Starting To Plant

I got my shelf and my potting bench in the Greenhouse.  Started some rosemary cuttings, and a few peppers, basil and lettuce . I also divided a Peace lily (Spathiphyllum ‘Mauna Loa’) that was in my mom’s room . It had out grown the pot so I made 5 pots out of it. Yes it was very over grown for the pot.

Some of the succulents brought in earlier.

Here are the cuttings and seedlings. I have also started some peat pot soaking for the seeds I have on the way.

Tops on the pickle barrels to keep out any bugs.

Here is the Prayer plant that was divided looks like it got a little cold last night.

I decided to bring them in for awhile , haven’t got heat in the green house yet.

Put the peppers up high for the heat and sun.

The bloom is fake we put that i for my mom before the plant bloomed on its own.

Merry Christmas to One and All

Merry Christmas everyone  hope you all are having a great day. We had our Xmas with our daughter and her husband last night on Christmas Eve because my lovely wife has to work today.  We (my wife and I ) will have our Christmas tonight when she gets off work. She is ok with it it allows the younger nurses with families with young kids to be there with them today.

Last night we had what has become a Christmas Eve tradition, tamales .

We made a few tamales for Christmas Eve

Here is Christmas Eve diner …we had a good time…..and way to much food.

Sorry that one is so small My daughter took this and I copied it from her face book page.

Here was a surprise pulled this yesterday morning,so it is my Christmas Eve Carrot.

Right out of the ground.

Cleaned up , this is some of the carrots I planted in my Rosemary bush Barrel

Here is our Tree this year LOL Sharon thought it would be cute. Since she had to work today and all the kids have move out.

A good year presents pile as tall as the tree…LOL

And this is great Tamales for Christmas Breakfast.

And cant for get the furry kids

Bella in her party dress.

Rowdy Cat as Santa Kitty

And what would Christmas be with out PK the Kitty Grinch.

So From Our House To Yours Have A Very Merry Christmas And A Happy New Year.

Ready for Fish

I have worked out most of the bugs I believe , and I am about ready to get the fish. I am planning on building a water heater using compost as the heat source, so that I can raise Talapia . But for now I am going to start with blue gill. I had a to do some work  getting the timing down on the two pumps. Ended up getting a different timer to run the pump for the grow beds. Now the system is running well. I did water checks the other day and all thee readings were in the proper ranges. I will go out and catch the blue gill so if there is a problem it wont be with a tank of fish that cost me very  much.

As you can see my celery has not bounced back from the transplant yet. This is the celery I planted the end of from store bought . It has done well since early in the summer we I put it in the other system. We have eaten off it for quite awhile.  Hopefully , now that the timing  is worked out it will come back.

  I added some tomato that I got from the volunteer plant I have coming up in one of the cinder blocks at the base of the Green House. This is also the strawberry that was in the first system.

 These are cayenne peppers that came out of the garden and a Coffer Lime tree. I am over wintering in the GH. The frog is just cool…..lol

Here is the volunteer tomato I have it tied up with some red tape going to see how big it gets. It already has blooms so we should have some hot house tomatoes soon.

My succulent balls are in here also I have to do some work with them once I get the benches built. That is my Avocado  tree it is also over wintering.

One of the changes I made was to run the return line from the grow beds to the drum that has the pump in it. The two are tied together (see front bottom ) but it pumps out faster than they equalize. So this way the one with the pump fills faster.

This is how I first tried but it didn’t work, so got another timer like the one with the multiple sockets. So this is how it looks now.

I have also move all the tomatoes into the one bed.Here you can see that the peppers are still bearing new fruit,  this is the middle of December here in NC and we have had several frosts . I still don’t have any heat in the GH but it stays above 50 F.

So now I need to find some time to go fishing and catch some gills. hopefully soon.

From my family to all of yours Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Plumbed in With a few leaks

Well finally got out in the greenhouse today and worked on the system. Have been super busy lately, so haven’t been working out there.

But today I got the plumbing to the grow beds and the return to the holding tanks in.

Got all the bell syphons in the line from the pickle barrels and the return lines in.

That is where the went well part ended…lol

I was able to use the parts from the old system for the bell syphons

Here is how I tied the grow beds together to make sure they fill at the same rate.

The Duck weed tank full and draining

showing the intake for the Duckweed drain. So it will pull water from under the Duckweed and not drain it in to the fish tank.

This is the line to the grow bed almost full

Just as the water started to flow to the grow beds.

Water to the grow beds.

Here is where the good news stopped.  The water only made it to the first bed.  After I re-checked. the pipe ran up hill from here. So I will have to do a little re-plumbing. But other than that and a few leaks( every thing is dry fitted) it works well.

Skipped the Gym Today and Got Some Work Done

I have started going to the gym again , got to loose some of this weight and get back into shape. It has been going real good, I do a lot of the aqua aerobics and such , I have to do the low impact stuff, too many jumps and to much running every morning for PT took its toll on my joints. Missing a bunch of cartilage in various places. The pool is great I can get a great aerobic work out in and my joints don’t ache for three days.Any way having said all that let me tell you why I didn’t go today and stayed home to work on the system  I have been going and staying till 1000 or 1100 everyday, well when I came home I was beat and just really didn’t feel like getting out there and work. So today I got to work.

My old Miter Saw it gave up the ghost.

I got the carriage built for the grow beds and got a lot of the dry fitting done in the plumbing.

My plan called for four grow beds, but I made a slight miscalculation and only have room for three. So the end you see here on the right got cut off. Hope to use the fourth grow bed also. Just have to figure out where to put it.

Here are some of the project in the Greenhouse.

