Aquaponics - Carrot haul

I pulled up the last of my aquaponics carrot patch and was pleasantly surprised by the result.

I suspect I could have planted them a lot closer together, but I harvested enough that I think it's a worthwhile crop for aquaponics.

Generally speaking, I try to grow quick growing or repeat harvest produce because I have such a limited space, but I might be able to grow carrots under my capsicum plants or something.

One of the issues with growing things like carrots or potatoes is that when they are in season in your garden, they are practically free at the supermarket, but these carrots had quite a long season where I could pick them a bit young, or a bit old. Either way they tasted good, and it was nice to have perfectly fresh carrot kicking around.

All in all, I would say carrots were a success in aquaponics.

Aquaponics - Only very slightly kooky carrot

I was expecting a lot more interesting looking carrots, because I was led to believe they would all resemble Elvis/whatever you normally focus on, in a crazy attempt to grow toward the nutrient.

But I've nearly harvested all my carrots, and this is as kooky as I've had.

Not so kooky.

They also taste great and are super crunchy.

I cant help feeling that if I spent the last couple of months in wet gravel, I might not maintain quite so much crunch.

Really, really crunchy.

This one is getting on a bit, and it's probably the case that it was always this carrots intention to grow this way, at this time, no matter what it was standing in for the last few months.

I think I can safely say that in my system carrots grow just fine.






When asked in a recent interview why some people have a difficult time growing carrots, and other have no problems, 120 Things in 20 years replied  "Who knows? Carrots keep their own council."

It was a short, imaginary interview.

Aquaponics - Carrot growth

My carrots are growing.

Which is nice.

They, or at least this one, looks like this.

Some stuff take a long time to grow.

I have very low levels of nitrate (plant num-nums) in my system due to having only two fish, and sleepy ones at that.

The water temperatures are sitting at around 10c, and the growhouse has similar air temperatures.

All that means my fish are almost dormant, and only eat a tiny amount every second day. No feed, and no activity mean no plant nutrient. I should have got some trout, (trout love the cold water) but I was waiting for some more silver perch, and also expected this grow house to keep temperatures up a bit higher. Unfortunately, the fish farm I normally get them from, had some kind of spawning fail, so I didn't get any.


In other news in the grow house, there is no new news. Everything is sleeping except lettuce.

I think I need to seal up my solar panel, and connect it to my fish tank heater. It's a 300 watt heater, which is quite powerful for a fish tank heater, but I suspect it won't do a lot in a thousand liters of water that's outside.



120 Things in 20 years needs to have bought a bigger and better grow house if it wanted decent aquaponics carrot growth.

Aquaponics - Carrot

I pulled up one of my carrots prematurely to see if they were developing into something carrot looking, or were going to look like Elvis.

Something I read ages ago in a dirt gardening book mentioned that you should plant carrots in deeply dug soil that had old fertilizer added. If you had too much new fertilizer the carrot would branch out seeking the nutrient, rather than going straight down looking from nutrient.

I think my carrots are going to be carrot looking.

Obviously, it's early days yet, but at least they haven't started to go crazy yet.

I suspect that even if they do they might still be good to eat, because they will be all nice and clean and fine to eat without peeling.

Besides, I'm happy to eat Elvis shaped carrots if the ebay market has dropped off for rock star/deity shaped vegetables and pictures on toast.

Aquaponics - Growing carrots idea

I'm told growing carrots can be tricky in an aquaponics grow bed. I wouldn't know, because I've never done it. But that's not going to stop me from offering tips on the subject.

From what I've read in dirt gardening, carrots need to be planted into a bed with old fertilizer. This, I'm told, is to stop them growing legs, arms, heads, and fingers, and getting top dollar on e-bay for looking like a religious figurine. Food based religious figurines make particularly good money it seems.

So, now new fertilizer, and deep garden beds. I forgot to mention deep garden beds.

I suspect the problem with aquaponics, is that there is nutrient everywhere. This is great for most things, but annoying if you want your plants tap root to grow straight down. As I understand it, you can still grow carrots, but peeling them is like doing micro-surgery because they grow all over the shop and as a result, there is no real carroty bit.

I was reading about someone struggling with this problem when I remembered the dirt garden advice I was given, and figured I might have a solution.

If the carrot takes all the nutrient from the surface, and then grows down looking for more, perhaps all we need to do is drop the nutrient rich water level as the carrot grows.

The easiest way I can think to do this, would be to grow carrots in their own grow bed, and adjust the high tide level down each week as the carrots grow by changing the length of the standpipe.

I think I'll do an experiment with two buckets. One using the new method, and a control bucket that floods and drains like my normal grow bed. If I get rich from selling the idol looking ones on ebay, I can conclude my new system is a winner for growing normal looking carrots.



If this is not an original idea, I did my best (within reason) to discover blah blah blah