Free Working Hollidays

WWOOFS
World Wide Opportunities On Organic Farms

The above named organisation WWOOFS provides free workers, to work on organic farms and in return the farmer must provide these workers with food and accommodation.
wwoofs are a global organisation. 

Aquaponics is organic and I think I could provide food and accommodation for the wwoofs workers, probably nothing too glamorous though, but something that would be both comfortable and memorable.

I think I shall apply to be a wwoofs host, as soon as I get my first poly tunnel up.

Thanks to my mate Laura for telling me about them.

Here is a link to their site -wwoofs Link

A cool place to come and stay

The authentic hippy experience couldn't be more perfect than working in some organic aquaponic poly tunnels and sleeping in a communal tee-pee.

I think about four hours work a day ought to cover the workers for food and accommodation.  Especially considering that most of the food will be grown on site.  The rest of the time, they could do what they wanted and then they really would feel like they were on Holiday.

Apparently allot of the wwoofs workers travel around the world doing this, so it sounds a very good thing to get involved with.

Aquaponic Methods

Three Main Methods of Aquaponics

There are potentially unlimited methods of setting up an aquaponic system.  But there are three main ones and those; I am going to focus on here.

Setting up any system, which works and aligns to all of Aquaponics main principals, will give you an Aquaponic System, so there is great scope for inventions here, but for most, this choice of three, should be quite adequate:

Flood and Drain

This method is the most commonly used form, mainly for non commercial or small-scale growers.  It is sometimes known as the ‘ebb and flow system’.

You have a pond or reservoir of water and 6-8” (20cm) deep trays of your growing medium, which can be something like aggregate type gravel or expanded clay pebbles, but there are many different things you can use.

Water is pumped up on a timer system for about 15 minutes, four times a day.  Flooding the grow trays, but not above the surface area of the growing medium, as this will rot the plants, unless you are growing semi aquatic plants such as Water Cress, in which case you would be advised to flood about 2 inches/5cm above the surface of your medium.

Water drains back into your water reservoir and the system is operational.

Some growers sow sees directly into the medium, but more success is usually achieved by germinating them in conventional seed trays first, washing off the compost from the young plants and then planting them in the medium.  The surface can often get a bit too dry for tiny seeds to get established and some tiny seeds, like Lettuce, will just get lost between the bits of medium.

Some growers actually stand pots of medium half buried in the medium of the grow tray.  This might be beneficial if the crop you are growing is prone to rotting, such as Courgettes, as it will lift them off the wettest area.  But for most stuff; I would dismiss such as an unnecessary extra cost.

Raft

This method is mainly used by big commercial growers.

Usually employing long flat bottomed grow trays, often the whole length of the poly tunnel or green house, with the reservoir of water and fish underneath.

In this system the lower parts of the plant’s roots sit continuously in the water.

Floating rafts of Styrofoam or floating board, cut to fit the trays; floats on the water, as it flows continuously through the system.

The plants are put in pots of medium and sat down in holes in the floating board, so that the lower part of the pot sits in the water.

For this set up; Coconut fibre is a good medium to use as it is buoyant and light weight.  Often growers use the kind of pots that are used for growing pond plants, as the roots have more exit points and crops seem to prefer this.   Whatever pots you use; they must be plastic and/or light weight and buoyant, as otherwise they would sink and sit on the bottom of the tray, restricting both root growth and the flow of water around the whole grow tray.

This method allows the grower to lift up whole sections to inspect them also to remove or replace individual plants.

NFT

Nutrient Film Technique

Used by large and small scale (back garden) growers.

Basically something like plastic guttering us used and a thin trickle of water goes through it.  Plants in pots of light weight medium or blocks of rock-wool cubes are sat in the water and light is prevented from getting to the roots by something like horticultural plastic.

Aquaponics

Aquaponics explained

Aquaponics is the most efficient and cost effective way of producing food, known to man.  And it’s Organic!

Fish feed the plants, eliminating the need to buy plant food.  The plants purify the water for the fish, giving you two crop products, instead of one, from the same amount of space.

The only thing which needs to be added is Fish food.  So long as the fish food is organic and you don’t use any other chemicals, then your whole venture will be completely organic, producing much higher yields than any conventional farming system, be it organic or not & giving you a very competitive edge, should you decide to turn it into  a business.

Aquaponics is quite simply a marriage between Aquaculture (fresh water fish; raising and breeding) and Hydroponics (soil free plant production).  It is a far more efficient system, than both of its ‘highly efficient’ parent industries.

Fish and ponds

Fish or some other (preferably edible) fresh water creatures, sit (usually) directly bellow in a pond or tank of water.

The tank/pond water builds up with ammonia and other chemicals, from fish urine and excrement.  Left to its own devices this water would eventually become stagnant and the fish would suffer, but the water is sucked up from one end, by small pumps, which transport the water on the beginning of its journey around the aquaponic system.

Gravel 

The water is first pumped into the bottom of a container, holding gravel.  This filters out big lumps of fish dodo, so that it doesn’t mess up the system further down.  But its main purpose is to assist the whole procedure in a micro-biological way;

In nature there is the nitrogen cycle.  Our atmosphere consists mostly of this inert element.  Our planet has a nitrogen based atmosphere.  Plants need Nitrogen to grow and produce the green pigment chlorophyll, found in the chloroplasts of the cells in the leaves and it makes them go green.

The Nitrogen cycle is recreated in miniature, in the aquaponic set-up.  In nature nitrogen fixing bacteria live in river banks and on gravel, so having the gravel causes these bacteria to become present.  Adding a small quantity of river gravel would probably help to get them there, to begin with, though that is not necessary and will arrive naturally.

The nitrogen fixing bacteria transform the ammonia from the fish urine into usable nitrates, which can be utilised, by the plants in the next stage of the circulatory aquaponic system.

The Plants

Water overflows in a constant gradual flow, out of the gravel holding container and into trays, positioned above the tanks or ponds and fixed at a slight angle, with the water entering it at the slightly higher end.

This water, enriched with nitrogen, then trickles constantly through the roots of the plants, giving the plants the entire range of nutrient they need.

At the ends of the trays, the water, now emptied of nutrients and purified; falls as an artificial waterfall, back into the other end of the pond/tank from whence it came, forming a complete cycle.