Aquaponics is similar to hydroponics, but makes use of fish to create fertilizer-rich (fish waste 💩) water for the plants to thrive. In turn, the plants help clean the water for the fish.

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You can put the pumps and fish feeders on a timer to automate them, and even use fish types people eat for fish farming.

My only ask is that you remember to make the tank nice for the fish. A stressed fish is a dead fish, and way too many aquaponic users just throw a bunch of fish in an empty(no stimulation) and overcrowded tank.

The below videos talk about using the systems to grow food in urban spaces.

https://youtu.be/9ZLDDhFLWCY >“Ever heard of aquaponics? In urban areas, aquaponics helps combat barriers that come with farming in cities, like lack of access to space. “

https://youtu.be/_YmkWODcqbA >“There are so many barriers in place when it comes to growing food in cities, but education and lack of access to space are the hardest to overcome. Yemi Amu has dedicated her life as a farmer to solving this problem, by starting the only Aquaponics farm in NYC. Oko Farms in Brooklyn is both a working farm which provides fresh food to surrounding neighborhoods, while also actively engaging the public in education on how to grow food for yourself in urban environments.”

https://youtu.be/hKWREFjNWX4 >"What's up everyone, in this video i build part 1 of an indoor DIY aquaponics system for my 10 gallon fish tank! I have been interested in aquaponics for a while now and know i wanted to build an indoor DIY aquaponics system early on when i saw the price of most retail aquaponics kits. This DIY aquaponics system was built using all materials found either on Amazon or at local hardware stores and came in under $50 total! "

>"Recent research has shown that red nets are more effective than black or white nets in preventing onion thrip damage to crops, reducing the reliance on harmful chemical pesticides by up to 50%. This approach supports sustainable farming by minimizing environmental impact."

From this post: https://scitechdaily.com/the-science-behind-red-nets-a-new-dawn-in-eco-friendly-farming/

If you are looking for a way to both conserve water but also have a healthy garden, an Olla might help.

While surface watering, some of the water will be lost to evaporation, and you may not get the soil damp enough to encourage the roots to spread deeper.

This is when the Olla becomes helpful; made from porous clay, this pottery can be filled with water, which it will then gradually seep into the surrounding soil. While most of it is burred, enough of the neck is out of the soil to fill it.

You can make your own for your outdoor garden using terracotta pots and water-proof adhesive. Simply glue two pots together, and fill the hole on one side. When the glue is set, just bury the pots (with the unfilled hole up), fill with water, and cover the hole with a saucer, cork, or rock.

If, however, you only have indoor plants, you have an option, too! You can get terracotta watering spikes that work in a similar way, but a glass bottle fills it.

While they might not be suitable for all plants, for many plants they are suitable, and can help with your gardening chores.

While they might not be suitable for all plants(such as plants that prefer dry soil), for many, they are.

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Images from Permaculture Research Institute

The Science Behind It Projects

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15830343

> Our retention pond in our neighborhood has a lot of algae and problematic plant growth due to the surrounding farms and lawn runoff, so we're experimenting with a floating island to pull nutrients out before they can cause problems. This will also provide some interesting flowering plants, and more fish habitats. > > Will be an interesting experiment to see what survives and what does poorly. > > Zinnias, sunflowers, marigolds, and a few others are in net pots, inserted into cutouts in EVA foam mats. > > Design is from: > http://www.beemats.com/ > > More reading: > https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/flowers-grown-floating-on-polluted-waterways-can-help-clean-up-nutrient-runoff/ > > https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666765723000637?via%3Dihub >

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/9575309

> Very cool project and glad to see it’s still going strong. Fun fact: I actually helped plant some of the very first trees here when it was just an empty field.

Canonical YouTube link

Apparently it also integrates with Home Assistant: https://github.com/vinteo/hass-opensprinkler

At the height of the pandemic, farmers were forced to dump millions of pounds of perfectly edible produce. Four years later, they still need help with their surpluses.

Hey y'all,

I stumbled across this free extensive course on permaculture by Oregon state university on YouTube. Thought y'all might be interested.

I've been working on the photobash I posted about apparently two months ago (jeez) and I think I'm getting close to being able to stop working on layout and start working on details. The problem is that the scope of this scene involves a lot of stuff, like agroforestry, that I only read about for making this picture, so I know I don't know enough to render it accurately.

So I thought I'd post again and basically ask what did I mess up? I haven't really started locking stuff down yet so it's a good time to make changes.

The basic goal was to show a small, dense village surrounded by different types of agroforestry, power generation, and agriculture. I'm happy to identify anything that's unclear

I'm especially interested in info on the overall layout. Like, I haven't settled yet on where in the dirt patch the greenhouses will go, and I'd like to add a centralized composting facility, wastewater treatment, possibly some animal barns/grazing areas, possibly a grove of coppiced trees for wood gas/biochar. I'll be adding more houses to both the village proper and the outskirts of the fields in some places.

I'm just a guy who's okay at cutting up photos, so any advice on making the farming more practical/realistic would be a huge help.

>Glyphosate has proved divisive since the World Health Organization’s cancer research agency concluded in 2015 that it was probably carcinogenic to humans. Other agencies around the world, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and EU agencies, have classified it as non-carcinogenic. > >The European Commission said on Thursday it would renew glyphosate’s approval based on European Food Agency and European Chemicals Agency safety assessments and subject to new conditions and restrictions, such as maximum application rates.

