Floating Island Garden ( lemmy.world )

Our retention pond in our neighborhood has a lot of algae and problematic plant growth due to the surrounding farms and lawn runoff, so we're experimenting with a floating island to pull nutrients out before they can cause problems. This will also provide some interesting flowering plants, and more fish habitats.

Will be an interesting experiment to see what survives and what does poorly.

Zinnias, sunflowers, marigolds, and a few others are in net pots, inserted into cutouts in EVA foam mats.

Design is from:
http://www.beemats.com/

More reading:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/flowers-grown-floating-on-polluted-waterways-can-help-clean-up-nutrient-runoff/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666765723000637?via%3Dihub

Live_your_lives ,

If you ever want to try creating your own floating mat, this guy goes through the steps that worked for him:
https://howtorewild.co.uk/actions/build-a-floating-bog/

MilitantAtheist ,

Love that it's not a YouTube video.
Someone needs to fix an AI that scrubs YouTube tutorials and makes text and image versions. šŸ˜

blindbunny ,

Aquaponics with less steps šŸ˜œ

BubbleMonkey ,
@BubbleMonkey@slrpnk.net avatar

Not less steps; this is the OG aquaponics method and has been around for hundreds of years. Everything else is just refining for efficiency and space limitations.

https://www.milkwood.net/2014/01/20/aquaponics-a-brief-history/

blindbunny ,

Less steps the humans have to take. Cool link I'm pretty versed in Choctaw agriculture šŸ˜

toaster ,
@toaster@slrpnk.net avatar

What a great idea! I'm curious to see how this goes. Would you be open to cross-posting this to the solarpunk farming community? !farming

mipadaitu OP ,

Done

NataliePortland ,
@NataliePortland@lemmy.ca avatar

Wow thatā€™s fascinating! How will you know if itā€™s working? Will you do lab samples?

mipadaitu OP ,

For this year, we're only interested in seeing how the island looks, and if the plants can thrive with low effort.

Next year, if all goes well, we'll add a lot more islands and do water testing.

I don't expect a significant impact to water quality with a single mat.

Atelopus-zeteki ,
@Atelopus-zeteki@kbin.run avatar

That was my first thought, along the lines of 'how much plant mass will you need to significantly reduce N in the water, enough so that it has sufficient reduction of unwanted photosynthesis'? I look forward to reading of your progress.

mipadaitu OP ,

The projects they are doing in Florida say they are targeting 10% surface coverage, that would be unrealistic in our situation, so we're just going to do our best and balance cost/looks/effort with effectiveness.

Atelopus-zeteki ,
@Atelopus-zeteki@kbin.run avatar

Interesting, so less than 10% might be sufficient for your needs? That dosen't sound too onerous. I was at Fairchild Tropical Garden in Miami, FL some years ago. They had a small pond, roughly 20X30 feet more or less, with Amazonian plants. Initially the local algae was interfering with the Amazonian species, so they put black dye in the water to inhibit the algae. At the time, there was also a showing of Dale Chihuly's glass work in the garden, including several 1-2 ft. multicolored spheres floating the the black water of the Amazonian pond; looking like alien planets floating in the darkness of space. It may well have been this pond, pictured.

mipadaitu OP ,

Well, to get to 10% coverage on this pond, we would need 700 of these islands (assuming they were all the same size), which would mean we needed to prep around 37,000 plants every winter to install every spring.

We'll probably shoot for a more realistic target to start with.

PlantJam ,

Would native riparian plants planted directly into the pond be an option?

SchmidtGenetics ,

What a fascinating idea!

Iirc, there is some plants that are better at pulling the crap out of soil, should be the same for water. So maybe research some of those for options?

Iā€™ve read cannabis/hemp can be grown to remediate some places.

Iā€™ll give the links a read when I get time later, thanks growmie.

Linky for cannabis

rdyoung ,

Yep, hemp has been long known to rejuvenate soil. It's been used for decades (or more) as a rotation crop to restore soil after something like corn or wheat sucks up all of the nutrients.

SplashJackson ,

Plus you can make ropes out of it which are good for sailing or bondage

rdyoung ,

Did this get downvoted for the bondage bit? Bunch of vanilla fuddy duddies round these parts it seems.

