this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
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Floating Island Garden (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 months ago by mipadaitu to c/gardening
45 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

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? [email protected]

[–] mipadaitu 13 points 6 months ago

Done

[–] Live_your_lives 24 points 6 months ago (3 children)

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 9 points 6 months ago

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

[–] Dashi 5 points 6 months ago

Thanks for this! I may try this on my pond

[–] mipadaitu 1 points 6 months ago

Very interesting project, I'm curious if this one ends up being more cost effective at scale due to the difference in planting styles.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Aquaponics with less steps 😜

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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/

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Wow that’s fascinating! How will you know if it’s working? Will you do lab samples?

[–] mipadaitu 19 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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 2 points 6 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Zounds!!

[–] ThrowawaySobriquet 9 points 6 months ago

Oh, I love this. Keep us updated!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

The rain makes the scene particularly beautiful.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

I Would Like to Know More

[–] SchmidtGenetics 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

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?

I’ve read cannabis/hemp can be grown to remediate some places.

I’ll give the links a read when I get time later, thanks growmie.

Linky for cannabis

[–] mipadaitu 13 points 6 months ago (16 children)

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.

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[–] rdyoung 5 points 6 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] mipadaitu 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

https://extension.wvu.edu/lawn-gardening-pests/news/2021/11/01/legumes-nitrogen-fixation#:~:text=Garden%20crops%2C%20such%20as%20peas,that%20operate%20the%20nitrogen%20factory.

Regenerative crops pull nutrients out of the air so they go into the soil, which is the opposite of what our intent is here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] SchmidtGenetics 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

For soil rejuvenation you mulch it back into the soil for compost I thought, you can’t do that if you’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 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.