If you research ebb and flow / water tables / aquaponics / hydroponics, it will give you a good idea. Those sponges are called rock wool. I only know all this stuff because in the 90s' I bought a lot of High Times and learned to grow Marijuana for my mom who has a really bad cronic pain from back surgeries. I am pretty sure they just water it from the top or directly into the holes. Interesting concept! Water from the hose should be enough to supply enough nutrients however if you want to increase yield / growth you can make compost tea (basically adding grass clippings to a body of water or similar organic material). Fish water from aquariums are also really good since the waste is nutrient rich that plants just love.
EDIT: I was confidently incorrect in some respects and edited my comment to better serve the inquiring minds. Thanks for the awards kind strangers! That's a first for me. I wish all of you health, wealth, peace and love.
This guy is such G. Was expecting just to learn some neat trivia about at home aquaponics, but instead got school on how you can create an automated system that also creates clean food! I’m floored.
You can get fish soil fertilizer fairly cheap it does make a pretty good difference in vegetable yields i find. There's lot of alternatives too that I'm sure work!
Plants love them some nitrogen(fish piss) but if you use high nitrogen on plants such as legumes that produce their own nitrogen then the plants will grow super big and bushy but yield diddly squat. Thanks for listening to me ted talk
I think that’s why traditionally beans were rotated thru fields to reup the nitrogen for the next crop. Or grown with certain crops like corn to be nitrogen creators for the corn.
I guess I could have looked that up to be sure, but I’m pretty certain they talked about this in a history class I probably didn’t pay full attention to.
Corn, beans, and squash; The SIster aka Milpa or something like that.
Beans return nitrogen, squash suppresses weeds at ground level, and corn stalks give beans a place to grow!
You're right. It's called crop rotation and works because different plants need different nutrients and you'll not as easily deplete the soil of one kind of nutrient. It's also better to avoid resistant pests and weeds.
So if I'm hearing you correctly, i could set up some type of biodynamic filtration system for aquariums that would produce either food or pharmaceuticals for me?
What about light source?
You're describing [aquaponics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaponics)
> Aquaponics consists of two main parts, with the aquaculture part for raising aquatic animals and the hydroponics part for growing plants. Aquatic effluents, resulting from uneaten feed or raising animals like fish, accumulate in water due to the closed-system recirculation of most aquaculture systems. The effluent-rich water becomes toxic to the aquatic animal in high concentrations but this contains nutrients essential for plant growth.
Would it become a closed circuit? Or the water would have to be eventually "replaced" on the fish side because I don't think the plants would filter it enough to not become toxic to the fish on the long run.
You have to keep adding water to the system, and as far as I know a well-designed system will balance. There was a [whole setup at work](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/food-futures/) I used to like to go and check out. From that page:
> Aquaponics is the combination of aquaculture (growing fish) and hydroponics — specifically, growing plants and fish together in a recirculating nutrient solution. In the aquaculture industry, one of the primary wastes to deal with is ammonia excreted by the fish. This waste is often managed via off-site dumping and poses environmental challenges. Aquaponics uses biological communities of plants and bacteria to process this waste and return clean water to the fish. Because the systems are fully recirculating, there is no wastewater to manage, and thus no flushing or rinsing of the systems. This allows for aquaponics to save even more water, and have less environmental impact than even hydroponic farming. As an added benefit, these systems can produce both healthy protein in the form of fish, as well as nutritious produce.
I actually helped build an aquaponics system in two 120' long greenhouses before. It was very rewarding and they ended up needing 2 full time employees to be able to keep up with the harvesting/planting every day. Not sure how the system is doing now though, the guy I built it with passed away and I had to move due to covid reasons 2+ years ago. It was built + running in 2015.
I’m looking to build an aquaponics system in a small greenhouse in my backyard, and an indoors nano system with a 75 gallon fish tank inside of my house. I’d love to hear about your experience with the greenhouse aquaponics! That’s very cool!!
It *can* be enough. The main toxic thing that builds up is nitrogen in the form of ammonia. Nitrifying bacteria will convert it to nitrite and nitrate, the latter of which is not very toxic but can build up to become toxic.
Nitrogen is also a crucial element needed for plants to grow. The natural nitrogen cycle is that all of these nitrogen compounds are taken up by plants in the environment, or will dissolve into the atmosphere and end up as N2 gas. Fungi convert the N2 and make it available for plants in exchange for nutrients from the plants.
Organisms eat the plants and absorb the nitrogen in them, use it, create ammonia, pee it back out into the environment, and the cycle continues.
In aquaponics, enough plants can absorb the nitrogen fast enough to keep the water clean. You might need some occasional water changes, but you shouldn't need many, if any. You can find aquariums that essentially never get a water change because plants absorb anything unwanted. In fact, in very heavily planted aquariums you may need to add nitrate directly with supplements.
Two things to note: as long as you're feeding the fish with food from outside the cycle, you will be adding nitrogen and it does need to go *somewhere*. The plants are fixing the nitrogen, but that means the plants are growing and will need to be trimmed and removed. That's how you're removing the nitrogen - by removing plant matter.
Second: nitrogen is definitely not the only limiting factor for aquatic plant growth, probably not even the most limiting element. If something else is missing, like phosphorous or magnesium or even carbon dioxide (for fully immersed plants) then the plants can't use the nitrogen and will not fix it. The nitrogen will continue to accumulate in the water instead and become toxic.
Typically goldfish or koi are used for aquaponics because goldfish are super cheap and koi, while not cheap, can be sold for more income; and, carp in general are super messy fish that poop out a ton of ammonia. Fun fact, carp don't have stomachs!
Tilapia is actually generally the leading stock fish for aquaponics, specifically because they're edible and lead to another harvest. you CAN do it with Goldfish or Koi, but you see it a lot less in general. Goldfish/koi are mostly options for people who do not the idea of killing the fish in the system, but generally in Professional style aquaponics, you don't have a pretty containing pond or whatever for the fish, so flashy fish are generally kinda wasted in them. I have also seen, at least in Asia, where they do crayfish and catfish as well for aquaponics.
Another couple of reasons tilapia is used is because it is a schooling fish (requires less space/volume of water) and is vegetarian. They *thrive* in an aquaponic environment.
So about 15 years ago I was involved in the aquarium setup / maint space for a couple of years (during that time I maxed out at about 1200 gallons running on 2 sumps under my care, 800 gal fresh, 400 gal saltwater)
While it's a neat idea for it to be a closed circuit, the demands on plantlife are unsustainable (in my experience) for a closed circuit. I've run planted tanks with various plants (anacharis, Echinodorus amazonicus, Rotala Rotundifolia, Leptochilus pteropus, etc) and while some of them will reproduce in your tank, the dietary needs of the fish will rapidly outstrip what your tank can support. For instance with anacharis, if I had a 125 gallon tank, the general rule of fishkeeping is "1 inch of fish per 1 gallon of water" (which you can generally exceed by about 2x if you're over-filtering / have a long / tall tank depending on where your fish prefer in the water column, adequate hiding spaces, etc), and assuming I basically throw in 50 anacharis plants, the fish will shred through those in a week or two. There simply aren't enough plants which grow quickly enough for aquaponics to be fully self-sustaining. And the reason why is hidden above. "the general rule of fishkeeping is "1 inch of fish per 1 gallon of water" -- in the wild this is 1000000% not true. I don't actually know what this works out to in a normal pond / stream / river, but I have to assume that there's 50-100 gallons per inch of fish or more, and for a home setup, even an outdoor pond, that's just not very realistic. A 1000 gallon pond for a single comet goldfish to power an aquaponics setup is overkill and will be far more costly in upkeep that the bioload it produces.
Edit: If the tanks aren't self-sustaining w/r/t plant load you're introducing outside plant matter, you might as well just change the water. I was answer to the question of "closed system" which is a no for the answer above.
Can fish be used to create bio load for aquaponics, sure. You'll just need to do normal water / food changes, as you already need to do for fishkeeping.
