and a bunch of know how.  But how does having a warehouse size aquaponic system help a homesteader with not much room?  Well, I did some research on my own and I found that I can use the same techniques as my friend and his class but scale it to use a normal size, at home, fish tank, a small pump, and a few extras.

There is actually a lot of great information out there to get you started on your own aquaponics system and I would like to share a few sites and essentials with you.  The first place I went to when I started was a website called Aquaponics4You.  They provide great assistance during the building of your system and deciding what system will be the best for you.  I also orderd a  book called “Auqponic Gardening: A Step-By-Step Guide to Raising Vegetables and Fish Together” which is a tremendous wealth of great information.   With those two tools, a at-home aquaponic system is possible.

I can sit here and preach to everyone how important it is for us to grow our own vegetables and eat healthy but what’s the point.  I will say, if you have children at home and you want to bring them the joy of having a winter project then this might be something worth your time.  Not only is it a fun at-home project but it also demonstrates what a complete agricultural system is and how cool it is to be able to grow and produce your own vegetables and/or herbs.  If you do decide that this might be worth your time, I would like to invite you to use our amazon affiliation to purchase your amazon goods.  Half of all proceeds go to environmental education in New Jersey.  Simply click the amazon banner at the bottom of the home page or the blog page and it will it take you to the amazon affiliation link.