I arrived in Denver on Frontier Airlines Saturday night.. great flight. I found my way to the baggage collection via a driver-less electric train that takes you from one side of the terminal complex to the other.
Driverless train to baggage collection.
What a novel idea. I imagined these devices in my home city of Brisbane. A great public transport method.
I had not made definite arrangements with Sylvia Bernstein for a meeting point, so the inevitable happened. Sylvia was waiting for me in one place while I was somewhere else. My mobile (cell) phone, that I had been assured by Telstra would work USA wide, worked well in California but not in Denver.
I was about to catch a cab to a hotel somewhere for the night when Sylvia located me. Good work Sylvia!
Imagine how much that cab ride would have cost, a foreigner at an airport asking to be taken to a hotel somewhere. The cabbie would have thought he had struck gold!
Next morning up early to get to the Denver Botanical Gardens venue for the seminar 9:00am start. A wonderful group of people had assembled from Denver, Boulder and nearby towns. Some folk had travelled in from out of state. I must say that I found everyone I met to be warm and friendly. A very enjoyable experience.
During Q & A the issue of seasonal/climate variations in operating Aquaponics systems was frequently raised.
I have to admit, I had no idea as to the difficulty of year round gardening in climates where there are severe winters and very definite seasonality. (compared to our Australian climate) Only our most southern island state of Tasmania would have similar winter temperatures and climate, as is experienced in much of central and northern USA.
Here in Southern Queensland we can grow all year round, and we can run our Aquaponics systems outdoors if we wish. I must add that better results are obtained when the system is in a greenhouse of some sort. It protects the system from heavy downpours and assists in pest and bug control.
In much of the US gardens need to be protected from deer, raccoons, and even bears.
Deer in the streets
(I spotted deer wandering the streets of Boulder)
Some participants talked of an inner wire fence around their garden with an electric fence perimeter to keep the animals at bay.
As is always the case, I came away from the seminar having gained much new knowledge from the participants.
In order to have a year round Aquaponics garden Sylvia has designed her AquaBundance
The Aquabundance Aquaponics System
system to be able to be easily moved indoors in winter. The system will wheel through a standard home door, out onto the patio for summer and indoors for winter.
This is a very important design criteria. The cost of building a suitable greenhouse in those colder climes is very high and in many cases put a productive Aquaponics system out of the reach of many folk.
Indoors the system is operated under suitable grow lights. Sylvia gave a very informative lecture on grow lights at our Denver seminar. She demonstrated several types of grow lights even including the latest in LED lighting. Sylvia explained how supplemental lighting can be used to good effect during the transition months of Fall and Spring. The ability of the light type to penetrate and provide the correct light spectrum, are important considerations.
To build a suitable greenhouse that is capable of providing winter grow conditions is a very expensive exercise. This expense limits the entry of many folk into home food production.
The AquaBundance moveable system provides a meaningful entry into Aquaponic
Aquabundance on show.
gardening. Sylvia Bernstein has come up with a real winner here. There has been a lot of very thoughtful design in this very functional kit.
In Denver I met with the folk from Colorado Aquaponics. They are putting together a facility in an abandoned warehouse to provide food and employment in some of the less privileged areas o town.
Colorado Aquaponics group.
A very enthusiastic group . I really admire people who get involved in this type of community activity. Take a look at the Colorado Aquaponics Blog.
Here is another blog about our seminar in Denver. “The Expensive Tomato“
Happy to hear your visit here to Denver went well. Unfortunately due to a work emergency I was unable to attend.
I too have had many concerns regarding operating a system through the winter months. I have just about completed setting up my test system after a number of hurdles… mainly the moving of the chickens to a new area . who would have thought moving them 30 yard would have provided easy access to the hawks..either way chicken have been moved back and wife is now happy. The last item is to attach the Hoop House to the side of the barn, get some cold season veggies started and buy some Trout. I am posting the progress under ColoradoFish.
Also, thanks for the local links. I will be contacting the Denver group to see if they could use an extra set of hands.
Be well.
ColoradoFish
I stumbled upon the idea of aquaponics after stumbling on yet another website — http://www.gardenpool.org.
I am now very much interested in trying to make aquaponoics work for us. Trouble is, hubby has many reservations so we’re not quite on the same page yet.
We bought a foreclosed home with an empty and neglected swimming pool. We would never use the pool, anyway — our grankids live hundreds of miles away and, at best, only get here once a year for a few days.
Anyway, now I’d like to marry the concept of using the pool (as in gardenpool.org) and aquaponics as Murray describes by using the deep end of the pool for fish, putting grow beds around the pool edge and inside, and covering with a greenhouse covering. We have no homeowner covenants or city ordinances to worry about – we live in the country.
Trouble is, our winters can get very cold (zero, sometimes below. Average 40 though.) And, our summers can get quite warm for a month or so (high nineties to 100+ for a month or so.)
If anyone else is doing this, or thinking about it – I’d like to learn from your successes and mistakes.
At the very least, we should be able to double our growing season from late May through Oct. 1 (4 months) to March through December (9-10 months)
Oops – forgot what I really started to ask
I’d like to purchase the membership and some videos – but would appreciate knowing if they could be appropriate for, or apply to, Pacific Northwest, USA conditions.
Hi Pat, We have loads of folk in all parts of the USA and Canada participating in Aquaponics. It can be done in any climate with equipment such as a greenhouse that is appropriate for your location. The information in our DVD’s is not location specific and cannot be really, but you will find the information invaluable for your Aquaponic journey.
It would be wise to join our Forum here http://www.aquaponics.net.au/forum and become a member of this blog.
We have dozens of members on our forum from the USA and Canada.
You will be able to converse with them for location specific information.
The swimming pool idea can be done and done successfully. On our first DVD “Aquaponics Made Easy” we caution against a simplistic approach but the method you speak of has been done very successfully. A new “Geoff Lawton” Permaculture DVD coming out soon features a backyard Permaculture build that incorporates some of our equipment that has been used to convert a swimming pool and surrounds very successfully. (another DVD from ECO Films)
You will need appropriate greenhouse materials as stated earlier on another comment of yours.