Build your own aquaponics garden

this is an aquaponics system I love nature and I love to be able to bring nature inside and to be able to use that to teach kids about our environment okay so in a nutshell how does the system work well the water and the waste from the fish gets pumped to the top of the system and it trickles on the boards behind the plants back down to the into the catchment tray and while that's happening the plants strip out the fish waste and clean the water for the fish waste from the fish becomes a fertilizer for the plants why did you choose these particular plants well we wanted to go for something that's permanent so with a normal aquaponic system all of those vegetables that you grow are generally annuals and so we want to go for a system that's perennial that's here all the time that we can enjoy we're looking at ways of tying in terrestrial environments with our aquatic environments and teaching people in that process about the the connection and ecosystems involved with that I notice you've got grow lamps are they essential for this system they are because we're indoors were inside a factory shed and in here we need some extra UV to give these plants a push so what about the plant selection once you've chosen are my eyes drawn to these and thorium's because they're brilliant red reminds me of cloud forest and it also makes the green look even more green absolutely there's some fantastic plants in there that change color as they grow so some of these phones they come out with bright red foliage as well when they first start growing and then they turn to green who also got some white and theorems down the bottom so out a bit more color and that change is over the season as well I quite like the polar podium up here purely I guess because it's such a large plant on the wall it's got beautiful blue color I also really love the adiantum the maiden hair ferns down here with the black stem absolute classic really delicate and look I've never been able to grow them up until now I've always bumped them off when I've had them in pots so I'm pretty excited about being able to grow them and I can't go past this this is a beautiful crested fern that's a joy to behold they're fantastic and the fact that there's so many of them in that one space that just it fills the area out well and again it recreates that idea of how one plant would take over a niche in a natural rock face absolutely so we're creating that patchwork and mosaic again but we've also got individual plants in here so we've got some orchids and by far and large that my favorite being the picture plant or Nepenthes carnivorous plants they're they're really amazing for any feature though they grow really well in the right spot now I understand this is easy to construct and I also believe if you're gonna show us just how to do it absolutely [Music] so the first thing we have to do is make our trough where we hold the water and what we have here is just some recycled treated timber and we're going to build that trough out of that I've pre-drilled the timber and I'm assembling with batten screws [Music] what happens next we're gonna line it with plastic [Music] you could use pond liner for this but I'm just using a couple of layers of thick builders plastic nicely tucks excellent now we fix the plastic in place with back now we just need to screw those in place this is a recycled aluminium gate frame we'll use that to go on the back of our wall and we'll attach a sheet of expanded foam PVC to that just goes straight on top there thanks for letting me feel useful time mate alright grab the felt that's next and we'll fix it in place with staples so what's it made from it's made from recycled bottles so it's a PE T recycled bottle felt I'm glad my bottles of course somewhere useful so the trick is to keep it tight and have staples in your stapler and that'll hold our plants on the wall when they start growing so you're starting to do this in a grid pattern there yes about 20 by 20 centimeter squares and we'll put our plants in the middle of those gaps there cutting corners that's so that we can fold the felt underneath the board and staple it to the back of the board okay Jerry can you give me your hand to flip it over now the irrigation we're going to put a stopper in the end of this nineteen millimeter pipe and at the other end I'm putting an elbow and I'm putting a four mil dripper about every five centimeters along this pipe now we just fold that into the felt on the front side so that's the top of the board the drippers will drip water through the felt that's the idea here [Music] this belt will stop her legs poking through the plastic so gone for and theorems and maiden hers again well they worked so well on the last wall and we thought we'd use them on this one as well so now a foot across is where we're going to put air in theorems and I've put lines where we're gonna put our maiden hair ferns make each cut ten to fifteen centimetres pump goes in at the bottom then we connect that with the vertical pipe to the elbow at the top [Music] it's a traditional aquaponic system and so it doesn't rely on the soil it relies on the felt and having the roots grow through the felt while that's filling up we'll put some staples on these plants to hold them in one either side and one on the bottom so really this is the same as planting in soil the roots need to be an intimate contact with a growing medium yes absolutely okay well it's looking good it is I've just added the water conditioner for the fish does that take out the chlorine it does it removes the chlorine and puts a protective slime over the outside of the fish so they're not too stressed all that remains is to let our fish acclimatize to the temperature and then we can flick on the pump get the water flowing through to the plants [Applause] they seem quite happy right now certainly are how much maintenance for a wall like this take look not a lot for a system like this I'd probably spray it every two weeks with a liquid seaweed fertilizer and I'd change the water every 2 or 3 months and how long before this resembles the wall behind it I'd say about 3 months but the one behind it is a year ahead so there's a little bit of catching up for it to do how much would it cost this little system including the plants and the fish was about four hundred and eighty dollars [Music]

Channel: Gardening Australia

Views: 185,957

Rating: 4.9708247 out of 5

Keywords: Gardening, Gardening Australia, garden, gardening tips, gardening advice, plants, how to, ABC, ABC TV, aquaponics aquaponics system, vertical garden, gardening projects, indoor plants, indoor vertical garden, jerry coleby-wiliams

Id: HTq364RwH44

Length: 8min 39sec (519 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 06 2019