There idea of growing your own food has a lot of appeal. The ability to have complete control over the quality of your food and nutrition, not having to deal with the grocery stores or paying their high prices are just some of the things that give the idea such appeal. But most people continue to pay for unfresh and processed food year after year.
But growing your own food may be easier than you might realize. Aquaponics is a way of growing food that has been recently developed into a very simple way to grow food. Aquaponics takes away most of the work, time and expense that is necessary with traditional gardening in the soil.
Hydroponics, or growing plants in nutrient rich water, also makes this promise. But it has some serious disadvantages, such as using chemical fertilizers, the need for the constant maintaining of proper nutrient levels, and disposal and replacement of waste water. Aquaponics takes the good parts of hydroponics, and combines it with aquaculture, growing fish, and creates a low cost, low maintenance, complete system between the two.
With aquaponics, fish are raised in a tank, no more complicated than having common aquarium fish. The fish water is circulated to grow beds where the plants extract the nutrients from the fish wastes. At the same time the plants are cleaning the water for the fish. This makes a complete natural cycle that has the capability of growing a lot of fresh organic fish and vegetables in a very small space.
This type of system mostly takes care of itself, similar to the way plants and animals in nature do. Without a need for working soil and pulling weeds and all the other common garden chores. growing food with aquaponics is very simple and requires very little time or money.