Back to the Roots Aquaponics System

I am going to gush for a few moments, so you've been warned.

This company and this product are amazing! By that, I mean that if you like to grow your own food...you need to get one of these. If you're a homeschooler that wants to do a unit study on

1. Food production
2. Biology of plants
3. Biology of fish
4. Life skills of taking care of pet
5. Biology of bacteria
6. How fish poo feeds plants, or
7. How plants clean the water for fish

you need one of these too!

Do you sense my excitement yet?

Here's what has happened:

Back in June, our family visited The Simple Way in Philadelphia. One of the things I was most excited to see was their new aquaponics greenhouse. They had just hosted a workshop two weeks before we arrived but Dan from TSW graciously took some time out one day to give us a tour. The idea that an inner-city community could produce food from fish poo and give kids that rarely see grass a chance to taste fresh-off-the-vine tomatoes was something that my dreams are made of. And even though I sound melodramatic...I am not exaggerating. I have shared my patio gardening and the updated photos with you. This summer has also had me asking lots of questions about where I should focus my time and energy. Things like "What really gets me jazzed up and fuels me?" have been answered by two equally important ideas for me: I love to grow things and I love to share new ideas with people.

Now you understand the excitement, don't you?

My new aquaponics tank is both of these rolled into one!

I kept thinking I'd have to wait until we had a house someday to start one after the huge undertaking I saw in Philadelphia, but then a Facebook friend posted from a company she knows an indoor aquaponics system that was attractive...but not cheap. I couldn't even begin to approach the almost $400 price tag. Commercial systems range in the thousands!

So I literally googled "cheap aquaponics systems" and I was directed to Back to the Roots. This young start up has been selling grow your own mushroom kits for awhile and just launched their aquaponics tank this summer. For $59.99 this tank has everything you need except the fish to get started...and they even send you a $0.99 coupon for a fish at your local PetCo. With shipping (from California to Kentucky), I paid less than $75 for the whole system.

Oh...but wait...there's more! 

If you post a picture of your system up and running on their Facebook page, they will donate a system free to a school of your choosing. Read that again. It's just like Tom's Shoes. Buy one...and you're donating one. I haven't done this yet, because I want to find an urban school that would like to do this and then make the connection with Back To the Roots.

But here's how easy it is. I set the whole thing up in 1.5 hours...while I was making dinner too. Without that distraction, it probably would have taken about 45 minutes or so. I was concerned about water levels, because I just didn't see how it would work. I was wrong. In two days I had wheat grass sprouting, two days later, lettuce began to show up.

My water was cloudy for two days, but I knew this was because I probably didn't rinse the shale rocks enough. I didn't want to throw out all of the water and start again, so I took one of my Swiss Chard seedlings from outside, gently rinsed all of the dirt off of the roots, stuck it down in the rocks and in just a day and a half, the water was clear. 

We've named our new farming friend Ron...Ron Weasley to be exact, since he is a ginger and we are one Harry Potter crazy family. But I'm quickly becoming crazy about something more...growing our own food this winter inside. I've even been scheming how to rearrange our dining room to take advantage of a huge, full-sun window. My next step will be to make my own larger aquaponics system.

But for now, I'm content with Ron and his little garden. Check out the company. They will be launching in Whole Foods, Nordstrom and PetCo stores for the holidays. If you can help them out now by purchasing a system of your own, I'm sure they'd appreciate it. They included everything I needed as far as information in the kit and when I did have questions, found them readily accessible in their website's FAQ section...but the owners go so far as to send you their e-mail and phone numbers too because they want to work out any kinks before they go into stores. So far, I haven't found any kinks that need working out!