A Chicken In Every Pot

“A Chicken In Every Pot” is a political quotation that I can remember from the 1930’s. Many attribute this quote to Herbert Hover President at the beginning of the 1930’s. At that time I didn’t know what they were talking about. Hover never used the phrase, but the Republican Party did. When tracked down you will find that the origin of the phrrase was from Henry IV of France supposedly wished that each of his peasants would enjoy “a chicken in his pot every Sunday.”

What does this all have to do with anything? Our President Obama is using his wife to show how the nation should have a garden so that our people might enjoy a chicken in every pot on Sunday. This I think is very nice, however there is a new scientifically developed by our universities a new method of gardening that will increase your yeild by ten times. At the same time it will decrease the water requirement by 70%. When you consider that it is really mind boggeling if it can be applied world wide. The nice thing about it is that it can be done on a world wide basis. However it will take a lot of education for people to do it right. What I am talking about is aquaponic gardening. That’s right, raising fish and plants in your garden.

This aquaponic system is a closed loop for the water and only requires adding water as the amount of water in the loop diminishes. The plants are grown on tables in a grow medium of gravel or other available products. The fish are grown in a separate fish tank. The fish tank and the grow tables are plumbed with tubing to circulate the water from the fish tanks to the plant tables and back to the fish tanks. The solid fish waste is filtered out and the chemical waste is nuteralized for the plants which use the nutrient rich water.

Some people have used animal manure to feed the fish but this has not proven successful because of the dangerous and undesirable pathogens introduced into the aquaponics system. This could become a cause of the spread of disease and pandemics. This problem should be remedied from the start of developing your own aquaponic gardening system.

The only negative to this system is that it requires daily monitoring. That monitoring is only about a 5 minute to a 15 minute check on equipment function and the testing of the water to maintain proper balance for the fish and for the plants. Consider the trade off, no more weeding, Halleluiah! Believe me this aquaponics will save you time. However if you aren’t careful you will have much more harvest to manage and take care of and give away or sell.

Thank you for reading my blog. Brad Vigansky