Unfortunately, this article forgot to mention that some national agencies of countries have opposite conclusions such the french agency "Inserm"...

Glyphosate: Europe divided by the world's most widely used pesticide, Published on 12/10/2023 The risks

>Environmental groups have called EFSA's assessment "shocking". > >"In our view, EFSA has downplayed the existing evidence from animal and epidemiological studies on the effects of glyphosate, which can cause DNA damage in certain organisms," says Gergely Simon. "This indicates that glyphosate can cause cancer. We therefore believe that, in line with international guidelines from the US EPA, glyphosate should be classified as carcinogenic, which has already been done by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and also by France's National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm). They have all concluded that, based on the available evidence, there is a probable link between exposure to glyphosate and the development of cancer". > >EFSA, for its part, responded that "data gaps are mentioned" in their report, "either as questions that could not be completely answered or as open questions." > >The three questions that could not be finalised relate to the assessment of one of the impurities present in glyphosate, the dietary risk assessment for consumers and the risk assessment for aquatic plants. "Overall, the information available does not allow definitive conclusions to be drawn regarding this aspect of the risk assessment," EFSA told Euronews. > >Gergely Simon stresses that the risks should not be underestimated under any circumstances. "Numerous studies show that exposure to glyphosate can be linked to both autism in children and Parkinson's disease. We therefore believe that the fact that EFSA has stated that there is no standardised protocol for drawing conclusions on the neurotoxicity of glyphosate should be a critical area of concern, which would mean that glyphosate could not be authorised as it currently is," he emphasises

>"In addition, there is a large body of alarming evidence about the destructive effects of glyphosate on the microbiome, as glyphosate is both a herbicide and an antibiotic. It is primarily used, for example, to alter the soil microbiome, but also the human gut microbiome. We know that there are many health risks associated with the destruction of the microbiome. Finally, EFSA has confirmed that glyphosate has the potential to cause endocrine disruption at doses considered safe in the European Union", adds the PAN Europe representative. > >"There are no internationally recognised guidelines for assessing the risks associated with the microbiome in the field of pesticides. Further research is needed". > >Glyphosate EU, the group of companies in favour of renewing the authorisation of glyphosate in Europe, says: "All allegations have been raised on several occasions and have been dealt with by the regulatory authorities, in Europe and throughout the world. This is yet another attempt by non-governmental organisations to discredit the most comprehensive scientific dossier presented in the application for renewal of EU approval for glyphosate, and to undermine confidence in the regulatory authorities in order to prevent the renewal of approval for glyphosate in the EU". Opposing countries > >Germany has argued in favour of abandoning glyphosate in the European Union. In September 2023, at the end of a meeting between representatives of the 27 member states to discuss the European Commission's proposal, the German agriculture minister warned of the threats to biodiversity and stressed the need for a coordinated phase-out of glyphosate at European level, while warning of uneven levels of protection within the EU. > >In 2021, the German government announced its decision to withdraw glyphosate from the market by the end of 2023. The country is therefore expected to vote against renewing the authorisation of this herbicide within the EU at the vote scheduled for 13 October. > >France, for its part, had also tried to adopt restrictive measures with regard to glyphosate. In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron announced his commitment to completely ban glyphosate in France before 2021.

This time the French's government (kind of the same that the one in 2017) was in favour of glyphosate's use. However since our national agency has published studies that are not in favour of its use, our government chose to not participate in the vote in order to avoid having to justify a decision against our national agency and in the same time avoiding to go against the authorisation's renewal.

Some midwestern fields are still bordered by hedgerows, but most US farmers don't plant hedgerows and are skeptical of their benefits, worrying that they might introduce pests or predators to their farmland.

North American farmers are also loath to reduce the size of their crop-producing land by adding a living border or to deal with potential difficulties when the hedgerows require maintenance.

Even in the United Kingdom, hedgerows experienced a downturn in popularity as farmers moved towards more heavy equipment for working their fields and maintaining their boundaries.

While US farmers have been slower to embrace hedgerows for their ecological benefits, the science of hedgerows as natural havens has become inarguable.

A farmer looking to embrace the benefits of hedgerows as field boundaries first has to identify what kind of boundary they need.

https://inv.vern.cc/watch?v=WoprVhpOKIk - Hedging (1942)

I'd read you could transplant them in the fall, after they've died back a bit but before the ground freezes. I finally dug a few out of two local groves and it turns out they're different varieties! My neighbor gave me the okay to plant them (I've been helping him replace his lawn with local plants, and we're emphasizing local food plants in the back). I know they can take over a space a bit, but he seems excited at the idea. He has just about the only bees I've seen in our neighborhood, so he's happy to give them more flowers. And if the sunchokes go too crazy I have a friend who knows how to cook them.

Tucked one in to a sunny spot where someone clearcut along a bike path too. Maybe it'll take off. I've been thinking about trying a little guerilla forest gardening along the path, perhaps starting with edible mushrooms next. I guess they make plugs - you drill holes in dead logs, tuck the mushroom plug in, and you get mushrooms. We'll see.