I have been studying raft grown veggies for 4 years now and am ready to jump in so to speak. I didn't realize that this site had aquaculture in it but now that I do I thought I might post here and get any information or tips that I can from here as well.
I have a 25,000 square foot bass pond that I would like to try and grow raft veggies on. I have 3 other ponds as well but they are full of catfish and they might eat the roots of the plants so I am going to try out the bass pond to start with.
My first simple design set up this morning utilizing materials that I have mass quantities of so that I don't have to invest any money on this to start. It took me about 15 minutes to do this. I have yet to rout the holes in the plastic panels and I need to mount the boards on the ends of the logs better but this is basically the idea of this first raft version.
Planting Raft 1.0...
I will place planters into the holes that I rout in the plastic panels and put some rotten hay and then soil into the logs themselves and plant in those. I am expecting one year to potentially two years of raft use. When they begin to sit low in the water I will pull them to the shallow end of the pond and set them on the bottom of the pond in the 1 to 2 feet of water and keep them stationary. Between my eldest son and I we could build about 60 of these with about 30 to 40 hours time invested. I have hundreds of punky white fir trees which are not good for firewood or milling so I have more than enough wood and I have several thousand feet of these plastic fence panels which I have been taking out as I hate that fencing with a passion.
Any thoughts or advice?
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