permaculture

[KAKerby@aol.com]

These questions are part genetics, part philosophy and part  practicality.  
I'll try to answer in similar veins:
 
What would happen to root strength if one were to grow aquaponics  
vegetables over a few plant generations?  Aquaponics has been around now  for 
50 
years in its modern form, more or less.  And some claim that the  concept has 
been used by multiple generations for thousands of years, with the  first 
well-documented system possibly being the water gardens of Babylon.   But 
let's 
skip that historical precedent and stick with modern aquaponics.   Even 
with that limitation, hundreds if not thousands of plant generations have  
come 
and gone never seeing anything but an aquaponics system.  Their seeds,  cut
tings, divisions or other reproductive methods can be put right back into 
the  garden or field and grown alongside plants whose forebears never grew in 
an  aquaponics system.  The plants grown in an aquaponics system would  
undoubtedly change over time, just as any plant's genes would change over 
time  
when grown in a fabulously fertile, deep, soft, crumbly perfectly irrigated  
garden soil.  Take either of those plants and put them in the desert and  
they'd both die.  Does that mean we don't want to work towards  fabulously 
fertile, deep, soft, crumbly, perfectly irrigated garden soil, lest  that 
weaken our plants as well?  Aquaponics can provide rich, diversified  root 
zone 
communities, via the methods I've already described.  That rich  web can and 
does rival soil-based communities from the best gardens.  So  any genetic 
abormalities that come from aquaponics growth would come from rich  garden 
growth as well.  
 
"What would happen to the strength of a vegetable/fruit  strain........."   
The same thing that happens to that vegetable or  fruit strain when it's 
grown in rich garden soil.  It grows stronger,  it grows faster, it grows 
larger, it puts forth more leaves and/or more seed  and/or more propagation 
vines and/or whatever genetic cues it has when  presented with everything it 
needs.  It has fewer pests, fewer diseases and  lives longer with less 
stress.  
Again, let's compare apples to apples, no  pun intended.  A well balanced 
aquaponics system gives the plant everything  it needs.  So does a 
well-balanced garden soil.  If you find fault  with using the former, you'll 
have to 
logically find fault with  using the latter.
 
"What would happen when human ingenuity stops and Nature takes charge  
again?"  Once again, if two plants of the same variety, one grown in a  
well-balanced aquaponics system and one grown in rich garden soil, were 
suddenly  
uprooted and moved to a different climate, both of them would be limited in  
response to whatever their genetic code plus their current condition allowed  
them to have.  If you took an aquaponic tomato vine and a garden-grown  
tomato vine, and transplanted them both to the North Slope of Alaska, neither 
of  them would do well.  If you took those two plants and transplanted them  
both to some tropical location with adequate solar and water and drainage 
and  nutrients, they'd probably do quite well.  If something happened to  
dramatically impact the growing conditions for the aquaponics system, those  
plants would probably die.  Just like if something happened to dramatically  
impact the growing conditions in a garden, those plants would also probably  
die.
 
And as we've also discussed, a mature aquaponics system starts to very  
closely resemble a mature fertile garden soil, in the richness of the  
microorganisms that live there, in the diversity and ratios of nutrients 
present  in 
the root zone, and in the diversity and health and branching of the roots  
growing through the root zone.  I suspect that after 10 years, most folks  
would have a hard time differentiating between the two.
 
If folks find the concept of aquaponics distasteful or alienating or  
whatever, that's fine.  But admire it, or fault it, for the characteristics  
it 
truly has, which are much the same as the characteristics of the very best  
gardening soil we fantasize about creating and working with.  If our plants  
are turning into wimps in aquaponic systems, then they'll become wimps in  
our very best gardens as well.  One of the true strengths of  aquaponics is 
that we can fine-tune the nutritional balance in a matter of  weeks.  Yet 
most gardeners and farmers will spend years, if not decades,  trying to 
achieve 
that same balance.  If your dinner could only come from  the quality of the 
growing medium you used, would you be so willing to wait ten  years for a 
good meal?  
 
