Sweet Leaf Aquaponics

January 21 the husband and I traveled to Melbourne, FL to attend a workshop at Sweet Leaf Aquaponics, led by David Lindemann.  What a great experience! 

David lives in this cute little 1950's house on a half acre lot that backs up to a golf course with his significant other Nancy, two dogs, at least one cat and LOTS of worms and lizards.  He's managed to turn his back yard into a fantastic garden, both aquaponic and otherwise. 

Dave talks to us about his growing beds

Salad anyone?

This tomato plant has escaped the bed and invaded the walkway.

The aquaponics section is less than a year old, but is already quite prolific!  Greens, okra, basil, mint and more are growing like weeds.

Dave shows us the root system growing in the nutrient-rich water.

Dave told us that he and Nancy have even enjoyed a couple of fish dinners, courtesy of their Tilapia tank.

Part of the day was spent hands-on, building portions of the Aquaponics system.  We drilled holes in blue board for rafts, drilled holes in PVC to attach air lines and learned Dave's special folding technique for the bed liner.

The weather was beautiful, the company was good and we learned so much!  We were also treated to a delicious, home cooked, vegetarian lunch courtesy of the Sweet Leaf garden and Nancy.  It was so good I had to ask for the quinoa pie recipe and have already made it at home!

So, plans are developing for our balcony aquaponics garden and seeds have been ordered.  But more on that next time...

The Beginning...

I live in a 2nd floor condo with an east-facing screened-in balcony.  I try to eat only organic produce and meats, but that gets awfully expensive after awhile.  I've thought about growing some veggies and herbs on my balcony, but I've killed every house plant I have ever owned.  When we lived in a house, we tried to plant a veggie garden and everything died there, too. 

I first heard about aquaponics when I attended a conference where one of the presenters was Colle Davis, the founder of Portable Farms.  My husband and I thought this was genius and started researching how to do this ourselves.  At the time we figured we might do it some time in the future, when we were in a house with a yard again.  But then, during our research, we found Friendly Aquaponics. 

Friendly Aquaponics offers designs and plans for micro-aquaponics systems.  Small enough that we could put one on our kitchen counter if we wanted to!  So we decided we would purchase Friendly's plans and use this to design a system for our balcony.

I spent hours reading through the materials and searching online for all of the parts I would need.  I felt like I had a pretty good understanding of what I would need to do and that I could probably find everything I needed, but I still felt like I needed some hand-holding before I could start.  Plus, we are fortunate to have more money than time.  While I am sure I could eventually build and implement a system on my own, I am also sure it would cost many hours of frustration and probably take way longer than it needed to.

Further research brought me to Sahib Punjabi and Sahib Aquaponics.  Sahib is two hours down the road in Winter Park, Florida.  We have exchanged some emails and I am hopeful that we will be able to work together to design an ideal system for my balcony.  I am even more hopeful that he will quote me a reasonable price to pretty much put it all together so that I can just load it up in the trunk of my car, drive it back to Jacksonville and put it together on my patio.

Anyway...here is what I am starting with: