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What Are The Benefits To Grow Your Own Food With Aquaponics System?

Published May 15, 2023

Whether you use an aquaponics system, an indoor smart garden, have an outdoor garden, or a few plants on your windowsill, there are endless benefits and ways to produce your own plants.

Aquaponic systems provide fresh, organic, pesticide-free produce for your whole family, with minimal space and maintenance required. Plus, growing your own food reduces your environmental impact by having your crops directly at home, with no intermediary.

Let’s get into why gardening will significantly benefit your quality of life, health, help you save money, and mitigate climate change with an aquaponics system!

In this article, we will cover the following:

What is an aquaponics system;
Benefits of growing your own food;
Benefits of using an aquaponics system for your home garden;
Environmental and health advantages.

What Is An Aquaponics System?

An aquaponics system is a fascinating innovation in the world of agriculture. This method of growing is actually an ancient Indigenous technology utilized for thousands of years from the Americas to Asia.

It is the incredible combination of hydroponics (growing plants without soil, usually in water with added nutrients) and aquaculture (the cultivation of fish and other aquatic animals).

Those systems don’t require a lot of space and are therefore great in small places, or if you don’t have the luxury of having your own garden outside.

Aquaponic systems marry these two farming modalities into one closed loop, recirculating environment, using the nutrient film technique (NFT) to get all the necessary nutrients to the plants through a water flow.

A symbiotic relationship occurs in an aquaponics system where the fish waste, collected in a fish tank, produces nitrogen that is fed to plants that are placed above the tank, via the water flow, delivering crucial nutrients, like nitrifying bacteria, that ultimately help produce healthy vegetables.

With aquaponics, the roots of the plants absorb the nutrients from the nitrogen-rich fish waste, and in return, the plant’s roots act as a filtration system and clean the water to help the fish thrive.

It is a beautiful, mutually beneficial relationship that provides both healthy plants and healthy fish without ever having to add additional nutrients or fertilizers to the plants.

Benefits of Growing Your Own Food with an Aquaponics System

There are so many benefits associated with producing your own food with an aquaponics system.

For one, you never have to deal with messy soil, as this system only uses water to grow plants. You can cut costs and time by not having to water each plant one by one or dealing with pesky weeds and setting up a closed-loop system that essentially takes care of itself with minimal effort on your behalf.

1. Eat healthier produce, reduce your environmental impact

Another huge benefit is that by growing your own food with aquaponics systems, you are significantly cutting down your carbon footprint and environmental impact.

Industrial farming is one of the top contributors to climate change. If everyone could get an aquaponic system and harvest their own produce at home, it would have an enormous impact on the health of our planet.

Additionally, most traditionally farmed culture, even if it is organic, is seriously lacking in nutrients due to mass production and inattention to soil health.

Reclaim your health, and your planet’s, by harvesting your own nutrient-dense food and cutting down on your carbon footprint with aquaponic systems!

3. Grow food year-round

An aquaponics system allows you to grow food year-round without worrying about varying temperatures or other environmental factors.

Plus, when produce isn’t in season at your local grocery store, you have the unique ability to get any crop you please with an indoor aquaponics system.

You can even harvest flowers for those gloomy winter days when you could use a burst of sunshine!

5. Never worry about buying soil or fertilizers again!

An additional cost that’s often involved in traditional gardening are fertilizers, compost, soil, etc. With an aquaponics system, your vegetables have all the nutrients and food they need from the fish waste.

Even just growing hydroponically in water, you can feed your plants through the water, which is much easier than applying fertilizer to soil and ensures an even spread of nutrients.

Soil can also be a hassle to deal with. It can be expensive, messy, and can often become infested with weeds which ultimately means you will spend a lot more time maintaining your garden and trying to keep the weeds at bay. It’s not a problem anymore with revolutionary systems such as aquaponics!

An aquaponic system also eliminates dealing with the heavy lifting of bags of soil, compost, digging, etc.

It is a more accessible form of home gardening for those who are not able to handle the heavy lifting and leg work that comes with a traditional soil-based outdoor garden.

2. Grow tons of food with limited space

Using aquaponic systems is excellent for people who do not have tons of space to work with. All you need is space for a small fish tank and an indoor smart garden.

Growing your own food will significantly impact your health by having access to organic, fresh, nutrient-rich produce that you can’t get at the grocery store.

There are plenty of ways to harvest your own vegetables, but the easiest way to do it with limited space is to use an aquaponics system or smart indoor garden system!

4. Cut out toxic chemicals and pesticides

When you grow food using an aquaponic system, you don’t have to worry about using pesticides or other toxic chemicals, as they have devastating effects on both the plants and the fish.

