Biodomes during hyperinflation.....

Im an amateur gardener, always been fascinated with the entire process, especially the results which feed family and friends. A few months back i stumbled onto a website Nelson & Pade who are leaders in the Aquaponics industry, one that features low wattage tech with a naturally occurring biofilter plus the sun(free!yay!) to produce plants and aquatic proteins together in a symbiotic cycle with very little water waste( literally what escapes back into the atmosphere plus loss through plant mass production.....ridiculous considering the inefficient waste of everyday agriculture practices. Long story short, i bought a handful of books and one of them is The Biodome Garden Book by Patricia Watters.....extremely eye opening. Although i respect Nelson and Pades efforts to bring the industry forward, the costs are pretty high because they use the best, again, much respect and drooling over there setups.

Heres where Biodomes come into play...... because the way i see it if we keep printing money with disregard eventually that tomato is going to cost a wheel barrel of benjamins. One street or one school, homeless shelter, etc at a time and we can all eat well with little waste and nothing chemical or gmo'd.

What a Biodome Garden is.......

An organic growing system capable of supplying animal and veggie protein and nutrients without Gmos, chemical ferts or pesticides, although you will have some friendly pests that help your endevour
A design of great strength, engineered with a high degree of structural integrity.....like hurricane integ yo
A naturally humidified, non electric and totally wind-powered ventilation system
A unit capable of absorbing, storing and radiating heat for a stable growing environment for most if not all of the year in a vast array of regions.....a few feet of snow? yawn
A weed-free, waist level, moisture retaining, " potting soil" passive solar greenhouse garden


What a Biodome is NOT.......
A place for germinating plants to be "replanted" somewhere else
A flimsy structure higly susceptible to wind "beating
A unit requiring extensive ventilation and humidifying systems
A "hot house" to wilt and bake plants
A veggie bed requiring extensive tilling weding and crouching
A garden needing extensive watering and daily care

All i gotta say is screw tilapia....im putting some Aussie crawfish in mine....and tons of basil.

Costs depend on a handful of factors but can be accomplished for a few grand from what i understand, if your good with your hands, source materials well, compost yourself.


- Foo

thanks for posting this. we are finally looking at property ownership and was talking about a greenhouse just the other day.
the set up sounds insanely efficient with both water and electriciy and like the fact that uses wind power.
thanks for sharing this.

Aquaponics is the way to go! It will get you out of the rat race!

www.backyardaquaponics.com...

reply to post by RedbeardedFoo

Nice post, S&F!
While all of the internal systems that you are describing are incredibly efficient, there is one thing lacking with the structures containing them that should be addressed: The sun only penetrates directly through the southern side of the greenhouse, therefore, having glass surrounding the entire structure is wasteful. You lose a great deal of solar gain from the North, West and East sides of the building. If you would like to be able to maintain the system year-round, using only the sun to heat, you should look into earth-sheltered greenhouses. One of my heroes, Mike Oehler, wrote an excellent book on the subject, and I highly recommend getting a copy. It is called The Earth Sheltered Solar Greenhouse Book. You can also find all of the information and plans by simply googling the name.

I've been looking into adding a earth contact greenhouse for aquaponics year round. See if you can find a pdf called "the earth sheltered greenhouse" by Mike Oehler for some good ideas. I was thinking of combining this with a passive phase shift heating for the winters, I think the process was called umbrella.

Thank You for this great information.
I am no gardener yet, but I am brushing up and learning as quickly as possible.
I have a feeling that even if we won't have to survive on our garden,
we will want them, for all the benefits of healthy, beautiful foods.
If that hurts big Agro, and there by, big Oil.
All the better.

reply to post by ludshed


Great minds think alike. It seems as if you typed that up while I was in the process of doing the same.