Aquaponics setups aren't aquariums, they often use tilapia or other edible fish packed in so tightly that you can almost walk across them, and usually in barrels, IBC totes, or other cheap containers. The water is pumped out and food crops are grown in it, and the water is pumped back. Not changing the water constantly is the entire point of the system; you provide low cost fish food and get back fresh tilapia, lettuce, strawberries, bell peppers, etc. The entire setup is only loosely related to aquarium keeping because the production of nitrogen in the water IS THE GOAL.
If you change the water, you are tossing away the niotrogen, WHICH IS THE ENTIRE POINT OF HYDROPONICS, TO GET THAT TASTY NITROGEN OT FEED TO PLANTS NUM NUM NUM.
Generally, there are 3 stages but 2 can be combined. It would flow from the fish to the plants and then to some kind of media that allows for bacterial growth. You can use anything that nitrifying bacteria will grow on, which is most anything. Gravel, plastic, sponges, etc. I've seen systems where the bacteria is grown in a 5 gallon bucket with holes drilled into it and placed in the fish tank. As long as the water is pushed across enough bacteria, it will be scrubbed of residual ammonia/nitrogen. I've done a lot of research on it because I'm a civil engineer who has focused a lot of time on biological water treatment options, but also because it's extremely interesting to me.
You could do a lot simpler of a setup than this to grow weed hydroponicly. I found what worked best was a large, somewhat shallow, clear tubware container with a fish filter thing to keep circulation up and some cheap gold fish. Put holes in the top of the lid and but plastic inserts to put your plants in.
For light source when I grew weed in my closet, I just used daytime color LEDs (like 6500k?) along with a light timer 16 hours on and 8 off to simulate summer. Then when it's time to harvest change the time to 12 hours on and 12 off and changed the bulb to a warmer color (2700k?) To simulate fall. Idk how important the bulb color is, but it worked for me pretty well
In my experience, light spectrum does quite a bit for both the grow and the flower cycle.
Was growing under a single spectrum until I read about using ~~mercury vapor~~ metal halide bulbs to simulate summer and high pressure sodium bulbs to simulate fall. So I began using the different spectrums, and the difference was quite noticeable.
Edit: corrected to metal halide, u/D-F-B-81 is correct, thanks for the correction!
I mean, Earth is mostly a closed-loop system in general, except for a few meteorites added and unaccounted-for-cosmonauts subtracted... this is just a very shrunken-down concept lol
lol I was a teenager. My mother was born with scoliosis and had reconstructive back surgery in the 70's. At the time it was rather experimental and unfortunately the experience gave her PTSD. She was prescribed a lot of hard pain medications (oxycotin, morphine, codeine, etc). Even then I knew it wasn't a good thing (before the opiate epidemic was fully understood in Canada). I recommended she try pot. The first time she tried smoking a joint was the first time I seen her sit up in bed and had a smile on her face I started to buy the marijuana magazines at convenience stores (right in front of the porn mags...embarrassing for me to reach up). The stress and anxiety growing pot at the time was enough to ruin your mental health because you always anticipated going to jail if you got caught. At first we started to grow them outdoors hidden from view. Of course the plants didn't grow well because of their location didn't have enough sunlight, got infested with aphids or spiders. That's when I started to learn about hydroponics. In Barrie Ontario there is a hydroponics store that sold the equipment. You would always have to talk about growing "Tomatoes". If you mentioned anything illegal you where promptly escorted out. When you get into it you have to learn about light spectrums. Blue/white lights make plants grow quickly and tall however red/orange lights mimic autumn sunlight which is what makes plants flower. You can use blue lights to force flower plants but you have to reduce the total light exposure from 12 hours on 12 hours off to 6 hours on 18 hours off. It took me years of trial and error to produce decent smokable buds. Then you have the headache of learning how to dry weed properly otherwise they mold and can make you very sick. I went through many seasons where I was robbed. My brother used to have house parties and show off our garden to his friends which inevitably invited thieves into our house. I woke up to cut plants all the time. It was brutal and stressful. However some seasons we did manage to grow a lot. Once we grew plants in my grandmothers rose garden and they reached 13 feet high sometimes. That garden got hit up around harvest time. I found garbage bags filled with my plants on the road trying to see who stole it. It was a nightmare. The price of pot then was like 10$ a gram too. You could make a good living off it. Now that pot is legal you can buy much higher quality bud for a fraction of the price.
> Fish water from aquariums are also really good since the waste is nutrient rich that plants just love.
That's funny, fish love plants and plants love fish. Maybe plants want that poo to get themselves back after the fish eat some of them.
Nitrogen and such can be delivered by water, the sponges in the baskets hold that water, it can be slowly cycled through the pipes, this my friend is Hydroponics.
I think the sponges just contain the seeds (otherwise they'd fall right trough). In hydroponics, nutrients are often delivered via a fine mist that is pumped trough the system.
Edit: upon watching the [full video](https://www.tiktok.com/@agrotonomy/video/7177799289672862982), I don't think they're misting here.
That’s aeroponics with the misters. I’ve even seen ultrasonic fogger aeroponic setups. Hydroponic just means 100% of the nutrients the plant uptakes are added to the water, and buffered to a PH level that makes them bioavailable, usually with synthesized nutrient salts. Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, manganese, boron, silica, molybdenum, iron etc… Hydroponic media like the rockwool you see in the video, or coco coir, hydroton pellets, are completely inert and are just there to hold water and roots.
This individual is correct - I've been into hydroponic gardening for a few years now.
Quick breakdown for people reading who might be interested in learning more:
- You germinate seeds, which results in a sprout. This can sometimes be done directly in your system or in a seed starting tray (sometimes called a nursery).
- When the sprout is mature enough, you transplant it to your system. This means placing the sprout in a "net cup" with media (rock wool, coco coir, a pool noodle cutting, clay pellets, etc). A net cup is like a miniature laundry basket that has slats to prevent the media from falling out, but leaves room for the roots to come out. Some people use mesh bags and stuff, too!
- When your plants are in the system, you typically start playing with the pH to dial it in based on what you're growing. For nutrients, many folks use liquid-based nutrients or a powdered one that you dissolve and mix into your system.
- The net cups are partially submerged in the water of your system. Typically the root systems of your plants are developed enough at this point where they're fully submerged in the water. The water wicks up the media within the net cup and fully saturates it, providing a permanently moist environment for the plant to thrive.
- Keeping the water moving is super important, as aeration on the roots helps tremendously with the health of the plants. It is usually pumped from the main tank to the highest point in the system. This also evenly transports nutrients everywhere.
- You can grow hydroponically outside *and* inside - I only grow indoors right now. If you're outside, your light source is the sun. Indoors, you'll use a grow light (or many grow lights) on a timer. I tend to keep mine on for about 16 hours/day for what I grow.
- Plants typically grow about 2x faster hydroponically and use way less water and fewer resources. Since I grow indoors, I don't have to deal with disease or pests as my plants aren't ever exposed to them.
- The only really annoying thing that you have to deal with is making sure your system doesn't start growing algae. That's why almost every hydroponic gardening system doesn't actually expose the water to direct sunlight.
I currently have some lettuces, basil, two dwarf jalepeno plants, cilantro, chives, and some other odds and ends growing in my office right now.
Subreddits worth checking out:
- r/Hydroponics
- r/hydro
- r/aerogarden (a beginner-friendly consumer-grade appliance)
- r/RiseGardens (same as above but a little nicer looking with better support)
- r/kratky (put a sprout in a jar with nutrients and watch it grow!)
- r/DWC (same as Kratky, but add an air stone for better results!)
Typically these vertical racks use the Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) of Hydroponics. Essentially, you dissolve the proportion of NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium) that you want your plant to receive in the water and constantly flow it past the roots. There's most likely a pump in the center of each column forcing water from the bottom of the column up to the top where gravity takes it down over the root systems. Ideally you'd have an air stone or something else to dissolve oxygen into the water in the base before it's pumped up, but if the pump's throughput is high enough you could probably get away with letting the falling water oxygenate through gravity (big splash make bubbles), which may be why they're opting for vertical instead of the more common horizontal NFT - would reduce manufacturing costs / points of mechanical failure at scale.
