Mele Kalikimaka (Merry Christmas in Hawaiian)

Its that time of year again where it seems like there is never enough time to do everything that we need to do. With just 21 days left before Christmas, it’s a mad rush to try to get everything finished in time.

Along with Christmas, its also the time of year when those of us with credentials that require a certain number of Continuing Education hours each year to maintain try to scramble to fill the void, and this is what I have been doing this past week.

I noticed that I was going to be 6 hours short of my required CE hours and began to get nervous, but then I found the Hawaii Department of Health Education Conference on December 1st and 2nd which counted for 11.5 CE hours so I was saved for another year.

This year there were speakers giving presentations on a variety of topics from Shigella to Bed Bugs and from lead paint to the radiation in Hawaii from Japan’s nuclear reactor disaster, a very wide range of topics.

One topic that I found very interesting was one given by the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR) on Aquaponic Agriculture. This method is similar to Hydroponics where the plants are grown in a soilless environment where water is used to deliver the required nutrients to the plants, however with the Aquaponics system additional nutrients are not added to the water system as they are with hydroponics.

Aquaponics is a symbiotic relationship between the plants and the fish where each one benefits which uses a fraction of the water, labor, and energy that other growing systems require creating a sustainable and self-sufficient closed-loop system.

With the aquaponics  system the water that flows through the planting bed comes from a separate tank that contains live fish. The fish provide the nitrogen in their natural waste which is then delivered to the plants which clean and filter the water. Then the filtered clean water is returned to the fish tank once again. The complete cycle is actually very simple, and mimics what happens in a natural aquatic and marshland environment.

Several large commercial agricultural farms on the island of Oahu are already using this aquaponic method for their fruits and vegetables including one farm which is able to produce thousands of heads of lettuce per month for the past year with this system. The aquaponics system allows them to produce plants with larger leaves and fruit much faster than by traditional methods using soil.

CTHAR has researched this new method so much that they are now able to calculate exactly how many fish you will need in the system to produce a certain number of heads of lettuce.

I am very interested in this new aquaponics system and its possible use for growing the medical cannabis that I require to relieve my debilitating migraines as well as fresh herbs. I will be researching this further over the next few months and will be setting up an aquaponics system in my greenhouse to test it out on herbs, fruits & vegetables that I will be using in my own kitchen. I will also be creating a completely green aquaponics system using solar power to run the pumps instead of hooking the system up to the electrical grid and I am collecting rain water to fill the system with.

I must point out that initially it is a very expensive system to get started, but afterwards it is much cheaper because you do not have the ongoing need to purchase nutrients and fertilizers which can become very expensive as you normally would growing with other means. Since I will be utilizing solar power there is also the additional expense for the batteries and solar panels.

I will keep you updated on the progress of the aquaponics system as it progresses and post some photos as I get the system up and running.

Mele Kalikimaka me ka Hau’oli Makahiki Hou

(Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year)