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How to use a rundown swimming pool to provide a family of four with a continual supply of: fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs, eggs and fish.
A young couple with two young children buy a home in the US (Mesa, AZ)with a rundown unused pool in the back yard. They are interested in self sufficiency and economy. So they turned the unused pool into a green house. They generously share their information at the website listed above.
Then summer hit and it took too much water, time and effort to keep the plants watered so they set up an a hydroponic system in the deep end of the pool. Water from the pool pumped up and allowed to trickle down through the plants back into the pool where it was then reused to water the plants again and again. The water circulation pump is run with solar panels.
It was costing them a lot to fertilize the plants so the added fish (tilapia also known as Nile perch) to the pool. The waste from the fish fertilizes the plants as the water is pumped up and allowed to trickle through them in a loop system. The fish also provide the family with protein in the form of fish dinners.
The fish need to be fed. They eat algae so chickens were added living in a coop on chicken wire suspended over the "pond". Waste from the chickens feeds the algae that feeds the fish that fertilizes the plants that feed the family. The chickens also provide eggs that help feed the family.
The chickens have to eat too so duck weed was added in additional kiddy pools. Duck weed is an aquatic plant that can double in volume every four days and is high in protein providing an continual supply of food to the chickens and fish. Fly larvae that feeds on compost from the garden plants were also added to feed the chickens.
They used trial and error to make this work and continue to refine the process making this a self perpetuating, self sustaining food producing system. From what I can see it looks like most of what they have here can be picked up relatively inexpensively at a good hardware store.
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