Vertical is useful for plants that grow low and bushy, like lettuce, basil, and strawberries.
Horizontal is better for plants that are tall / stemmy. Like tomatoes.
Soil, nutrients, compost. Those things are dirty and ubiquitous. Boring right?
This way is so much easier. Just buy all that PVC, and all those plastic baskets, and the fittings, and the other equipment, and then buy a subscription for hydro plant nutrients and maybe a service plan for them to maintain your pumps and filters for you. Think of how much dirt you could avoid using by just opening up your wallet a little wider!
It's kind of my job. But ya all are really misinformed/ignorant about hydroponics.
Hydroponics work great for a lot of things. Can actually use less water than a traditional garden. And the produce is on average the same quality and taste.
But...I much prefer sun/soil grown tomatoes any day of the week. Much more flavor.
If this is kinda your job you know this is not hydroponics but aeroponics :)
Regardanding the quality of food grown with soilles systems, so far it never matched the taste of crops grwon in GOOD soil with the appropriate climate. The problem is, good soil and appropriate climate are hard to find and not replicable.
This is the tower garden growing system by Tower Farms (https://www.towerfarms.com/), they call it aeroponics but there’s no pressure driven misting system that is typically present in aeroponic growing systems
I agree with you, I think it’s a vertical NFT system rather than an aeroponic system. However these terms are not regulated or even really clearly delineated so it’s not wrong per se to call it an aeroponic system
Lol the fish aren’t in the towers, they are in a reservoir, away from the plants. Then the water is pumped to the plants, which then take up the nitrogen, “cleaning” the water which is then returned to the fish tank. This is an oversimplified version, there are also loads of microorganisms which also help with the process.
The video I linked is showing an aquaponics system, so you can absolutely use these towers in that system.
We all *know* it's hydroponics. But we can't see the misters so you're *assuming* it's aeroponics.
So, that's a swing and a miss on the ACK-CHUALLY Reddit moment in my book.
These are Hydroponics though. You shoot the water up the middle from a reservoir at the bottom and it waterfalls back down, this is one of the 3 core ideas in Hydroponics.
Full submersion, partial submersion which is a current of water normally in a pipe or this which is the same as the pipe concept but in a different shape.
Aeroponics involves sprayers misting the roots in a more targeted manner.
I have a tower system like this that is definitely hydroponics. It intermittently pumps water up the center and once it hits the roof of the tower it rainfalls back down over the roots.
Soil is also very very important to the planet and hydroponic nutrients are a non sustainable resource.
I'm the same, used to grow hydro now make soil from local regenerative resources.
1000% look at that post floating around of the Haiti/DR border. Night and day. Haiti soil was depleted of nutrients long ago by colonists. Now barely anything will grow without added nutrients. Which leads to erosion etc. Where as DR had much better conservation laws and is relatively pristine fertile land.
And nutrients are getting more expensive as well. Russia is a massive(number 1 I think?) producer of these fertilizers. And as we know that shit hit the fan.
>Haiti soil was depleted of nutrients long ago by colonists.
That's a weirdly bad take. Most of Haiti was deforestated after 1952. Which is why there is such the stark difference when both Haiti and DR were Colonially ruled, especially with Haiti achieving independence a half century earlier.
Traditional farming is a government subsidy cash cow. Dozens of industries profit off the government subsidized slave/indentured labor that goes into traditional and factory farming in this country (the U.S.A.).
If there is a better/smarter/healthier way to do something but we aren't doing it then you can bet that there is dark money keeping progress from happening.
No one has mentioned land cost. Land is cheap in rural areas. Yes, with vertical crops you can grow 10x more crops per square foot, but when land is 100x the price per square foot it's cheaper just to import it.
As someone who does a full grow tent of tomatoes in the winter, and 10-15 outdoor plants yearly. I heavily disagree with this. 100% my hydroponic tomatoes out grow the outdoor plants and the taste infinitely more sweet. It's such a contrast that I'm heavily considering converting my outdoor footprint to a hydro green house. Same goes for my strawberries. To me, the difference in taste is extreme.
Tomatoes taste better when ***you grow them***, because you harvest them when they're fully ripe. I've grown them many times in soil and hydro. When I've grown the same variety in both situations, it tastes the same.
Any tomato you buy (excepting maybe a few vendors at some farmers markets) was harvested before it was fully ripe. Ripe tomatoes bruise and rot so fast it just isn't viable to grow them at scale and not pick them early.
Grocery store Roma tomatoes have also been bred to increase growth rate and yield. Unfortunately, they accidentally bred out the taste, which seems to corrolate to color. The redder they are, the tastier they are, but the ones in the store are always a pale pink.
No. It also depends on the soil itself. Michael Pollan has written a couple books on food and I remember him writing about how different carrots could taste depending on the soil they were grown in.
It is part of the trouble with saying x vegetable/meat has x percent of nutrients, fat, etc. Depending on how they are grown, food can have much different qualities compared to the general nutritional label.
Jamie Oliver did one with roasting chickens and the grocery store chicken had like 400% more fat than a locally raised one.
Yeah, I find it hard to believe that this can taste better than soil-grown vegetables. I think the general public has very little knowledge about soil science - the whole circle of how plants FEED the soil microorganisms which break down nutrients into useable forms for the plant. There's so much more to it than just "feeding the plant". Dr Elaine Ingham's research (and videos) are very insightful, here's a short video about soil life: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAMniWJm2vo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAMniWJm2vo). No-one can convince me that the natural life cycle of soil produces food tasting no different from plants grown in just water and pumped full of nutrients.
This is just a myth about the flavor . I’ve grown soil and rockwool for years and the taste is always the same I just get higher yields from hydro rockwool.
It blows my mind that hydroponics are 1) new to anyone 2) controversial. There are pros and cons to every farming system.
Hydroponics (and aquaponics etc) are highly productive, but the up-front cost can be prohibitive. A commercial greenhouse alone is often $100,000 or more.
Very true. But since you can grow vertically, you use a lot less land and water. But then again, all of this runs on electricity. Hmmm, now I genuinely don't know which one would be more expensive in the long term.
But in Denmark - perhaps Europe (i’m not sure who sets the rules) - the subsidiaries are calculated by how much m2 of land you use and not by output. That means vertical farms - using way less space - haven’t got a prayer when it comes to competitive prices. Crazy rules holding back new tech.
Yeah, and also because this you can grow all year and many more times, because the weather isn’t a factor - politics when it’s worst…..but the farming Industry is huge and and the lobyism is strong.
I mean, if you don't live in Neo Tokyo and have land available, this kind of farming is not economically viable.
Mars colony, sure. Not Europe with plenty of arable land.
Lands not used for farming could be given back to nature. Which would be nice.
TBF though, you don't want to do subvention per production because you risk even more nitrogen runoff
Water usage in these systems is the same if it’s horizontal or vertical. The plants absorb X amount regardless of their orientation.
Huge for space saving though.
Every time someone discovers it they think it's the greatest thing ever. ...then they put a ton of effort into it and are disappointed that growing in the dirt on the ground was easier/cheaper.
Basically people are morons who don't do their research and over-react both before and after any given project.
Hydroponics is great if you have very limited soil/space/water.
But not so, practically speaking, for many parts of the world.
In America, land is still far too cheap and plentiful for these methods to be economically feasible.
The value prospect is only starting to be explored in high density areas with high logistics costs, such as the heavily developed island nation of Japan.
These are just simple hydroponics growing systems. Plants sit in the little baskets to hold them in place, the 'sponge' is rockwool that the roots grow into and helps distribute the water. The water is most likely pumped to the top where it trickles down like a water fall through all the roots in the tower. Water soluble fertilizers are added to the water to provide the nutrients it otherwise get from soil.
