Feedbag Farms Aquaponics Ecosystems are fabricated using recycled (while still Food Grade) materials to the greatest degree possible. Our systems tend to utilize both the wet-film media bed as well as vertical aeroponic (“rain”) methods, in order to maximize plant production in available square footage. These hybrid designs provide for lighter weight, increased plant diversity, simplicity of maintenance and extended growing season. Whenever practical, and if desired, electrical components such as pumps, fans and auxiliary lighting are designed to use photoelectric solar panels as a primary power source.
How we do it
Feed Bag Farms uses multiple Hydroculture methods of proven farming techniques originally developed in the USA where luxury levels of essential organic minerals and enzymes are provided to plants in combination with a select range of living microbes and bacteria that are normally found in only the healthiest of farming soils. The result is plants having truly optimum growing conditions and in return producing harvests that have the maximum nutritional and flavor potential for our natural health and wellbeing.
In recent years, nutritional science has found that high nitrate and low mineral levels in the human body are a major cause of many health problems, including many mental and cardio vascular diseases. Unfortunately, food with high nitrate levels and low mineral content is a common result of modern farming methods in use since the 1950s in both open-field and hydroponic horticulture.
How It Works
While it all sounds very technical, the science behind the types of Hydroculture offered by Feed Bag farms is quite simple.
The Feed Bag Farms Hydroculture project is based on work over the last four years in The Northern Virginia, Piedmont region. In response to the lack of access to high quality healthy foods, FBF’s is empowering the Piedmont region to create a self-sustaining local food system through three main avenues: food production through backyard gardens and urban farms; food distribution through a local neighborhood marketplace; and value-added processing via guaranteed resale’s via FBF’s distribution chain.
All Feed Bag Farms Hydroculture systems are soil-less. It performs well for green leafy plants, and does so by using fish feed and fish urine as a source of nutrient inputs. It does not, however, do so well for fruiting or heavy feeding vegetables and herbs. That’s due to the challenge in simultaneously optimizing the conditions for plants and fish, which have different environmental needs. Fish like alkaline water, plants need more acidic. More potassium and phosphorus is needed than that which is produced from the fish urine in the alkaline pH environment. And it’s difficult to regulate concentration of fish urine nutrients to ideally satisfy plant needs through different stages of growth.