2700 Sq.Ft Grow Bed Construction
To jump start the plants and vegetables in the system, we decided to go with flood and drain grow beds initially and expand it to various techniques like dutch bucket, blue drums , NFT, PVC, etc both vertical and horizontal setups in the near future. We constructed twelve 170 square foot and fourteen 50 square foot grow beds with 18 inch deep.
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| Grow beds are constructed on the sides of the fish ponds |
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| Side walls are solid blocks and the base is 2 inch concrete. |
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| We made sure the water back from the grow beds are spread across the pond as much possible |
Water from the pond is taken to swirl filters located at 30 foot above the ground and then distributed to all these 26 grow beds, gate value is used on all the water outlets to adjust and control the flow to the beds. We have 6 1.5 hp motors inside the pond and 2 motors are run in parallel at any given time, this makes sure all the small grow beds gets 4 breathing under one hour and the big ones takes about 3 breathing under two hours. Please don;t panic or get surprised, 8 breathing a day seems to be quite alright for the larger grow beds. Grow beds are flooded and drained from sun rise through sun set. Ill show you the plants later in the blog.
10 inches of the grow beds are filled with 4 varieties of crushed stones (used for laying roads). 1,5", 1", 3/4" and 1/2" inch stones are filled at 2.5" deep layers each. Remaining 8" are filled with 1/4" stones. Water in the beds are free flowing and lots of voids for aeration and the bacteria to grow and do the nitrification process.
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