In Fort Myers, rumors flew when a property that had been a nursery for 88 years came under new ownership and construction began on the site.
“They thought a rich person had bought it to create a private aquarium,” says Frans Kox, co-owner of East Fork Creek Gardens.
In fact, East Fork Creek Gardens was beginning an exciting endeavor into sustainable agriculture growing lettuce using aquaponics. Owners Frans Kox and Jana Telecka bought the property with this goal in mind, bringing their substantial background in sustainability and horticulture studies to the work.
Instead of relying on traditional fertilizers, Kox and Telecka created a system that uses water from large tanks of live Blue Nile tilapia to grow lettuces. After being filtered, this water flows gently through tubes with small holes in them, where lettuce plants grow with their roots in the water.
“We feed the fish an organic vegetable-based food and monitor them, because if the fish are comfortable, they excrete more ammonia – we keep them very happy,” Kox says. “The ammonia in the water becomes nitrates and nitrites when we filter it, which then feeds the lettuce.”
While their system reduces the use of fertilizers, the efficiencies don’t stop there. Growing lettuce using aquaponics and distributing it in the local area has allowed for further sustainability efforts.
“In traditional growing, a head of lettuce would take 70 to 100 days to grow and would need 11 to 14 gallons of water. We wanted to do better,” Kox says. “With aquaponics, we can grow lettuce in 45 to 55 days and use a little more than 2 pints of water per head of lettuce. We also don’t have to reset soil between plantings, since lettuce grown in water can be replanted with no lag time.”
When demand from restaurants took a dramatic dip due to pandemic-related shutdowns, East Fork Creek Gardens’ team sprang into action, partnering with other local farms to make sure that they could offer direct-to-consumer options and share more about their farms directly with consumers.
“This pandemic has made people more aware of where their food comes from,” Kox says. “We are a little part of educating people that things grown in Florida have extra value because they’re grown right here.”
In the future, East Fork Creek Gardens hopes their facility can serve as a model that can be adapted to other locations to create sustainable, efficient and profitable aquaponic agriculture.
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