Pesticides can kill the fish, significantly reduce the nutritional value of food, and add a number of toxic pollutants that are harmful to ingest.

Plus, you can cut costs, as using toxic chemicals and pesticides can get expensive.

In aquaponic systems, the plants benefit from the water, enhanced by fish waste, and the fish benefit from the water rejected by the plants. It is a wonderful way to watch the natural process of beneficial symbiosis take place in your very own home!

Discover More

Want Plant That Will Provide Multiple Harvests?

You can opt for over 25 varieties of leafy greens from our yCube portfolio if you prefer a plant that can offer multiple harvests rather than quick results. The choice is yours!

What kinds of plants can you grow with an indoor aquaponics system?

There are so many plants you can produce with an aquaponic system inside. On top of the large and common kinds of crops, you can also get rare varieties and try unique produce you can’t find in the grocery store!

Depending on your individual aquaponic system setup, the plants you can grow will vary.

However, for the most part, the plants that work best with an aquaponics system are the following:

Vegetables and leafy greens

Cut your grocery bill down significantly by growing your own vegetables and leafy greens in your aquaponic system!

You can grow salad greens like arugula, romaine, and many types of heirloom lettuce, kale, tomatoes, cucumbers, Swiss chard, bok choy, eggplant, cabbage, spinach, and watercress, to list a few.

Small root vegetables

Some small root vegetables you can easily grow with an aquaponics system are ginger, turnips, radishes, beets, carrots, and potatoes.

Microgreens

If you’ve never tried microgreens before, you are truly in for a treat. Easy to maintain in systems like aquaponics, microgreens are the immature seedlings of classic crops that you have probably tried in their mature stage, like arugula, beets, radishes, cucumber, alfalfa, celery, cabbage, sorrel, mustard, basil, etc.

They make an excellent addition to virtually any savory dish and add a burst of flavor, texture, and a significant amount of nutrients.

You can make any meal both more nutritious and gourmet with the addition of some nutrient-packed microgreens.

Fruiting plants

Yes. You can even grow fruits with an aquaponic system!

The must-have in aquaponics or an indoor smart garden is strawberries! These tiny adorable fruits love an aquaponics system and produce so much abundance due to their rapid growth.

You can also grow melons, pineapples, and even pomegranates!

What’s cooler than being able to eat your own homegrown pineapples, strawberries, and melons?!

Herbs and flowers

When you grow your own herbs, you can enjoy a plethora of benefits, such as making healing herbal teas, adding essential elements to certain dishes, and creating your own herbal spice blend!

Some popular choices for medicinal and culinary herbs are sage, basil, watercress, thyme, rosemary, chives, onions, garlic, cilantro, coriander, oregano, mint, chamomile, dill, parsley, and more.

Herbs can make or break some dishes and there is nothing like having your own fresh herbs to spice up your dishes and make some medicinal healing teas that you grew yourself in systems like aquaponics or hydroponics!

Meet our new

Microgreens

Now, choose between 7 different flavor-packed varieties.

SPICY BLEND

MILD BLEND

KALEFETTI

Start Your Aquaponics System With Gardyn

When it comes to systems like home indoor smart gardens and aquaponics, not all are created equally.

The best part of a good-quality, efficient, and smart indoor garden is that it requires minimum effort on your behalf.

Gardyn’s Home Kits are the way to go if you’re willing to grow your own plants easily inside your home.

Setting up your aquaponics system or indoor smart garden should be the most labor-intensive part. Once it’s set up, it should pretty much be a self-sustaining system. All you need to do is input the plants and monitor them occasionally to see how they are doing.

The Garden Home Kit 3.0 is the single most advanced, done-for-you indoor smart garden you can find!

Equipped with cameras that monitor your plants to ensure success, temperature regulation, an AI assistant that walks you through each step of the growing process, a self-sustaining system, and a super easy setup, the Garden Home Kit is the easiest way to grow your own organic, nutrient-rich food at home!

Get ready to feed your family healthier, nutrient-rich food, cultivate a connection with the food that sustains you, and save tons of money on your grocery list by choosing our hydroponic systems! It’s time to start your Gardyning journey today.

See how Gardyn’s innovations can put you on the right path to nutritional, delicious, and sustainable food.

Start to Harvest Your Microgreens Indoors Today!

For those who own a Gardyn Sprout Nursery

$54.99

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$24.99 - $49.99

Start to Harvest Your Microgreens Indoors Today!

For those who own a Gardyn Sprout Nursery

Feel good about growing microgreens indoors using our Gardyn Microgreens Complete Kit. Skip the hassle of buying all the separate materials, and order your complete kit today! You will be crafting nutrient-rich, gourmet, delicious meals in no time and enjoying the fruits of your (minimal) labor!

Large Grow Pack

$54.99