Just because you live in an urban setting without adequate yard space, or in an especially cold or inhospitable climate, doesn’t mean that you can’t maintain a delicious selection of fresh fruits and vegetables year round. By setting up a proper aquaponic growing system, you can almost guarantee a healthy pay off. The costs and difficulty associated with aquaponics, hydroponics, and other soil-less gardening techniques have plummeted over the past several years, and today, you can set up an entire garden for a small fraction of what it cost in the past.
What is Aquaponics?
Aquaponics is a technique for growing plants in a controlled, recirculating water-based environment, rather than in soil. In many ways, it is similar to a hydroponic growing system. Which is to say that they are both soil-less gardening methods that use recirculated water to grow crops.
The primary difference being that, with aquaponics, the nutrients necessary to sustain plant growth come from animals living in the water. Normally, a hydroponic system requires the nutrients be added to the water supply.