From the fish tank to the two pickle barrels that will go out to the grow beds.

Filling the tanks that the pump is in. these pump to the fish tank, and everything drains back to these.

Water pumped into fish tank.

The plumbing for the tank and on top for the Duck Weed

Cleaning the Barrels

I got out and cut the barrels in half yesterday. Then today I washed the insides of them. At first I thought it would be harder than it was. The rusty looking stains that were on the inside and tops of the barrels actually came off very easily. Just used the dish soap and scrub brush that I used on the pickle barrels. That got most of it and then detailed with Mr. Clean errasers, and it turned out pretty good. 

Got More Barrels :oD

Went yesterday to Pink Hill NC to get the rest of the barrels I needed to complete the system. I pick up 2 of the blue barrels 55 gal,with the bung holes that will be cut in half to make the Grow beds.  

I also picked up 4 black pickle barrels, 60 gal ea.  Two of these will be in the system and 2 for rain barrels.

I got the pickle barrels all cleaned out and ready to go . The blue ones I did a little bit on them I will get them thoroughly after I have cut them in half.

These are the 2 that will be the rain barrels.

Here are the two pickle barrels in place .

My original system had a catastrophic failure Sunday. THe left bank of grow beds had been slipping slowly toward the pond.  So I needed to do something anyway , well one of the totes broke at the bottom and I was lucky I didn’t loose all the water. So I took the left bank out and the flood tank out. I piped the water directly to the right bank of grow beds. So they are now running continuously.

The rest of these are some plants I have brought into the green house because the nights are getting cooler.

The milk jugs are filled with water , part of the thermal mass.

OK thats it for today ,will start the plumbing tomorrow. Hopefully I will be able to get it up and running soon. Might be running on a extenion cord for a little bit , I will eventually get it wired …I know Eric I will call before I start tat  LOL..

Did you notice the volunteer tomato I have coming up out of the cinder block hole. I will keep it and see what it does. The rest are weeds and I will get rid of them.

IBC and Barrels

I drove over to Pink hill and met a Brent Kennedy of Cabin Creek barrels Monday. Very nice elderly gentleman who had the IBC and Barrels at very fair prices.  His IBCs are just about new only having been used one time. They held animal proteins the hog farmers use to supplement feed. They get them in used the product and throw them out, their waste my good fortune. He also had both 65 gal pickle barrels and blue 55 gal plastic barrels. I would have loved to gotten 2 of the blue and 2 of the pickle barrels along with the IBC but just could not fit then all in the truck. I mention how fair his prices were, $10 ea for the barrels and $65for the IBC in the cage and on the metal pallet. pretty good huh.

I got the IBC cut down yesterday, cut the bottom of the cage off at 8 inches and 8 inches off the top of the container. Will use the bottom of IBC in the top of the cage as the fish tank. I will use the bottom of the cage and the pallet with the top of the IBC as a raft system growing leafy vegetables like lettuce , boc choy, pac choy, and u choy.

Here the IBC has been cut and stacked so I could move it with a hand cart.

You can see the top ins in the bottom of the cage and above is the bottom of the IBC in the top of the cage.

I screwed up a little on the cut meant to cut at 8 inches but actually on one side drew the line at 6 so a little off but should not be that big a deal.

The Barrels all ready to go.

Today I got out and and finished getting the foundation in place. I have a buddy coming by in the morning that will help me put the frame on the foundation. Then we will get to remove the soil from the inside and start covering the brush in the Hugelkulturl.

I am enjoying a little alcohol and Percocets, after all the squatting placing those blocks today . I even found some Bio Freeze. So not doing to bad right now. Wait till to morrow evening lol.

Green House Build Part Two

Got a load of landscaping blocks and some more cinder blocks. It is too wet to try to tamp and set the block in place but I did get them unloaded then moved around to the back yard. Man this used to be a lot easier 20 years ago.  Four wheel barrow loads later, I was pretty well beat. It has been raining here off and on for awhile now. I heard yesterday that North Carolina is the soggiest state this year. It seems like the whole country is in a drought and we are wet, very wet indeed. I know I should be happy there are several states that love to have this rain. But my yard is growing so fast that it almost needs to be cut every three  days. Any way I will have to let the ground dry out some before I can much more.

Here are some pics I took today,and some visitors to my yard.

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The Begining of the Green House Assembly

I have been lazy with this blog for awhile. The hot summer has taken its toll . But back on track now, I hope for awhile. The heat has subsided into the mid 90’s so I got back out in the garden . I am starting the process of leveling the spot for my green house . This is a little bit of a challenge since I have such a slope in the back yard.

The green house is going to be where my old raised beds were, so had to tear them out. As you can see they were about to fall apart anyway. They had been there close to 5 years .

Old raised beds , they were ready to go.

I decided to go with a 4×4 foundation and will use gravel for the floor. Here you can see the 4X4 frame and how the slope of the yard is keeping this interesting.

Entrance will be here. Probably go with flower bed on each side of they walk way to the door.

The two pepper plants that were not in the way.

Left side, Fish tank (IBC) will be in the left rear corner.

Corner where the IBC will be.

From the rear

  I have the frame level now, So you can see how much I will have to fill. I think I might go with the cinder block or the decorative blocks for retaining walls to fill the down hill side. Really don’t think I will have to bring any more soil in . When I dig the IBC in (about 20 inches deep) that soil should be enough to level the floor before the gravel goes down. So that is where the Green house project is at this point.
Now for just some random pics around the garden and Aquaponics system. It is running good , plenty of peppers even the okra is producing.

So enjoy The Slide Show !!

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OK  time to get back to work . More Pics to come as the work progresses. until then have a great day.