Hello sustainable growers.
Welcome in this video.
Today, I would like to respond to a question that I received from Amanda.
She asked me what is the specificity in aquaponics?
What should we do exactly to grow some nice fruits?
So when you start aquaponics in the first few months, I recommend to start with some
leafy vegetables.
So I’m talking about for example, herbs such as mint.
You can grow celery.
You can grow some spinach, silver beet, lettuce, and all those kinds of veggies that are producing
leaves and not specially the fruits.
The reason why is because fruits need a lot of different nutrients to be able to develop
their fruits.
You know it’s a bit more complex than just building the leaves.
So I recommend to wait for at least six months for the setup to cycle properly, to develop
a nice biodiversity of different insects and different animals and also bacteria that are
going to be able to break down all those organic matters in different particles, being able
to release all the minerals from the fish food and being able to release and to offer
a nice profile of nutrients to your plants and to your vegetables.
So after six months, you got this biodiversity that is here.
You know you got all those insects that are here and as soon as an organic metal falls
in the system, as soon as we got some fish food that is pumped up into the growbed, those
animals are here to break it down in different parts and to offer this wonderful range of
nutrients to your plants.
So then you can start to plant some fruits.
So you can grow some tomatoes.
You can grow some chili.
I mean, there is a number of fruits you can grow.
In aquaponics it’s very wide.
There are a lot of different plants that you can put in aquaponics that are going to produce
amazing fruits.
When the fruits are growing, you know, the fruits at the beginning, they are flowers.
Right?
Because that’s how it works.
You got the plants.
You got some plants that are going to produce some leaves and you’re going to be able
to consume the leaves.
And you got some plants such as this lovely chili here that are going to produce some
flowers and those flowers are going to produce some fruits.
So here for example, we got one nice chill.
You can see it’s still green.
But that’s the idea.
So you start with the plant.
The plant is growing and then it’s going to develop some nice flowers and the flowers
are going to develop some nice fruits.
So you see, it’s a bit more complex.
You are not just going to produce the leaves.
You need to produce some leaves and then you need to produce some flowers and then some
fruits.
So to produce the flowers, the plant is going to need a lot of nutrients and especially
potassium.
So potash is something that you can find everywhere in more different food.
There is some potassium in all veggies.
But the plant when they grow to flowers, they need a higher quantity of potash.
So there is a source of potassium inside the fish food that you give to your fish.
There is some potassium inside and when you put it into the water, you got those bacteria
that are going to break it down in small particles and they’re going to release the minerals,
the potassium available for the plants.
So the plants are going to be able to absorb this potassium.
Right?
Now, there is some interactions between the potassium, the calcium, and the magnesium
so they are not you know, depending, if you have a lot of calcium in your water, you’re
going to have less potassium available for the plants.
What is very important to understand here is that if you add some potassium into the
setup, yes, it’s going to improve the general health of the vegetables but reaching a certain
point is going to help all the plants to grow into flowers, into seeds, and into fruits.
Right?
But even the plants that are growing some leaves normally if you put a lot of potassium
into your setup, they’re going to start to produce some seeds so that’s where you
have the lettuce, for example, that is going to grow in height and develop the flowers
and the seeds.
And that’s what you don’t want, basically.
So there is a balance to find between having a setup that is going to produce some excellent
fruits but the leaves are going to – the leafy vegetables are going to grow quickly
in seeds or trying to get your setup to produce some nice leaves and having a nice production
of fruits but not a crazy one.
So there is this kind of choice that you need to make.
Right?
That’s why I like to add potassium in my setup.
It’s really important to have potassium and naturally, there is potassium already
in the fish food but if you want, you can add a bit more.
But just be careful of not putting too much potassium because then you’re going to have
obviously, amazing fruits but you’re going to have also all the leafy vegetables that
are going to grow seeds and therefore, they are not going to produce leaves anymore.
You need to find a good balance and unfortunately, it’s very hard to put the exact good quantity
of potassium into your water.
It’s very hard to determine the quantity.
So what I recommend is to add a bit of potassium and to see how the system reacts.
So the easiest way to add some potassium into your aquaponics setup is to add some potash.
So you can buy some potash granular from your garden shop.
You can buy some organic one.
This one for example is potash and sulfate.
Potassium is one of the very important elements, right, in the plant so you got N, P, K.
So the first, N is for nitrogen.
The second, P is for phosphorous.
And then the K is for potassium.
Here this one is 0,0,41, which means that there is zero nitrogen, zero phosphorous and
41% of potassium.
So it’s very, very high in potassium and when you’re going to add this into your
water, you are not going to add any of the fertilizer, which is really good because nitrate
is already very high in aquaponics because we produce it, thanks to the fish.
So we don’t to add anything, any nitrate into our aquaponics setup.
But if you want to give a boost to your plants, you can add this.
It’s potassium.
It’s quite good for the plants.
It’s quite good for the fruits but again, if you put too much of it, you may have new
lettuce that are going to grow into seeds very quickly.
So use it very carefully, not too much.
Just a little bit.
So I hope this video was useful.
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And I wish you a fantastic success with aquaponics.
Have a good crop!