By Brie Mazurek. Eric Maundu is, self-admittedly, an unlikely gardener. Growing up in Kenya, he became disillusioned with agriculture, seeing farmers struggle with lack of arable land, water, and resources. Everything changed when Maundu learned about hydroponics , a system for growing plants that uses nutrient-rich water in place of soil and fertilizers.
By that point, he had studied industrial robotics and had moved to the US to work as an engineer. Farming with water offered new possibility. Today, Maundu is the co-founder of Kijiji Grows , an Oakland-based company that designs and sells custom aquaponics systems for growing food.
In a typical aquaponics system, water cycles through a fish tank into a gravel-filled planter. Natural bacteria break down the fish waste, converting ammonia, which is toxic to fish, into nitrates that feed the plants.
The fish water irrigates and fertilizes the plant, the plants purify the water, and the water is then recycled back into the fish tank, creating a closed-loop system. The fish in the tank can be decorative or edible tilapia, catfish, largemouth bass, goldfish and other herbivores and omnivores , potentially adding another level of food productivity to the garden.
Aquaponics systems are easy to maintain, requiring only small amounts of water to replenish the evaporation loss. Aquaponics uses up to 90 percent less water than soil-based methods of farming. Outside the Kijiji Grows office in West Oakland, Maundu grows herbs and leafy greens in a demonstration garden irrigated by a small goldfish tank.
