Aquaponics - Strawberries

Yum.

I love strawberries, and spend way too much money each year in keeping the fridge stocked.

I cant get enough of them.

Here are some free strawberries  from the backyard.









Some are from the aquaponics system, and some from the dirt along the side of my house.

I planted a stack in one blue barrel grow bed, and a stack more in the ground along one side of my house.

The strawberries grown in the aquaponics system are always bigger and juicer. They also look better. Always big and perfectly formed. But I'm not convinced they taste any better. In fact I think the ones out of the ground may actually taste better.

When growing grapes for wine, I understand you don't want too much rain as this makes the fruit bigger, but lowers the amount of sugars per lump of grape.

Or so I'm told.

This might have something to do with why the strawberries seem to taste better out of the ground. The ground strawberries get watered once a day when it's hot, and every couple of days if it's not.

The aquaponics strawberries have as much water as they want when ever they want it.

Or...

It could have nothing to do with that. I cant be sure which went where, but there were two batches of strawberry plants. One batch was fully grown mature plants, and the other batch were all new runners. I seem to remember planting the runners in the aquaponics system because they were smaller, and I wanted to see if they would catch up to the others. But I also remember not doing that. I remember mixing them up so I would get a sample from each. I remember a few other contradictory things as well.

So... possible that they taste different.

But I think it's going to prove to be water content.

I think I'll do some experiments with the runners from both batches to see if there is any difference when all plants are the same age. Both beds are producing runners, so I think I should know within a few months.

Another thing to try, might be to change how long the aquaponics plants have wet feet. I should be able to control very precisely how much water the plants are exposed to.

I have an electric tap from a sprinkler system, so I might try to make some kind of moisture sensor, and perhaps try letting their roots get almost dry before giving them more water. I have no idea if such a thing is even possible, so I'll find out.

Or...

It could be that the strawberries don't taste as good when they are hot. Very few of the fruit ever make it into the house. Most get eaten straight from the plant, and there is a huge difference between the temperature of the narrow, protected side of the house, and those grown in a hot house. Now that I think of it, I think strawberries grow well in places like England. I'm not sure if England is called England or not, but that place that's sometimes called England seems to be the kind of place people grow things like strawberries.

Perhaps a hot house makes the fruit taste different.

I'll have to find some more information.

I'm being very fussy here.

All the strawberries from my back yard taste much better than anything I've ever bought from a shop. Shop strawberries are always under-ripe, and seem to be made of something other than strawberry.

That's store bought on the left, and back yard grown on the right.

Even with this poor photo, you can see the difference.

I can also smell the difference.

And if you drop a store bought strawberry into a clear drink, you get a strawberry in a drink. But the back yard ones colour the clear drink strawberry colour.

I count aquaponics and dirt grown strawberries as a total success.




120 Things in 20 years - I think I'l buy a second hand digital SLR camera so I can take better photos of strawberries and.