A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

The raft method makes a mobile farm

Since the raft method allows roots to grow into column of water instead of medium,everything is easily movable. This is a HUGE advantage for farm management. Small plants can be spaced very closely and be spread out as they need more space. This maximizes space which is important. Small plants can be placed at one end of a trough and mature plants can be harvested from the opposite end. The plants can always be moving toward a harvest end. This ability makes for very efficient farming and is kind of like a growing conveyor belt.

These are seedlings in a nursery trough. The plants in the foreground are ready for spreading out.

My grow out troughs. I harvest at the same end of all 4 troughs. The harvest end is the closest to my precessing area.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Margaret on December 13, 2010 at 10:22am

What a great set up? How did you get started?

Permalink Reply by Bill Anderson on December 13, 2010 at 2:20pm

yep, need specifics, location or growing zone, history of the farm, Fish type and amount, viability to pay off mortgage (lol), etc... And of course, more pics.

From what I can see, looks good.

Permalink Reply by David Hart on December 13, 2010 at 2:57pm

Chris has almost 80 pictures on 'his page'. An easy way to get to it, is by clicking on his name, near the top of this page :-)

Permalink Reply by Bill Anderson on December 13, 2010 at 5:59pm

Aha, I see how this forum thing works now. Thank you. Chris, thanks for posting so many pics, good stuff.

David Hart said:

Chris has almost 80 pictures on 'his page'. An easy way to get to it, is by clicking on his name, near the top of this page :-)

Permalink Reply by Chris Smith on December 13, 2010 at 11:50pm

I got started by goint to a farm tour at Friendly Aquaponics. My wife looked at me and said "We can do this". That was all it took. I began designing a system on the drive home. Within 2 months we had plants growing. My systems are all based on Friendlies design but are evolving.

Margaret said:

What a great set up? How did you get started?

Permalink Reply by Chris Smith on December 14, 2010 at 12:00am

Thanks for the help!

David Hart said:

Chris has almost 80 pictures on 'his page'. An easy way to get to it, is by clicking on his name, near the top of this page :-)

Permalink Reply by David Hart on December 14, 2010 at 12:52am

Your welcome... :-)

Thanks for sharing all the experiance !

Chris Smith said:

Thanks for the help!

David Hart said:

Chris has almost 80 pictures on 'his page'. An easy way to get to it, is by clicking on his name, near the top of this page :-)