Todd Tayloe of Carroll High School is raising plants and trout in an indoor growing system. He reports:
“It has been a year of ups and downs for sure. We first lost most of the fish and now the next batch of vegetables did not germinate. We planted about 30 different seeds and nothing germinated. So we had to stop harvesting so that the plants that are in the tank are still cleaning the water of nitrates. You will see from the pictures that the top is quite overgrown, but we were worried that if we harvested it, it would end part of the cycle.
“On a good note, the fish are doing great. Since they are perch they are slow growing, but growing and thriving nonetheless. We have only lost 3 of the new batch and the 3 that were lost came in much smaller than the others, so we think it might have been a competition issue.
“We were hoping to fillet the fish in less than a month, but most are not big enough to fillet. We are instead going to try to descale and pan fry them. We might have work around some bones, but the students will at least get to try what they farmed!”
