Grow Aquaponic fish and lettuce at your school
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What is Aquaponics?
Aquaponics the mixing of aquaculture (growing fish) and hydroponic (growing soilless plants) that mutually benefits both environments. Aquaponics uses no chemicals, requires 10% of the water needed for field plant production and only a fraction of the water that is used for fish culture (Aquaculture).
In aquaponics the waste from fish tanks is treated with natural bacteria that converts the waste, largely ammonia, first to nitrite and then to nitrate. The fish waste absorbed by plants is pumped to a bio-filter system as a nutrient solution for the growing plants (Grow Bed). The only external input to the system is food for the fish.
Once the system is initialized the water stays Ph balanced and remains crystal clear. The water is recycled with a small amount of water added weekly to compensate for what is lost by evaporation and transpiration by the vegetables. Aquaponics is the future of home gardening and commercial fresh food production.
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Aquaponics in action
Gardening is now a science
One of the consequences of global warming is that food and horticultural scientists have been tasked with finding innovative methods of growing food on a large commercial scale. Scientists are discovering new methods to enable inhospitable terrain to be exploited for food production, a major breakthrough in this is the use of hydroponics.
Situation: The Gambia
The Gambia is a least developed and low-income, food-deficit country with a predominantly subsistence agrarian economy. It is ranked 155th out of 177 countries in the 2006 United Nations Human Development Index with 69 percent of the population living below the poverty line.
Poor households have limited access to basic food commodities and domestic food production meets only 50 percent of the national food requirements.
The latest national nutrition survey (2005) by the National Nutrition Agency (NaNA), rated acute malnutrition at 7 percent and stunting at 17.8 percent; micronutrient deficiencies are a severe problem especially amongst children.
Crop harvest have experienced two years of decline with the 2007- 2008 harvest representing a decline of 35 percent from 2005- 2006, and the price for the staple food, rice, has increased by 39 percent from January 2008. In addition, fuel prices have been increased by ten percent in May 2008.
Growing Lettuce
Lettuce can be grown outdoors from early April onwards, once the soil has begun to warm up.
To get a succession of salad leaves all summer long, you need to sow seeds at regular intervals of two to three weeks.
Sow in rows, and once the seedlings are up, thin them out so that there’s 20cm to 30cm (8in to 12in) between each seedling – check the packet for details. There are many different types of lettuce, so you can try a whole range and plant half or whole rows. If you are sowing more than one row, space them 45cm (18in) apart.
TIP: To aid good pollination, grow sweet peas nearby to attract bees.
