1 MILLION pounds of Food on 3 acres. 10,000 fish 500 yards compost

Interested in aquaponics? Go here to grow up to 10 times the plants, in half the time, while the "fish" do all the work! http://thelocalwebsolution.com/aquaponics4you_gl.html -End of Ad See below.

Growing power seems to have a winning combo going. I underestimated what they are doing. Based on the information in these videos, IF true, then on 3 acres they are producing 1,000,000 pounds of food each year! How are they doing this? Well, based on the information given in the video...

10,000 fish
300-500 yards worm compost
3 acres of land in green houses
Grow all year using heat from compost piles.
Using vertical space

A packed greenhouse produces a crop value of $5 Square Foot! ($200,000/acre).

Now, just to be clear I am not growing power or will allen. Also, a pound of plant or fish product is not the same thing as eatable food unless you process all parts of them for food. i.e. eating the fish bones and using plant stalks in stews. Generally, nations that are well fed throw away most of the plant and eat only the best parts thus lowing the yield of food.

Growing power depends on and runs on the HUGE amounts of compost they make from food waste that is taken from the city. With out this compost there would be no heat for the greenhouses and no fuel for the plants to grow. Its a great thing to divert this from the landfill and provide cheap food for the community.

My personal experience is that growing 7 pounds of food per square foot in a year is not that hard to do especially if you grow year around. You have to select plants that produce a lot of food in a small space which means you may not get a nutritionally complete diet if thats all you grow. Also layering of growth to use all space is important.

I personally use a 12 foot round pond 2.5 feet deep to grow 300+ pounds of fish in an aquaponic system and the bulk of my produce is grow using the biointensive method, in the ground, which is watered from the nitrogen rich fish water. My typical yield is between 6 and 9 pounds of food per square foot per year. This does require that I grow over winter which most people do not do. I find that growing in fall and winter months I actually get more production over fall and winter because there is NO bug problems! The crops do mature much slower, but they will mature! Think of it this way, the standard planted row may have 2 or 3 rows of veggies. Bio intensive will plant 12 rows; thats already 4 times the produce. Now add in onions, for example, that grow vertically above sweet potato vines, this increases production a lot. Now add to that 4 harvest per year vs the standard one season growing season. Now you have X4 more productivity. This brings us to X4X4 or 16 times the productivity of the standard growing methods. If you add to that hanging pot or what ever to add more growing space you have again increased productivity again. I personally have not used vertical space in that way. An snap shot of my experience is growing one sweat potato per 1.5' x 1.5' area (2.25 square feet) this one plant produces on average 12 pounds of root per plant and in that space I grow 4 to 6 leeks adding a pond of produce. Now, the vines grow all over the place, and I tie some up, are not confined to that 2.25 square feet of soil space. From each plant you can easily average 3 pounds of eatable leaves as you pick them over the growing season. At this point alone I am averaging 16 pounds of eatable food in 2.25 square feet or 16/2.5=7 pounds of food per square foot. Now that is in ONE GROWING SEASON. As I also grow fava beans, wheat, and fodder greens for two more seasons so my yelid is averaging 8 to 10 pounds in a year. IF I did this on 3 acres of growing space, excluding foot paths and green house walls ect then my production would be 8 pounds per square foot * 43560 feet acre * 3 = 1,045,440 pounds of food. It is possible to get even more by choosing the right crops and getting 4 harvest per year. I have settled on 4000 square feet of growing space per person for providing pretty much all the food a person needs. I suggest anyone starting this start with a very small garden and do it well. Something like a 5' by 20' growing bed would be the most you would start with.

SUGGESTED READING:
backyardaquaponics [dot] com/forum
Food Now by bountiful gardens
One Mexican Diet by bountiful gardens
Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman
Winter Harvest Handbook by Eliot Coleman

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• aquaponics
• growing power
• tilapia
• fish
• green house
• vertical growing
• grow food
• garden
• Food
• compost
• harvest
• four season
• compost heat

[davehutchinson67]

All I know is that if you even had a somewhat modest commercial aquaponic system, organic lettuce sells for what? $1.50 a head....rotating 1000 heads weekly...that's $1,500 weekly...and once you have the system running...especially a system like they have here..a dwc (deep water culture) you can really have a nice green business that is feeding your local populace.

[GreenLearning]

@davehutchinson67 Getting the product directly to the consumer is the hardest part and the only way to make enough money to be worth the effort. It is not hard to sell a thousand dollars in 'natural' veggies at our local farmers market. This is because there is a health store next to it. Therefore, many health conscience and educated people are already passing by.

[AquaticCastle]

Tilapia are very low in fat. Sense fatty fish are so healthy to eat (and they keep you feeling fuller longer) have you considered growing fatty fish such as catfish or trout.

[GreenLearning]

@AquaticCastle I have tried bluegill, but they did not grow fast. I have not found any trout to try yet. Our weather here is warm and summers are long and hot.

[nomadatlop]

stilll.... going by your math of 3100lbs of food grown in 765 sqft. of a 1005sqft chunk, you're 100,000lbs short of half way to 1 million lbs grown on 3 acres of land per year... and that's if your data is completely accurate on variable lengths of a growing season based on sunlight. 130680= acreage / 1005 = 130 plots of 1005sqft area. now 130 X 3100 = 403,092lbs produced... looks like you're eating well, and if that isnt adding up for your food consumption, u did the math wron.

[GreenLearning]

@nomadatlop That is the amount of eatable food that I weighed in from 1005 SqFt over 120 days. I see no problem getting a similar yield using 4 season techniques over the renaming 245 days in the year.

Not only are we eating well, we cant eat it all. The goats and cow got many treats. The real problem with growing this much is that you must input compost or mulch to feed the soil. I dont like this idea as much as using the biointensive method and growing your own mulch on site.

[GreenLearning]

@nomadatlop We prepair our food with almost every part of the plants and fish; even the bones are boiled in vinegar to make them eatable. So what one person calls food another person would call waste. Americans in general are just wasteful and eat only the best parts. Its a matter of prospective.

[turborabbit1114]

ear rape video! why the fuck is this so loud compaired to everyting else on youtube?

[moecat1000]

where is this greenhouse..state ? where do you get the power to run the pump / does it run 24/7 ?

[cornishrob123]

fantastic 

[AquaticCastle]

@kingmike40 Obviously I didn't just pull that out of you know where. The tilapia in my store has 0 fat. If it has 0 fat, then it can't have any Omega 6.

[kingmike40]

@AquaticCastle You need to do research on tilapia's fat content. Very low in omega 3 fatty acid and very high in omega 6 fatty acid. Omega 6 fatty acid is bad. Omega 3 is why doctors tell people to eat fish.

[synal]

That is amazing!

[charukrsnadasa]

Look into using sonic bloom 45 minutes a day. Ash or biochar for soil. copper or copper coated garden tools for working the soil easier and soil plus plants like the tiny particles of copper left behind. Perhaps hire a local metal worker with foundry skills. Trade some food, ask people to bring scrap copper pipes, wires, etc to keep carbon footprint & $ minimized. Top bar bee hives. Start Fukuoka seedball operations. Metal worker make highly polishes parabolic dish for cooking.

[grandmastermicochero]

@101101101777 what are you talking about??

[101101101777]

@grandmastermicochero do you have something constructive to add or are you just being rude? trollololololol

[totey8999]

240p WE MEET AGAIN!