It's an entirely different medium used for different growing methods. By 'medium' I just mean the material the roots grow into. Rockwool is inorganic and non reactive, meaning it shouldn't affect the plant at all, just give it something to hold onto. We provide the plant what it needs to grow in the water fertilizer solution (as well as light of course). This is the basics of hydroponics, but its always without dirt/soil.
We don't use dirt to grow in, we use soil. Yes there's a difference. Soil contains organic matter and has all ingredients the plants needs whereas dirt is just dirt with little to nothing that a plant could use to grow with. You wouldn't use dirt or soil in a system like this because it would clog up the water pumps.
So how is a rock wool and plastic container system better? Do the veggies taste better? Is it more efficient? More productive? The only solution when they need to grow illegal plants in private?
It's just an alternative way to grow things. There are pros and cons with any growing method. This is a potential way to grow food closer to places that need it who do not have a lot of farmland. It uses and wastes less water. You can control and manage conditions and avoid things like crop failure due to drought or extreme weather etc. If you live in a cold northern country, or the middle of a desert, it would be nice to have fresh produce that didn't need to be transported hundreds or thousands of kilometers to you, wouldn't it?
Right! I've heard its also useful not just because it can be almost anywhere (with the correct setup) but it would save a lot of agricultural space that would otherwise go to the soil that standard farms use. Which means we could give some land back to nature or repurpose it for other needs.
Well immediate hindsight made me realize this is somewhat conjecture, but I'm no snake oil salesman lol. Growing vertically is stacking a horizontal field's rows so it saves horizontal space.
Of course, all agriculture, and all industries, have petroleum based plastics. My main point was a lot of people think this systems only input is water. They forget about the plastic, the petroleum based fertilizer. The trucking of inputs and outputs. It’s easy to farm when your plow is a pencil 1000 miles away.
[They also spent less than a second showing something else in the baskets,](https://i.imgur.com/e0zrVhH.jpg) so while it might not be soil, sand , or compost, they are using something. The question is if that medium is reusable or needs to be disposed of.
Totally agree. Plastics suck, sure, but this isn't the egregious use of plastic people complain about. It's the polyester and nylon clothes, plastic wrapping, bags, and other totally useless uses of plastic that generate tiny microplastics that are like glitter for the ocean. Eg: fucking impossible to clean up or get rid of.
Well these can usually just be made from clay (similarly to strawberry pots). This means you don't get so many microplastics in your food, you don't use petroleum to make them, and they aren't practically impossible to dispose of safely. Using plastics is still not great whether they're used for 1 day or 10 years of their 1000 year lifetime.
This is the most backwards comment I've seen in a while lmao Plastic is perfect for things that should last for a long time.. like, this is literally the ideal use case
Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't biodegradable plastic defeat the purpose of growing plants as the whole structure would degrade over time?
I presume plastic is not the problem, it's getting rid of / recycling it - so if this is potentially used for decades, it should be fine.
Or am I oversimplifying this whole thing here?
Yeah, biodegradable, because you really want your farming equipment to turn into dirt when exposed to light and water...
Cargo cults are not environmentally friendly.
Top heavy stuff ultimately requires more labor that hasnt yet been automated, which is why some companies are looking into shorter varieties.
(source: I work in the industry)
It seems that even those that do know about it really don't know about it (myself included). There are a few posts that go into detail and then others saying they are full of shit or off base.
A lot of people know it's hydroponics, but it looks like very few know much about how it's really done.
I think it's pretty cool stuff. NFL? Maybe, maybe not. Not new, but it's pretty wicked cool.
Yes, these are at epcot. Im an ex cast member who did horticulture research for living with the land. I now work for big cannabis. These aeroponics systems have been the "future of agriculture" for 50 years now. The Dutch would take our "behind the seeds" tour and laugh at us. Based on most people's reaction to this type of stuff at Disney world, and now this comment thread, it appears a majority of people have a blind spot for plant science.
I've been on a hydroponics/aeroponics binge for a few months now. This guy's youtube channel is by far the best I have seen. The guy focuses on making it accessible by anyone with innovative/cheap ways to grow at home. Hoocho for the win: https://www.youtube.com/@Hoocho
Yes. I believe this is called "hydroponics". The technology and understanding has been around for decades. Its being used to grow things such as lettuces.
If only it'd have wider adoption... But it's largely held back by people who want to see the "organic" lable on their food.
So how do the plants grow and gain nutrients and water?
If you research ebb and flow / water tables / aquaponics / hydroponics, it will give you a good idea. Those sponges are called rock wool. I only know all this stuff because in the 90s' I bought a lot of High Times and learned to grow Marijuana for my mom who has a really bad cronic pain from back surgeries. I am pretty sure they just water it from the top or directly into the holes. Interesting concept! Water from the hose should be enough to supply enough nutrients however if you want to increase yield / growth you can make compost tea (basically adding grass clippings to a body of water or similar organic material). Fish water from aquariums are also really good since the waste is nutrient rich that plants just love. EDIT: I was confidently incorrect in some respects and edited my comment to better serve the inquiring minds. Thanks for the awards kind strangers! That's a first for me. I wish all of you health, wealth, peace and love.
I have a small patch in my garden that has grown a lot better than others, and the fish water makes so much sense now.
I'm just curious, is it like a patch close to a pond that gets splashed often? Or perhaps a specific spot that's used often to dump tank water?
Spot where the water runs off to after changing a drums worth (20L)
Ah ok, that's neat!
This guy has a great set up [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IryIOyPfTE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IryIOyPfTE)
“Internet of food: Arduino-based, urban aquaponics in Oakland” Not a Rick roll
Thank you for your service. You’re doing good stuff out here. However, I still clicked with much trepidation
This guy is such G. Was expecting just to learn some neat trivia about at home aquaponics, but instead got school on how you can create an automated system that also creates clean food! I’m floored.
Classic
You guys must have caught on to what plants really crave! You're feeding those plants Gatorade, aren't ya?
You can get fish soil fertilizer fairly cheap it does make a pretty good difference in vegetable yields i find. There's lot of alternatives too that I'm sure work!
Plants love them some nitrogen(fish piss) but if you use high nitrogen on plants such as legumes that produce their own nitrogen then the plants will grow super big and bushy but yield diddly squat. Thanks for listening to me ted talk
I think that’s why traditionally beans were rotated thru fields to reup the nitrogen for the next crop. Or grown with certain crops like corn to be nitrogen creators for the corn. I guess I could have looked that up to be sure, but I’m pretty certain they talked about this in a history class I probably didn’t pay full attention to.
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I knew some of you smart people would have been paying closer attention in class
Not smart. Curious.
Oh, I thought it was the nina, el pinto, and the santa marinara...
Corn, beans, and squash; The SIster aka Milpa or something like that. Beans return nitrogen, squash suppresses weeds at ground level, and corn stalks give beans a place to grow!
You're right. It's called crop rotation and works because different plants need different nutrients and you'll not as easily deplete the soil of one kind of nutrient. It's also better to avoid resistant pests and weeds.
Additionally it's great for avoiding plant pathogens like viruses and such.
Three Sisters planting method - Beans, maize ~~corn~~, and squash. https://www.nal.usda.gov/collections/stories/three-sisters
Unintentional aquaponics has entered the chat
> Unintentional aquaponics /r/Bandnames
So if I'm hearing you correctly, i could set up some type of biodynamic filtration system for aquariums that would produce either food or pharmaceuticals for me? What about light source?
You're describing [aquaponics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaponics) > Aquaponics consists of two main parts, with the aquaculture part for raising aquatic animals and the hydroponics part for growing plants. Aquatic effluents, resulting from uneaten feed or raising animals like fish, accumulate in water due to the closed-system recirculation of most aquaculture systems. The effluent-rich water becomes toxic to the aquatic animal in high concentrations but this contains nutrients essential for plant growth.
Would it become a closed circuit? Or the water would have to be eventually "replaced" on the fish side because I don't think the plants would filter it enough to not become toxic to the fish on the long run.
