How To Grow Plants In The Desert Where Water Is Limited

How To Grow Plants In The Desert Where Water Is Limited

Many of the Earth's deserts have one ingredient that can make them great for growing plants. That ingredient is plenty of sunlight. But many deserts are unsuitable for traditional farming because of a lack of water. A newly developing form of farming consumes only about 2% of the water as conventional farming. This method can turn barren deserts into lush productive farm land.

With conventional farming, most of the water is wasted by sprinkling or dumping it on the ground. Most of this water evaporates or is lost into the ground, and the plants only get to use a small fraction of it. This problem can be solved with soil free growing. Hydroponics is a way to grow plants directly in water, but it has not caught on as well as some have predicted.

Aquaponics is a twist on hydroponics that is making soil free growing more practical and all organic. Aquaponics uses fish to enrich water with nutrients. This water is continually pumped through grow beds where the plants get all the water and organic nutrients from the fish that they can use. Fish release waste products into water in their excrement and through their gills. With conventional fish farming, this has to be filtered out of the water or it will become toxic to the fish. Another alternative is to continually flush the system with fresh water. But aquaponics changes all of this.

With aquaponics, nutrients for the plants are supplied by the fish, and since plants remove these materials from the water, they take the place of a filtration system. You end up with a system where you add fish food, and the fish and plants take care of each other. You are able to produce organic produce, and at the same time, and with the same resources, produce clean organically farmed fish. The return on the fish can produce a profit and on top of that you get plenty of low maintenance, free fertilizer.

This kind of system is ideal for growing plants in deserts. Since the water is given directly to the plants, instead of being dumped on the ground, water loss is minimal. Aquaponics can consume as little as 2% of the water as farming in the ground does. And since no soil is used, this is perfect for ares with poor soil or no soil at all. This has potential to allow many parts of the world to grow food that otherwise would not be able to.

Deserts in lower latitudes have an advantage in that they can grow warm water fish like tilapia without much worry about their water getting too cold. Tilapia are very efficient at producing protein, will eat just about anything, and are becoming increasingly popular as a food fish. They do very well in these systems, especially since they need little space.

Aquaponics is good for commercial farming and is also becoming popular with home gardeners, and even for growing plants indoors. You can build an aquaponics system very easily and they are easy to maintain.

Learn how to build an aquaponics system with this aquaponics how to guide.

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