SchmidtGenetics ,

For soil rejuvenation you mulch it back into the soil for compost I thought, you canā€™t do that if youā€™re using it for remediation to pull stuff out of the soil as you would be just be putting it right back in again.

rdyoung ,

You are correct but I think hemp is similar to clover in that there is some symbiotic relationship with other organisms that help rejuvenate the soil even if you don't mulch it back it in. I could be wrong here but I know that plenty of farmers grow hemp between other crops and likely don't "waste" it by mulching it back in.

If you are looking to pull bad stuff out of water, I'd think that growing anything that would hold onto the bad stuff as it falls to the bottom of the river or lake and stores it there would be a solution as well as harvesting and transporting it elsewhere.

mipadaitu OP ,

There would be some benefits to growing hemp, but in our situation, it wouldn't apply. We aren't looking to add nutrients to the water, we're looking to remove it.

We aren't concerned about other toxins that the hemp would absorb, so while it might be useful in some areas with more industrial pollution, it doesn't apply to this project.

SchmidtGenetics ,

Cannabis can be used for rejuvenation and remediation, it pulls out toxins and nutrients, but can also add nutrients. It can do anything, itā€™s just how itā€™s used, so yes it could maybe apply to your project.

mipadaitu OP ,

Love it, but we're not as concerned about metals or toxins as we are about excess nutrients.

The papers I listed have plants that they've been using for their remediation, and we're following those lists. I know some of the researchers on those projects, and we'll modify our plant list based on any changes in their recommendations.

SchmidtGenetics ,

Cannabis would pull out excess nutrients as well, Iā€™m just saying thereā€™s probably other options if you wanted to do a little research, but apparently no one wanted to discuss this topic.

mipadaitu OP ,

I am doing research on this, why do you think I'm not? I posted several links to resources.

SchmidtGenetics ,

Well you rebuffed and turned additional avenues I gave you to look up, it didnā€™t sound like you were willing to do anything additional. Cannabis does all of those things you are looking for, so clearly thereā€™s more than what the researches youā€™re using for options.

Usually when someone shares a topic they want to talk about it and learn more, is that not why you posted?

mipadaitu OP ,

I'm not sure why you're acting like I didn't respond to what you posted. Your paper discussed heavy metal toxicity and I responded that this wasn't a concern in our situation.

I'm not sure why you are offended at my post, because I responded directly to the topic you were discussing.

SchmidtGenetics ,

Through discussion, which was extremely hard, you found out that it can be used for both, and there is potentially other options you can find out for your floating garden.

Why do you think I was offended by your post? I was trying to start a discussion and you apparently immediately thought I said you didnā€™t do any research.

BubbleMonkey ,
@BubbleMonkey@slrpnk.net avatar

Iā€™m not OP, but I can answer your question.

You are coming across as argumentative and rather rude about your insistence, when OP has already said whatever you want them to look into is beyond the current scope of the project, which roughly translates to ā€œthanks, but Iā€™m not interested in doing that right nowā€.

And in response to that, to telling you itā€™s not in the current scope of a trial project, you are implying they are not doing research or learning or whatever it is (you literally said in your second comment ā€œif you want to do a little researchā€ which does indeed imply you feel they didnā€™t do enough). When really, you just want them to do something with their time that they donā€™t want to do, and frankly donā€™t need to do at this first stage of trial. And you seem to be getting butthurt that they arenā€™t interested in doing what you want them to. The condescending tone in the comment Iā€™m replying to is a dead giveaway.

Besides which, not everyone wants to deal with growing weed or hemp which looks identical. In fact, most people donā€™t want to deal with it (obtaining licenses, dealing with theft, etc.). So your focus on that specific plant through your comments seems really genuinely weird, like you canā€™t fathom people not being stoners or something. Thatā€™s quite off-putting.

If you were genuinely trying to start a conversation, you may want to look at how you approach that. When someone says they arenā€™t interested, like OP did, you can say ā€œok, well if anyone else is, or if it interests you in the future, hereā€™s the infoā€ and someone will probably reply to it if they want to talk about. You canā€™t just unilaterally decide what people are going to talk about and force them to participate if they donā€™t want to discuss it, which honestly seems like what you were trying to do.

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