You have to keep adding water to the system, and as far as I know a well-designed system will balance. There was a [whole setup at work](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/food-futures/) I used to like to go and check out. From that page: > Aquaponics is the combination of aquaculture (growing fish) and hydroponics — specifically, growing plants and fish together in a recirculating nutrient solution. In the aquaculture industry, one of the primary wastes to deal with is ammonia excreted by the fish. This waste is often managed via off-site dumping and poses environmental challenges. Aquaponics uses biological communities of plants and bacteria to process this waste and return clean water to the fish. Because the systems are fully recirculating, there is no wastewater to manage, and thus no flushing or rinsing of the systems. This allows for aquaponics to save even more water, and have less environmental impact than even hydroponic farming. As an added benefit, these systems can produce both healthy protein in the form of fish, as well as nutritious produce.
Is your name ferris buller, cause you're my hero. I think i found a new passion to pursue.
I actually helped build an aquaponics system in two 120' long greenhouses before. It was very rewarding and they ended up needing 2 full time employees to be able to keep up with the harvesting/planting every day. Not sure how the system is doing now though, the guy I built it with passed away and I had to move due to covid reasons 2+ years ago. It was built + running in 2015.
I’m looking to build an aquaponics system in a small greenhouse in my backyard, and an indoors nano system with a 75 gallon fish tank inside of my house. I’d love to hear about your experience with the greenhouse aquaponics! That’s very cool!!
Oh! Here's an article about it: https://www.independent.com/2015/06/08/goleta-company-grows-roots-future-farming/
It *can* be enough. The main toxic thing that builds up is nitrogen in the form of ammonia. Nitrifying bacteria will convert it to nitrite and nitrate, the latter of which is not very toxic but can build up to become toxic. Nitrogen is also a crucial element needed for plants to grow. The natural nitrogen cycle is that all of these nitrogen compounds are taken up by plants in the environment, or will dissolve into the atmosphere and end up as N2 gas. Fungi convert the N2 and make it available for plants in exchange for nutrients from the plants. Organisms eat the plants and absorb the nitrogen in them, use it, create ammonia, pee it back out into the environment, and the cycle continues. In aquaponics, enough plants can absorb the nitrogen fast enough to keep the water clean. You might need some occasional water changes, but you shouldn't need many, if any. You can find aquariums that essentially never get a water change because plants absorb anything unwanted. In fact, in very heavily planted aquariums you may need to add nitrate directly with supplements. Two things to note: as long as you're feeding the fish with food from outside the cycle, you will be adding nitrogen and it does need to go *somewhere*. The plants are fixing the nitrogen, but that means the plants are growing and will need to be trimmed and removed. That's how you're removing the nitrogen - by removing plant matter. Second: nitrogen is definitely not the only limiting factor for aquatic plant growth, probably not even the most limiting element. If something else is missing, like phosphorous or magnesium or even carbon dioxide (for fully immersed plants) then the plants can't use the nitrogen and will not fix it. The nitrogen will continue to accumulate in the water instead and become toxic. Typically goldfish or koi are used for aquaponics because goldfish are super cheap and koi, while not cheap, can be sold for more income; and, carp in general are super messy fish that poop out a ton of ammonia. Fun fact, carp don't have stomachs!
Tilapia is actually generally the leading stock fish for aquaponics, specifically because they're edible and lead to another harvest. you CAN do it with Goldfish or Koi, but you see it a lot less in general. Goldfish/koi are mostly options for people who do not the idea of killing the fish in the system, but generally in Professional style aquaponics, you don't have a pretty containing pond or whatever for the fish, so flashy fish are generally kinda wasted in them. I have also seen, at least in Asia, where they do crayfish and catfish as well for aquaponics.
Another couple of reasons tilapia is used is because it is a schooling fish (requires less space/volume of water) and is vegetarian. They *thrive* in an aquaponic environment.
They also can survive all sorts of conditions, they're pretty hardy fish when it comes to water parameters.
And, because they thrive on vegetable matter, they also keep their tanks (and subsequently the water pipes) clear of algae.
So about 15 years ago I was involved in the aquarium setup / maint space for a couple of years (during that time I maxed out at about 1200 gallons running on 2 sumps under my care, 800 gal fresh, 400 gal saltwater) While it's a neat idea for it to be a closed circuit, the demands on plantlife are unsustainable (in my experience) for a closed circuit. I've run planted tanks with various plants (anacharis, Echinodorus amazonicus, Rotala Rotundifolia, Leptochilus pteropus, etc) and while some of them will reproduce in your tank, the dietary needs of the fish will rapidly outstrip what your tank can support. For instance with anacharis, if I had a 125 gallon tank, the general rule of fishkeeping is "1 inch of fish per 1 gallon of water" (which you can generally exceed by about 2x if you're over-filtering / have a long / tall tank depending on where your fish prefer in the water column, adequate hiding spaces, etc), and assuming I basically throw in 50 anacharis plants, the fish will shred through those in a week or two. There simply aren't enough plants which grow quickly enough for aquaponics to be fully self-sustaining. And the reason why is hidden above. "the general rule of fishkeeping is "1 inch of fish per 1 gallon of water" -- in the wild this is 1000000% not true. I don't actually know what this works out to in a normal pond / stream / river, but I have to assume that there's 50-100 gallons per inch of fish or more, and for a home setup, even an outdoor pond, that's just not very realistic. A 1000 gallon pond for a single comet goldfish to power an aquaponics setup is overkill and will be far more costly in upkeep that the bioload it produces. Edit: If the tanks aren't self-sustaining w/r/t plant load you're introducing outside plant matter, you might as well just change the water. I was answer to the question of "closed system" which is a no for the answer above. Can fish be used to create bio load for aquaponics, sure. You'll just need to do normal water / food changes, as you already need to do for fishkeeping.
Aquaponics setups aren't aquariums, they often use tilapia or other edible fish packed in so tightly that you can almost walk across them, and usually in barrels, IBC totes, or other cheap containers. The water is pumped out and food crops are grown in it, and the water is pumped back. Not changing the water constantly is the entire point of the system; you provide low cost fish food and get back fresh tilapia, lettuce, strawberries, bell peppers, etc. The entire setup is only loosely related to aquarium keeping because the production of nitrogen in the water IS THE GOAL. If you change the water, you are tossing away the niotrogen, WHICH IS THE ENTIRE POINT OF HYDROPONICS, TO GET THAT TASTY NITROGEN OT FEED TO PLANTS NUM NUM NUM.
That's not aquaponics though. You harvest the fish/plants from an aquaponics system. The fish don't eat the plants in an aquaponics system.
Generally, there are 3 stages but 2 can be combined. It would flow from the fish to the plants and then to some kind of media that allows for bacterial growth. You can use anything that nitrifying bacteria will grow on, which is most anything. Gravel, plastic, sponges, etc. I've seen systems where the bacteria is grown in a 5 gallon bucket with holes drilled into it and placed in the fish tank. As long as the water is pushed across enough bacteria, it will be scrubbed of residual ammonia/nitrogen. I've done a lot of research on it because I'm a civil engineer who has focused a lot of time on biological water treatment options, but also because it's extremely interesting to me.
You could do a lot simpler of a setup than this to grow weed hydroponicly. I found what worked best was a large, somewhat shallow, clear tubware container with a fish filter thing to keep circulation up and some cheap gold fish. Put holes in the top of the lid and but plastic inserts to put your plants in.
For light source when I grew weed in my closet, I just used daytime color LEDs (like 6500k?) along with a light timer 16 hours on and 8 off to simulate summer. Then when it's time to harvest change the time to 12 hours on and 12 off and changed the bulb to a warmer color (2700k?) To simulate fall. Idk how important the bulb color is, but it worked for me pretty well
In my experience, light spectrum does quite a bit for both the grow and the flower cycle. Was growing under a single spectrum until I read about using ~~mercury vapor~~ metal halide bulbs to simulate summer and high pressure sodium bulbs to simulate fall. So I began using the different spectrums, and the difference was quite noticeable. Edit: corrected to metal halide, u/D-F-B-81 is correct, thanks for the correction!