I think a lot of folks have philosophical problems with the "gadgety"  
nature of aquaponics, and that it could never be "as good as" our more 
familiar  
gardens and fields.  But honestly, that's the opinion of a well fed  
stomach.  For folks who live where flood, famine, political upheaval,  
economic 
hardship and other challenges don't allow them the pleasantries of  
well-tended soil and regular meals, aquaponics can keep them fed and fed 
pretty  darn 
well.  Fed so that they have the energy and health to go out and heal  
whatever is going wrong with their region.  Perhaps then they'll have the  
time, 
money and resources to pour into their soils what we've poured into ours,  
and finally bring those soils back into healthy production.  Then they'll  
have the chance to sit back and mull which system is better.  But insisting  
on the use of nice fertile soils is to exclude a lot of humanity from the 
dinner  table, if not now then in the very near future.
Kathryn Kerby
frogchorusfarm.com
Snohomish, WA
 
 
 
 
In a message dated 10/9/2012 11:36:03 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
dfjager@yahoo.com writes:

Plant  evolution created root systems for land plants to penetrate the 
soil. To grow  in soil that is not nutritionally balanced, and can *never be* 
totally  balanced in Nature. And to adapt plant species to specific soils and 
climate  conditions.

* What would happen to the root strength if one were to  grow aquaponics 
vegetables over a few plant generations?

* What would  happen to the strength of a vegetable/fruit strain, if you 
provide all  nutrients in easily accessible form? By analogy: what happens to 
humans when  they have to do no effort, and get everything they need 
whenever they  want...???

* What happens when human 'ingenuity' stops, and Nature  takes charge 
again? Would we have natural aquaponics ecosystems, or just murky  wetlands, 
nutrient poor bogs, estuaries, tidal flats, and the like. With the  natural 
plant and animals species adapted to the specific constraints of that  
ecosystem: both climatologically, soil physiologically and  nutritionally.

Daniel



> Subject: Re: [permaculture]  pc aquaponics
> To: permaculture  <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID:  <C6524D99-51CC-4C5B-95C7-03B24AEE2FD3@patternliteracy.com>
>  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> Thanks,  Christopher. I, like most people, have a strong
> preference for working  in the dirt instead of using a bunch
> of tanks and pipes to grow food,  but, then, soil ag, too, is
> pretty mechanized these days.
>  
> To sum up: there is nothing special about soil, in one
> sense:  it is a medium for the propagation of the microbes
> that convert manure  and other non-available nutrients into
> plant-available nutrients, and  it can hold water and
> air.  Same with water. Instead of a  rock-based medium
> to hold microbes and nutrients, aquaponics uses  water as the
> medium, which is a nice stacking of functions, if you  think
> about it, because soil has to be kept wet for microbes  and
> plants to grow, while water doesn't, and most of the
>  nutrients that plants use are water soluble, converted into
> that form  from insoluble form by microbes. The carbon, the
> energy source for the  microbes, is provided by the OM in the
> fish manure instead of OM from  insect frass and animal
> manure. 
> 
> And aquaponics has a  couple of advantages over soil systems,
> because a water medium can  transport nutrients to microbes
> and plants much more quickly than  soil. In soil, water moves
> by diffusion, and once the water, or the  nutrients in it,
> are used up in one area, the organisms must wait for  more to
> diffuse in before they can feed or get moisture, and  that
> can take time--and sometimes it doesn't happen, and the
>  plants or bugs die. Same with oxygen, which can't travel
> well in  compacted soil. 
> 
> But in a water medium, nutrients are  constantly being
> circulated to where they are needed, as is air.  That's one
> reason that growth rates in aquaponics is much faster  than
> in soil.
> 
> To make it clear: Aquaponics is not  hydroponics plus fish.
> Hydroponics uses water-soluble nutrients from  the get-go,
> with no microbes in the mix. Aquaponics, just like soil  ag,
> relies on microbes to convert manure into plant-available
>  form. Big difference--the former is chemistry, the latter is
> an  ecosystem.
> 
> Toby
> http://patternliteracy.com
>  
>  

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