Today we ate an amazing mixture of Mesclun and Lettuce from our aquaponic garden for the very first time, including Roxy, Pirat Butterhead, and Tin Tin Lettuce, and a High Mowing Mesclun Mix. We also added some strawberries and flowers that were grown with our Tilapia water. We never would have had such a wide variety of greens if we hadn’t grown them ourselves. What a delicious lunch!
Here is the Lettuce and Mesclun right after we took it out of the system…
Here they are growing with all of the other veggies…
Here are some beans, peas, flowers, and other plants…and our Akita.
This bean plant has reached the top of the trellis and is searching for something else to climb…
Here are some bean, squash, and tomato plants that are growing near the fish tank…
We are very excited that the squash have added some color to the garden…
While the potatoes are not part of the system, we have been watering them with Tilapia water. It’s time to cut the bottom out of a couple of buckets and add some more dirt…
Our aquaponic chickens have a new home in our backyard, so we’ll be adding another post with lots of photos very soon.
Aquaponic Family 
Everything is growing so fast and it all looks great! It sure makes it worth all of the effort when you start to enjoy the fruits of your labor – literally! Good job.
So true…after so much hard work, that salad almost melted in my mouth.
Wow Fantastic! Now I can’t wait to get my garden planted in the next couple of weeks here in Canada….. actually I ate some coldframe lettuce yesterday.
Your garden looks SO yummy…..
Grammom, your fresh lettuce must have been deliciously cold with all that snow on the ground. I really missed the snow this year, but am so thankful for the warm Spring.
It all looks wonderful!
Thanks Jewels! It sure tasted wonderful 🙂
What a great first harvest. Well done. I hope you have lots of bees around to pollinate your squash (is that what I would call pumpkin, or zucchini or maybe button squash. I’m not sure but I think we use different terms in Australia). I had trouble getting full sized vegetables because of poor pollination.
Thanks Barbara!
Hmmm, I haven’t seen many bees lately. Now you’ve got me wondering if we should get some brushes and start pollinating some of those flowers.
I’m no expert, but Zucchini is usually green and long, similar in appearance to a cucumber. Summer Squash is usually yellow and crooked and fatter at one end. Winter Squash is usually larger than Zucchini and Summer Squash.
I probably got that all mixed up, so here are some photos from one of the companies we bought our seeds from…
http://www.highmowingseeds.com/organic-summer-squash-seeds.html
http://www.highmowingseeds.com/organic-winter-squash-seeds.html
http://www.highmowingseeds.com/organic-pumpkin-seeds.html
Thanks for the pictures, you’re winter squash is definitely what we would call a pumpkin. The first picture – what you called summer squash – I’m not all that familiar with. Going by what I read we would also call them summer squash or yellow zucchini. I do get a bit confused about these vegetables when I read American blogs. Thanks for clarifying for me. Oh and it might be worth getting the brushes onto at least some of your flowers. Or perhaps try Liz’s method http://suburbantomato.com/2012/01/the-mechanics-of-reproduction-hand-pollinating-pumpkins/.
Most squash family flowers look the same: zucchini and winter squash and pumpkin. I grow all of them in my garden.
Looks awesome!
Thanks! It sure tasted awesome too. And I already feel healthier 🙂
Here in the crazy climate of the UK we’ve had rain of biblical proportions. However, my ‘cut and come again’ lettuce have just germinated. Your photos are giving me something to look forward to, your lettuce look great!
Can you send some of that rain over here? Our trees would appreciate some of that moisture.
It’s funny that you mentioned your “cut and come again” lettuce, because we cut our lettuce and mesclun at the top of the net pots and put the pots back in the rafts to see if they’ll regrow. Hopefully we’ll both be eating our home-grown salads soon.
They should come back two more times if you don’t cut too close to the centre, and not too low down, but experience will tell!
I can’t believe how fast everything has grown! That lettuce makes me crave a bowl this minute. I am finding it so hard to wait planting ours.
I’m so happy how well everything worked out for you!
Thank you!
I would share some of ours with you, but you might not want to eat it by the time it arrived. 🙂
Everything looks so wonderful and tasty!! I’m impressed with how much progress you have made in such a short time!! 🙂
Awesome harvest there! It looks like everything is growing incredibly well and those strawberries look amazing. I totally agree with you about how you probably wouldn’t have eaten as many greens if you didn’t grow them yourself. There is something about putting in a lot of effort that makes you feel guilty if you don’t use what you grow and you can only be the healthier for it 🙂
That is so exciting you guys! Congrats!
Very cool! Our veggies are still inside under the lights as up here in the Northeast we are still experiencing some frosts. On a good note the rhubarb is flourishing and the frost don’t seem to have harmed the the pear tree blossoms.
Congratulations on your harvest; looks wonderful!
Looking good!
Looks great, it’s fun to look at your harvest pics. Can’t wait until our stuff is ready!
Congratulations, what a great project!
Everything looks so healthy! Congrads!! Love the bean plant reaching for the sky. Is Jack hiding behind it? 🙂
WOW – everything looks GREAT and huge! My little green beans have barely just broken out of the bean pod and starting to shoot up onto the trellis. You’ve done really well – you should be proud!
I learned a trick growing potatoes in a bucket like you have. If you put the potato starts in the bucket with a small amount of dirt. And then when they start shooting up the green, leafy part, add more dirt right up to the bottom of their leaves. They will shoot up the green part more and you can add dirt. So you are building the dirt UP rather than them growing down. It’s pretty successful and a lot less work.
The garden looks great! My lettuce is behind yours, but I have Arugula out the wazoo. Time for some pesto-making! 🙂
Congratulations! Beautiful lettuce.
Beautiful, and mouth watering!
Everything looks really beautiful, guys, it’s inspiring. Thank you for sharing your experience with us.
Your garden looks wonderful! It’s amazing the size of the crop you can get out off a small space. I love the hydroponic idea. Thanks for stopping by my blog.
I absolutely love this way of gardening! Now do you have to use any fertilizer, or do the fish take care of that part?
The fish provide all the fertilizer the plants need, but we do add iron and potassium once in a while.
Im lovin what you are doing with this system, I’m looking in to setting up a system in a green house in my garden here in the south west of Devon in the uk, for me and the kids to play with and lern from all year round. The info iv got from your set up is the best iv come across keep up the good work, looking good all the best Carl
Thank you Carl!