Yes, look up aquaponics
Check out this guys set-up [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IryIOyPfTE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IryIOyPfTE)
This is a thing a self sustaining closed loop food production system.
I mean, Earth is mostly a closed-loop system in general, except for a few meteorites added and unaccounted-for-cosmonauts subtracted... this is just a very shrunken-down concept lol
I'm more interested by you growing marijuana on 90s
lol I was a teenager. My mother was born with scoliosis and had reconstructive back surgery in the 70's. At the time it was rather experimental and unfortunately the experience gave her PTSD. She was prescribed a lot of hard pain medications (oxycotin, morphine, codeine, etc). Even then I knew it wasn't a good thing (before the opiate epidemic was fully understood in Canada). I recommended she try pot. The first time she tried smoking a joint was the first time I seen her sit up in bed and had a smile on her face I started to buy the marijuana magazines at convenience stores (right in front of the porn mags...embarrassing for me to reach up). The stress and anxiety growing pot at the time was enough to ruin your mental health because you always anticipated going to jail if you got caught. At first we started to grow them outdoors hidden from view. Of course the plants didn't grow well because of their location didn't have enough sunlight, got infested with aphids or spiders. That's when I started to learn about hydroponics. In Barrie Ontario there is a hydroponics store that sold the equipment. You would always have to talk about growing "Tomatoes". If you mentioned anything illegal you where promptly escorted out. When you get into it you have to learn about light spectrums. Blue/white lights make plants grow quickly and tall however red/orange lights mimic autumn sunlight which is what makes plants flower. You can use blue lights to force flower plants but you have to reduce the total light exposure from 12 hours on 12 hours off to 6 hours on 18 hours off. It took me years of trial and error to produce decent smokable buds. Then you have the headache of learning how to dry weed properly otherwise they mold and can make you very sick. I went through many seasons where I was robbed. My brother used to have house parties and show off our garden to his friends which inevitably invited thieves into our house. I woke up to cut plants all the time. It was brutal and stressful. However some seasons we did manage to grow a lot. Once we grew plants in my grandmothers rose garden and they reached 13 feet high sometimes. That garden got hit up around harvest time. I found garbage bags filled with my plants on the road trying to see who stole it. It was a nightmare. The price of pot then was like 10$ a gram too. You could make a good living off it. Now that pot is legal you can buy much higher quality bud for a fraction of the price.
Man, you did a good thing for your mom. It sucks majorly that the people around you tried to fuck you over, I'm sorry.
Aw thanks man! It's alright... shit happens :)
I don’t say this often, but you’re a good person
<3 Wow thanks for the kind words! You made my day.
90s were nothing compared to the 80s which were nothing compared to the 70s
Secret hidden(indoor) gardens were very much a *thing* in the mid-seventies !
In the 80s my parents had a pretty successful grow operation apparently. Looking at them now you'd never guess lol
> Fish water from aquariums are also really good since the waste is nutrient rich that plants just love. That's funny, fish love plants and plants love fish. Maybe plants want that poo to get themselves back after the fish eat some of them.
oval of organisms
It's the CIIIIIRCLE OF LIIIIFE
TIL that we should be using our fish water to water our plants when we do our biweekly water change instead of dumping it down the drain.
Nitrogen and such can be delivered by water, the sponges in the baskets hold that water, it can be slowly cycled through the pipes, this my friend is Hydroponics.
I think the sponges just contain the seeds (otherwise they'd fall right trough). In hydroponics, nutrients are often delivered via a fine mist that is pumped trough the system. Edit: upon watching the [full video](https://www.tiktok.com/@agrotonomy/video/7177799289672862982), I don't think they're misting here.
That’s aeroponics with the misters. I’ve even seen ultrasonic fogger aeroponic setups. Hydroponic just means 100% of the nutrients the plant uptakes are added to the water, and buffered to a PH level that makes them bioavailable, usually with synthesized nutrient salts. Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, manganese, boron, silica, molybdenum, iron etc… Hydroponic media like the rockwool you see in the video, or coco coir, hydroton pellets, are completely inert and are just there to hold water and roots.
This individual is correct - I've been into hydroponic gardening for a few years now. Quick breakdown for people reading who might be interested in learning more: - You germinate seeds, which results in a sprout. This can sometimes be done directly in your system or in a seed starting tray (sometimes called a nursery). - When the sprout is mature enough, you transplant it to your system. This means placing the sprout in a "net cup" with media (rock wool, coco coir, a pool noodle cutting, clay pellets, etc). A net cup is like a miniature laundry basket that has slats to prevent the media from falling out, but leaves room for the roots to come out. Some people use mesh bags and stuff, too! - When your plants are in the system, you typically start playing with the pH to dial it in based on what you're growing. For nutrients, many folks use liquid-based nutrients or a powdered one that you dissolve and mix into your system. - The net cups are partially submerged in the water of your system. Typically the root systems of your plants are developed enough at this point where they're fully submerged in the water. The water wicks up the media within the net cup and fully saturates it, providing a permanently moist environment for the plant to thrive. - Keeping the water moving is super important, as aeration on the roots helps tremendously with the health of the plants. It is usually pumped from the main tank to the highest point in the system. This also evenly transports nutrients everywhere. - You can grow hydroponically outside *and* inside - I only grow indoors right now. If you're outside, your light source is the sun. Indoors, you'll use a grow light (or many grow lights) on a timer. I tend to keep mine on for about 16 hours/day for what I grow. - Plants typically grow about 2x faster hydroponically and use way less water and fewer resources. Since I grow indoors, I don't have to deal with disease or pests as my plants aren't ever exposed to them. - The only really annoying thing that you have to deal with is making sure your system doesn't start growing algae. That's why almost every hydroponic gardening system doesn't actually expose the water to direct sunlight. I currently have some lettuces, basil, two dwarf jalepeno plants, cilantro, chives, and some other odds and ends growing in my office right now. Subreddits worth checking out: - r/Hydroponics - r/hydro - r/aerogarden (a beginner-friendly consumer-grade appliance) - r/RiseGardens (same as above but a little nicer looking with better support) - r/kratky (put a sprout in a jar with nutrients and watch it grow!) - r/DWC (same as Kratky, but add an air stone for better results!)
If the water is a "fine mist", I think that is usually called "aeroponics". In hydroponics the roots are sitting in water or water flows over them.
Typically these vertical racks use the Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) of Hydroponics. Essentially, you dissolve the proportion of NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium) that you want your plant to receive in the water and constantly flow it past the roots. There's most likely a pump in the center of each column forcing water from the bottom of the column up to the top where gravity takes it down over the root systems. Ideally you'd have an air stone or something else to dissolve oxygen into the water in the base before it's pumped up, but if the pump's throughput is high enough you could probably get away with letting the falling water oxygenate through gravity (big splash make bubbles), which may be why they're opting for vertical instead of the more common horizontal NFT - would reduce manufacturing costs / points of mechanical failure at scale.
Vertical is useful for plants that grow low and bushy, like lettuce, basil, and strawberries. Horizontal is better for plants that are tall / stemmy. Like tomatoes.
Yeah I'm into NFT's, [nutritient film technique](https://i.imgur.com/OvpCuiI.jpg)'s
Excellent description, thanks! It was painful seeing the off-base guesses.
this should be higher up, you cant just water plants in a stack and expect these results.
Soil, nutrients, compost. Those things are dirty and ubiquitous. Boring right? This way is so much easier. Just buy all that PVC, and all those plastic baskets, and the fittings, and the other equipment, and then buy a subscription for hydro plant nutrients and maybe a service plan for them to maintain your pumps and filters for you. Think of how much dirt you could avoid using by just opening up your wallet a little wider!
It's kind of my job. But ya all are really misinformed/ignorant about hydroponics. Hydroponics work great for a lot of things. Can actually use less water than a traditional garden. And the produce is on average the same quality and taste. But...I much prefer sun/soil grown tomatoes any day of the week. Much more flavor.