If you would like to find a way to increase your temperature inside of your earth-sheltered greenhouse, Mike Reynolds, who invented the Earhship concept, has a very simple, yet profound way to do so: He has demonstrated that a small composter inside of an average size room, will increase the temperature by several degrees. Not only would that be very convenient, but keeping your compost at the standard temperatures that plants thrive at, also increases the aerobic composting process.

reply to post by RedbeardedFoo


Do you have more info on basil? I found quite some contradictory info about it, a book I have claiming it is linked with cancer in animals, yet the internet states it is anti-cancer.. do you know more about it? I hope to build a bio-dome in 2014, but i guess I will stick to plants requesting a lot of water - salads , tomato, cucumbers ans so on..

About the shape, i found this one quite interesting:

www.geo-dome.co.uk...

This is why i love ya guys and gals, i will most certaintly look into that mans works and concepts, love new brains to pick. In regards to waste, the spherical dome fiberglass is designed to dissipate the light spectrums in an efficient manner, definitely dependent on the angle of the sun but alas!....this is where converging tech comes into play....solar panel powered LED's for an all night lightsource would be efficiently beautiful....the entire spectrum of light the plants want with no frequency waste. The 900 gallon water tank is also an all season heat sink, so simple, so awsome.

-Foo

reply to post by Romanian


I wish i had more direct info on basil but really its just my favorite herb ever from a culinary standpoint....well, 2nd....the only reason it would ever be bad for you in my opinion would be if its original genetics were modified or you are growing it with chem derivatives of naturally occuring nutrients. Trusted genetics and organic Teas is where to start. Btw that biodome looks awsome, mine would be 16 ft in dia and made out of free concrete staves, with flare of course.

reply to post by Q:1984A:1776

The sun only penetrates directly through the southern side of the greenhouse

for about 2 weeks of the year. For the other 50 we don't see it at all!

It has rained here virtually every day since mid July. No wonder we are 40 shades of green - most of them fungus and mildew.

Im in the process of building an aquaponics system. I've been debating on building a bio dome or hoophouse (greenhouse) to put it in. I will use tilipia as the fish, and been reading about one guy who grows worms in the grow trays and feeds them to the fish. Also, if you add another tank between the grow trays and fish tank and grow algae in it, you will have plenty of food to feed the fish. I bought 2 - 250 gallon storage tanks for $150 on craigslist. Its amazing what you can find on craigslist to get all your accessories to build these cheaply!!

reply to post by zooplancton


Thanks for being interested and posting, the only preaching you will hear from me is to learn more than i do, experiment and teach me down the road...pass the inspiration on, and keep it simple and small at first. From what i have heard and experienced it is quite addicting.

reply to post by Alchemst7


I just started to learn too. In regards to fish, summer insect can be quite a source of food for the fish: some lights that attract insects, insects that can be picked up by the fish. Also, I understood that something called "Duck weed" grows amazingly fast, and fish like it too (not sure what kind of fish). Duck weed appears to be excellent for human consumption too, i guess a small dome can even feed an entire family !






Well, I wish you success with the biodome, keep us updated!

reply to post by Romanian


Heres a Youtube of the guy who uses worms in his aquaponics. He actually calls it Vermiponics. This is like aquaponics on steroids!!

reply to post by RedbeardedFoo


This is similar to the hoophouse I want to make. Its not quite as big as his. Mine will be 12' x 18'.

Earthworms FTW, they aerate your soil, soak up unwanted stuff, turn it into great stuff just like the biofilter turns ammoniated water into nitrate then nitrite then walah! your plants eat it up like gravy.

reply to post by Alchemst7


Good links, thank you! I was thinking , the growing beds we see on most of the youtube videos can be quite expensive. A cheaper alternative would be to build directly on the soil, a trench covered with a plastic membrane, then you feel this trench with stones. Sure if you build something smaller maybe the price is not very great problem but thinking on a larger scale..

Also, the idea of floating raft seems to be good too..

reply to post by RedbeardedFoo


Awwwww bummer!
I was hoping for a Pauly Shore thread but all I got was....

But really, the idea has been a distant dream of mine for some time.
Just the size and capacity I want would take some Bill Gates size financing,
So..... I do what I can with what I must and dream.
The closest I think I will ever get is maybe an earthship someday.
If not sure just google it, theyr'e pretty dern cool and I am too lazy to find a link.