Aquaponics combines hydroponics (or water-based planting) and aquaculture (fish cultivation):
What feeds his winter crop of lettuce is recirculating water from the 150-gallon fish tank and the waste generated by his 20 jumbo goldfish. Wastewater is what fertilizes the 27 strawberry plants from last summer, too. They occupy little cubbies in a seven-foot-tall PVC pipe. When the temperature begins to climb in the spring, he will plant the rest of the gravel containers with beans, peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers — all the things many other gardeners grow outside.In here, though, the yields are otherworldly. “We actually kept a tally of how many cherry tomatoes we grew,” Mr. Torcellini said of last summer’s crop. “And from one plant, it was 347.” A trio of cucumber plants threw off 175 cukes.
A low-tech, low-cost barrel-ponics system can be built out of three 55-gallon barrels, a pump, a wooden frame and some off-the-shelf hardware:
One barrel, which sits on the ground, holds the fish. A second — split in half and filled with gravel — holds the plants. The final barrel, a storage or flush tank, perches above the other two like a toilet tank. The effluent-rich water that flows from one receptacle to the next is the life of the system, flooding the plants with nutrients and then trickling back into the fish tank.