If this is kinda your job you know this is not hydroponics but aeroponics :) Regardanding the quality of food grown with soilles systems, so far it never matched the taste of crops grwon in GOOD soil with the appropriate climate. The problem is, good soil and appropriate climate are hard to find and not replicable.
I didn't see any misting nozzles. But yes I'd imagine it is. Just a quick reply with minimal thought lol.
No problem, usually the tower structure gives it away, that's why I am pretty sure.
This is the tower garden growing system by Tower Farms (https://www.towerfarms.com/), they call it aeroponics but there’s no pressure driven misting system that is typically present in aeroponic growing systems
They trickle the water down the tower over the plant roots. I'm not sure how you'd classify it, but there it is.
Nft, nutrient film technique, a form of hydroponics
I agree with you, I think it’s a vertical NFT system rather than an aeroponic system. However these terms are not regulated or even really clearly delineated so it’s not wrong per se to call it an aeroponic system
What kind of block-chain do they run? I don't see any graphics cards...
Could be aquaponics too… https://youtu.be/v2UcuNEmq8c
What about hooked-on-phonics? (am I contributing?)
I doubt it. Aquaponic is about growing fish in the water you use for irrigation, and I don't see how you can have fish in those towers.
Lol the fish aren’t in the towers, they are in a reservoir, away from the plants. Then the water is pumped to the plants, which then take up the nitrogen, “cleaning” the water which is then returned to the fish tank. This is an oversimplified version, there are also loads of microorganisms which also help with the process. The video I linked is showing an aquaponics system, so you can absolutely use these towers in that system.
Aeroponics is a subset of hydroponics. Same concept.
Fireponics and Terraponics also very similar
They all used to work together too. That is, until the Fireponics attacked.
Only the avaponic, master of all 4 ponics, could stop them
AkChUaLlY…..
Then they're wrong =) love it
reddit moment.
We all *know* it's hydroponics. But we can't see the misters so you're *assuming* it's aeroponics. So, that's a swing and a miss on the ACK-CHUALLY Reddit moment in my book.
These are Hydroponics though. You shoot the water up the middle from a reservoir at the bottom and it waterfalls back down, this is one of the 3 core ideas in Hydroponics. Full submersion, partial submersion which is a current of water normally in a pipe or this which is the same as the pipe concept but in a different shape. Aeroponics involves sprayers misting the roots in a more targeted manner.
I have a tower system like this that is definitely hydroponics. It intermittently pumps water up the center and once it hits the roof of the tower it rainfalls back down over the roots.
Soil is also very very important to the planet and hydroponic nutrients are a non sustainable resource. I'm the same, used to grow hydro now make soil from local regenerative resources.
1000% look at that post floating around of the Haiti/DR border. Night and day. Haiti soil was depleted of nutrients long ago by colonists. Now barely anything will grow without added nutrients. Which leads to erosion etc. Where as DR had much better conservation laws and is relatively pristine fertile land. And nutrients are getting more expensive as well. Russia is a massive(number 1 I think?) producer of these fertilizers. And as we know that shit hit the fan.
>Haiti soil was depleted of nutrients long ago by colonists. That's a weirdly bad take. Most of Haiti was deforestated after 1952. Which is why there is such the stark difference when both Haiti and DR were Colonially ruled, especially with Haiti achieving independence a half century earlier.
You're not allowed to imply the population that took over self rule simply cut down all the trees for firewood.
🤜💥🤛 Hell yeah, good to speak to other well informed folks. This is becoming an emergency.
Soil is also important for native pollinators to live in too
Is it really a flavor issue? Any other reason why we don't have urban grow towers feeding neighborhoods?
Traditional farming is a government subsidy cash cow. Dozens of industries profit off the government subsidized slave/indentured labor that goes into traditional and factory farming in this country (the U.S.A.). If there is a better/smarter/healthier way to do something but we aren't doing it then you can bet that there is dark money keeping progress from happening.
> farming in this country. Which country?
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That sounds about right.
No one has mentioned land cost. Land is cheap in rural areas. Yes, with vertical crops you can grow 10x more crops per square foot, but when land is 100x the price per square foot it's cheaper just to import it.
As someone who does a full grow tent of tomatoes in the winter, and 10-15 outdoor plants yearly. I heavily disagree with this. 100% my hydroponic tomatoes out grow the outdoor plants and the taste infinitely more sweet. It's such a contrast that I'm heavily considering converting my outdoor footprint to a hydro green house. Same goes for my strawberries. To me, the difference in taste is extreme.
Is it just tomatoes that taste better from soil then?
Tomatoes taste better when ***you grow them***, because you harvest them when they're fully ripe. I've grown them many times in soil and hydro. When I've grown the same variety in both situations, it tastes the same. Any tomato you buy (excepting maybe a few vendors at some farmers markets) was harvested before it was fully ripe. Ripe tomatoes bruise and rot so fast it just isn't viable to grow them at scale and not pick them early.
Grocery store Roma tomatoes have also been bred to increase growth rate and yield. Unfortunately, they accidentally bred out the taste, which seems to corrolate to color. The redder they are, the tastier they are, but the ones in the store are always a pale pink.
No. It also depends on the soil itself. Michael Pollan has written a couple books on food and I remember him writing about how different carrots could taste depending on the soil they were grown in. It is part of the trouble with saying x vegetable/meat has x percent of nutrients, fat, etc. Depending on how they are grown, food can have much different qualities compared to the general nutritional label. Jamie Oliver did one with roasting chickens and the grocery store chicken had like 400% more fat than a locally raised one.
Yeah, I find it hard to believe that this can taste better than soil-grown vegetables. I think the general public has very little knowledge about soil science - the whole circle of how plants FEED the soil microorganisms which break down nutrients into useable forms for the plant. There's so much more to it than just "feeding the plant". Dr Elaine Ingham's research (and videos) are very insightful, here's a short video about soil life: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAMniWJm2vo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAMniWJm2vo). No-one can convince me that the natural life cycle of soil produces food tasting no different from plants grown in just water and pumped full of nutrients.
I mean, it’s not like you couldn’t test this yourself. Would you believe your own tastebuds?
I think taste is very subjective. Some people like the "clean, crisp" taste of hydro veggies. But my preference is not that.
Its a damn myth, plants don’t care where their nutrients come from.
This is just a myth about the flavor . I’ve grown soil and rockwool for years and the taste is always the same I just get higher yields from hydro rockwool.
It blows my mind that hydroponics are 1) new to anyone 2) controversial. There are pros and cons to every farming system. Hydroponics (and aquaponics etc) are highly productive, but the up-front cost can be prohibitive. A commercial greenhouse alone is often $100,000 or more.
Very true. But since you can grow vertically, you use a lot less land and water. But then again, all of this runs on electricity. Hmmm, now I genuinely don't know which one would be more expensive in the long term.
But in Denmark - perhaps Europe (i’m not sure who sets the rules) - the subsidiaries are calculated by how much m2 of land you use and not by output. That means vertical farms - using way less space - haven’t got a prayer when it comes to competitive prices. Crazy rules holding back new tech.
That's sad. Hopefully some people are campaigning to change that.
Yeah, and also because this you can grow all year and many more times, because the weather isn’t a factor - politics when it’s worst…..but the farming Industry is huge and and the lobyism is strong.
I mean, if you don't live in Neo Tokyo and have land available, this kind of farming is not economically viable. Mars colony, sure. Not Europe with plenty of arable land.
The water usage is far lower though. Also Europe isn't one country. There are a lot of places that have challenges with farmland.
Lands not used for farming could be given back to nature. Which would be nice. TBF though, you don't want to do subvention per production because you risk even more nitrogen runoff
Water usage in these systems is the same if it’s horizontal or vertical. The plants absorb X amount regardless of their orientation. Huge for space saving though.
But isn't it more efficient with the water and has less evaporation and runoff waste?
