Godney Aquaponics


Godney Aquaponics
In the village of Godney, with the beautiful back drop of the Glastonbury Tor, Melv and Sal are embarking on a new venture. Fed up with the poor quality of veg in the shops, they have the ambition to set up an aquaponics system to provide fresh vegetables and salad crops for the village, and with a little help from their hens a supply of fresh free range eggs too.


What is Aquaponics??


What is Aquaponics??
Aquaponics is a sustainable method of producing quality food with minimal external inputs. It is a system that combines conventional aquaculture (e.g. fish in tanks) with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment. Water from the aquaculture system is fed to the hydroponic system where the by-products are broken down and are utilised by the plants as nutrients, and the water is then re-circulated back to the aquaculture system.


Monday, 24 August 2020

Fruiting for four

 I don't mind admitting that I am a bit of a fruit addict, so you could say I am very much in the right job. However looking back this year to the time when the country went into a bit of a blind panic and we entered into lock down, Melv and I were thinking about ways to extend the fruit season to keep my addiction fed without having to frequent the supermarket. 

One idea was to use blue water barrels for our strawberries, for which we had everything we needed, (the barrels originally bought for the aquaponics, currently on the back burner), homemade compost and the strawberry plants from last year.

All we needed was a few hours to get them filled up, which took no time a at all, and after just a few weeks we were rewarded with the first flowers and small fruits.

These turned into be a great success and at the beginning of May - the 2nd, I harvested our first strawberry. Well now nearly 5 months on I can honestly say I have had strawberries for lunch every day - provided from 4 barrels of assorted varieties. Even now the berries are to be admired and taste delicious.

And more to the point the plants are still producing and there is still more to come.
Through the season, my lunch fruit bowl hasn't just been filled with strawberries, it has had black currants and red currants for company...
However, the other stars of the fruit assemblage have to be the raspberries, like the strawberries they have a long fruiting season. We have a number of different varieties that helps to extend this, for example the Tulameen fruit early...
Compared to the latest fruiting variety that we have - given to us by a friend and of an unknown type - but very tasty and very productive.
We also have a rather special variety, popular with The Sheppey Inn, as a way to introduce a bit of intrigue and surprise to their desert menu - the All Gold.
And the added bonus is that unlike many quirky fruit and vegetables we have tried to grow, they not only look good to help satisfy my lunchtime addiction, they also taste really good - what a treat.
at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Home grown

Now normally with our horticultural hats on when we talk about home grown we are refering to vegetables. But for the first time since we hav...

  • Compost is key
      Although we have been making our own compost in conventional bays for some time now, which Melv increased the size of just recently, these...
  • Home grown
    Now normally with our horticultural hats on when we talk about home grown we are refering to vegetables. But for the first time since we hav...
  • Learning the hard way - a silent destroyer
    Neither of us have either worried about learning through trial and error, after all that is often the only way to learn when you are doing s...