Aquaponics - Carrot algae

For some time now I've been growing a carrot by hanging it over the side of my fish tank so the carrot is in the water, but the stems and leaves are tied to the side and above the water line.

It seemed to have worked a bit.

The green is from algae, and I'm guessing just part of what happens to roots when you give them full sunlight.

The test was never intended to go as long as it did, and the original plan was to see if the carrots formed in any un-carrot like ways that made it a crazy idea to grow them in water.

It grew pretty much like a carrot.

This is a miniature variety, and it grew to the same size as it's cousins growing in the grow bed.

I suspected it would have no sense of direction because the nutrient and water were everywhere, and  it would have no need to grow down to get fed.

I wonder if anyone has grown carrots in space.

This experiment has been a fail in so far as making tasty food, (I'm not going to eat it) but a success in finding that it may well be possible to grow carrots by threading them through something that makes it dark underneath, and also that floats.

A sheet of polystyrene might be the ticket.

I've just started another experiment with a tomato plant to see if that will also grow by dangling it's feet in the fish tank.


120 Things in 20 years - Wasting food one slimy algae covered carrot at a time.