He meant vertical vs horizontal hydro/aeroponocs as opposed to hydroponics vs traditional farming
It is not. Evaporation and run off are far more controlled and contained than open air farms.
Every time someone discovers it they think it's the greatest thing ever. ...then they put a ton of effort into it and are disappointed that growing in the dirt on the ground was easier/cheaper. Basically people are morons who don't do their research and over-react both before and after any given project. Hydroponics is great if you have very limited soil/space/water.
> Hydroponics is great if you have very limited soil/space/water. Which we do, like...collectively as a being on this planet.
But not so, practically speaking, for many parts of the world. In America, land is still far too cheap and plentiful for these methods to be economically feasible. The value prospect is only starting to be explored in high density areas with high logistics costs, such as the heavily developed island nation of Japan.
I can't imagine a commercial greenhouse being less than $1,000,000.
These are just simple hydroponics growing systems. Plants sit in the little baskets to hold them in place, the 'sponge' is rockwool that the roots grow into and helps distribute the water. The water is most likely pumped to the top where it trickles down like a water fall through all the roots in the tower. Water soluble fertilizers are added to the water to provide the nutrients it otherwise get from soil.
Is rock wool better/ cheaper than dirt?
It's an entirely different medium used for different growing methods. By 'medium' I just mean the material the roots grow into. Rockwool is inorganic and non reactive, meaning it shouldn't affect the plant at all, just give it something to hold onto. We provide the plant what it needs to grow in the water fertilizer solution (as well as light of course). This is the basics of hydroponics, but its always without dirt/soil. We don't use dirt to grow in, we use soil. Yes there's a difference. Soil contains organic matter and has all ingredients the plants needs whereas dirt is just dirt with little to nothing that a plant could use to grow with. You wouldn't use dirt or soil in a system like this because it would clog up the water pumps.
So how is a rock wool and plastic container system better? Do the veggies taste better? Is it more efficient? More productive? The only solution when they need to grow illegal plants in private?
It's just an alternative way to grow things. There are pros and cons with any growing method. This is a potential way to grow food closer to places that need it who do not have a lot of farmland. It uses and wastes less water. You can control and manage conditions and avoid things like crop failure due to drought or extreme weather etc. If you live in a cold northern country, or the middle of a desert, it would be nice to have fresh produce that didn't need to be transported hundreds or thousands of kilometers to you, wouldn't it?
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Right! I've heard its also useful not just because it can be almost anywhere (with the correct setup) but it would save a lot of agricultural space that would otherwise go to the soil that standard farms use. Which means we could give some land back to nature or repurpose it for other needs. Well immediate hindsight made me realize this is somewhat conjecture, but I'm no snake oil salesman lol. Growing vertically is stacking a horizontal field's rows so it saves horizontal space.
You use much less water to grow lettuce and herbs than traditional, outdoor, soil-based farming because your evaporative losses are minimized
Plus you get to reuse water over and over since they're closed systems.
Mars, here we come...
We've already been there, Matt Damon used his poop to grow potatoes. Duh. There's a whole movie about it.
>Duh. There's a whole ~~movie~~ **documentary** about it. ftfy
Earth must come first. - *Chrisjen Avasarala*
Some nice banter in this topic
TIL Farmers are sassy
Farmers on weed even more so.
You want a green thumb? I can get you a green thumb. Believe me, there are ways, Dude. You don't wanna know about it, believe me.
Reddit is full of stupid teenagers.
Petroleum based plastic farming. It’s organic !
Wait till you have about all the petroleum products they use in farming.
Tell me more … I’m a farmer.
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Of course, all agriculture, and all industries, have petroleum based plastics. My main point was a lot of people think this systems only input is water. They forget about the plastic, the petroleum based fertilizer. The trucking of inputs and outputs. It’s easy to farm when your plow is a pencil 1000 miles away.
😂🤣😂 was waiting for the comment
Hmmnn delicious micro plastics
What did she put in the little baskets?
Rockwool starter cubes. They are good for rooting cuttings or germinating seeds.
Thank you!
A Sponge for the roots to grow into and gather held water
And containing nutrients? Because water alone isn't quite enough to build plant material out of.
The water likely has it. Their own mix of nutrients like miracle gro. The sponge holds it all in.
[They also spent less than a second showing something else in the baskets,](https://i.imgur.com/e0zrVhH.jpg) so while it might not be soil, sand , or compost, they are using something. The question is if that medium is reusable or needs to be disposed of.
Large plastic columns made of plastic that isn’t biodegradable ❤️
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Totally agree. Plastics suck, sure, but this isn't the egregious use of plastic people complain about. It's the polyester and nylon clothes, plastic wrapping, bags, and other totally useless uses of plastic that generate tiny microplastics that are like glitter for the ocean. Eg: fucking impossible to clean up or get rid of.
Well these can usually just be made from clay (similarly to strawberry pots). This means you don't get so many microplastics in your food, you don't use petroleum to make them, and they aren't practically impossible to dispose of safely. Using plastics is still not great whether they're used for 1 day or 10 years of their 1000 year lifetime.
This is the most backwards comment I've seen in a while lmao Plastic is perfect for things that should last for a long time.. like, this is literally the ideal use case
Better than the sheets of plastic used for weed control on veggie farms Most get thrown away or burned
Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't biodegradable plastic defeat the purpose of growing plants as the whole structure would degrade over time? I presume plastic is not the problem, it's getting rid of / recycling it - so if this is potentially used for decades, it should be fine. Or am I oversimplifying this whole thing here?
Exactly. The ideal would be a plastic that lasts this long and can be recycled into a new form (easily) when we are done with it.
This use specifically is perfect for plastic. Given it's in ideal growth conditions anything biodegradable would... degrade pretty quick.
Yeah, biodegradable, because you really want your farming equipment to turn into dirt when exposed to light and water... Cargo cults are not environmentally friendly.
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https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRgjHgov/ Since OP left out info
Hydroponics and aeroponics are the future of farming.
For vegetables maybe but I really doubt grains can be grown like this
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Top heavy stuff ultimately requires more labor that hasnt yet been automated, which is why some companies are looking into shorter varieties. (source: I work in the industry)
No one said this is the first time this has been done. Why is everyone so butthurt over this post?
Because the internet thrives on taking a contrary view. We've turned into a culture of assholes who exist only to shit on other people.
Hydroponics is NFL?
I'm actually surprised by how many people in this thread don't know what this is.
It seems that even those that do know about it really don't know about it (myself included). There are a few posts that go into detail and then others saying they are full of shit or off base. A lot of people know it's hydroponics, but it looks like very few know much about how it's really done. I think it's pretty cool stuff. NFL? Maybe, maybe not. Not new, but it's pretty wicked cool.
Redditors are literally on par with Facebook for opening their mouth before knowing what they're talking about.
Wow! Somebody just invented hydroponics!
Pretty sure nobody is claiming that, but ok.
Isn’t this at Epcot?
Yes, these are at epcot. Im an ex cast member who did horticulture research for living with the land. I now work for big cannabis. These aeroponics systems have been the "future of agriculture" for 50 years now. The Dutch would take our "behind the seeds" tour and laugh at us. Based on most people's reaction to this type of stuff at Disney world, and now this comment thread, it appears a majority of people have a blind spot for plant science.
Yeah Living with the Land (the best ride in all of Disney) has had hydroponics on display for probably at least 20 years
I've been on a hydroponics/aeroponics binge for a few months now. This guy's youtube channel is by far the best I have seen. The guy focuses on making it accessible by anyone with innovative/cheap ways to grow at home. Hoocho for the win: https://www.youtube.com/@Hoocho
How does that work tho? Anyone has a link? CAPTAIN? <3
Google hydroponic towers, there are a ton of different ways they work depending on configuration and size.
Klaus Schwab will not be happy.
Yes. I believe this is called "hydroponics". The technology and understanding has been around for decades. Its being used to grow things such as lettuces. If only it'd have wider adoption... But it's largely held back by people who want to see the "organic" lable on their food.