Got my New Camera

I got my new camera last week . Have been waiting to get this for a while now. So hopefully my photos in the blog will be higher quality. I got the Cannon Eos Rebel T3I

Ok enough about that lets get to the Aquaponics . Things are looking good for the most part. The fish are very active, and seem happy ,they are going pretty fast. The water is testing in the good for all tests. It is a little cloudy, added some barley extract hope the will help. We have had quite a bit of rain and I wonder if that has anything to do with the cloudiness. My flood tank is also giving me some concern. It tends to bulge at times . this causes the toilet vale not to open sometimes. I think I need to put some more straps going over the top on it.  Ok here are some pictures:

Romaine Lettuce and a small tomato (sucker from dirt garden tomato)

Here are peppers and a Leaf lettuce mix

The radishes under the pepper are going strong.

The tad poles are still going strong

Just a Quick Post

This is just a quick add on to the earlier post today. I had not checked the water in a while. After talking to Mat Wirt  a Charter Captain down in the Lower Cape Fear area, who also is into Aquaponics, I decided to go ahead and test my water. Mat t raised a concern that my bio filter might not be letting enough of the nutrients through that the plants need. So today I took samples directly from one of the spray bars on the grow beds . Here are the results

High PH Reading 7.4

Ammonia  .50 ppm

Nitrite   2ppm

Nitrate  between 80-160 ppm

So I am happy with those readings looks like it is cycling pretty good now.

Anybody Need 200 Tadpoles?

We have a few extra creatures in the pond yesterday. This is the second time that I have added water from our local lake.  When I first put the water in this time I noticed two tadpoles. then the next morning we had hundreds of tadpoles. I am thinking that we scooped up some eggs and they all hatched out the night before. So as you can see we have tadpoles now.

Thinking about getting a couple of small Blue Gills to take care of them. Don’t really feel like waking up to a plague of frogs in my back yard. You can also see how far the water is drawn down when the grow beds fill. Had to make some adjustments to the water flow.  Also added more water but this time I used a dechlorinator and used tap water.  The water was very cloudy when I first started running it through the gravel in the grow beds. I pulled and cleaned the filter box and cleaned the pump filter. That  immediately increased the flow rate out of the spray bar and the flood tank flow.  By the next morning the water was back to clear .

Today I decided to change the spray bar for the grow beds. Instead of the bar running down the middle I replaced it with a T bar at the top of the bed. Hopefully this will even out  the water flow through the beds.  Seems to be do pretty good at that now. 

Here are a couple of shots of the radishes , lettuces and spinach coming up.

So we have sprouts in the system now. Things are looking good. I have noticed a very small leak on the flood tank but I am going to watch it for a bit. To repair it will take 24 hrs, for the epoxy to cure. Do not want to do that right now. So for now will just add water as needed.

I Have A Aquaponics System!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well I finally have a working Aquaponics System not just a Gold Fish Pond . I got the gravel in and planted vegetables today.  Spent the morning helping with the Fayetteville Beautiful ‘s Electronics recycle , and Rain barrels, Compost Bin sale. We stayed till 1030 after getting there at 0730 to unload the Semi of the Rain Barrels and the Earth Machine Compost Bins.  I was pretty impressed with the bins I bought two of them for the back yard. That is my neighbors dog Jonah Photo-Bombing me…. LOL

We stopped by Lowe’s on the way to the little local lake. We picked up some peppers and radish , spinach , and lettuce seeds. Then on to the lake to get some water to help fill the void when I turned on the water to the flood tank. It really sucked a lot of water out of the pond. I let It cycle through several times and then at its fullest point in the cycle I added lake water to fill it up.

I did run tap water through the system (draining out into the yard not the pond)to clean the gravel . I ran it until the water ran clear. But it did still turn the water cloudy when we started the system and ran it back into the pond. I will let it run for a few days and see if it clears up, if not will try vacuuming the silt out.  one problem is when the bell siphons discharge the water back into the pond it churns up the silt so may have to take action to remedy that also.

These are the peppers I planted making it officially a Aquaponics System….Woo Woo. I have the radishes and the leaf lettuce blend in with the peppers. The Spinach and the Romaine Lettuce are in the end bin by they selves. As you will see my peppers in the garden to a hit and don’t look so good, so I decided to Start my Aquaponics( yes I just like typing that word LOL)  adventure with them.  The lettuce and radishes that are in with the peppers , I am hoping they will be up and wanting some relief from the sun when the peppers start really filling out. As for the spinach and the Romaine I have heard these do well in the systems. So for now we will see what happens. I have heard of some systems having a iron deficiency and to try to avoid this I have placed a nail under each of the spray bars. In household plants, I have used water with nails rusting in it as a spray when the plants were low on iron. Will see if this works.

See what I mean about the peppers.

Here are some of the garden as a up date.

CCRES – ALGAE BIOFUELS AND AQUAPONICS

They are making a lot of progress with the algae auquaponics .

CCRES – ALGAE BIOFUELS AND AQUAPONICS.

A Bean Wall and More!

Got the idea today to start a Bean Wall. Nothing  new i saw the planting in soil bags on the internet somewhere, and decided that I would try some beans that way. 

I planted the beans a Dragon Tongue variety, at the back of the bags.  Six per bag, two per hole in the bag. Then I planted Marigolds in the front of each bag. I figure they will mound and cover the bags.

Next I tied a net on the PVC Frame , to form a trellis for the beans to climb. These are my trellises from last years cukes and cantaloupes.

Had some Marigolds left over so just put them in a couple of pots not quite sure where they will go yet.

Just a shot to show how well the water lilies are doing.

Glass Gem Corn, and other heirloom jewels of the corn cabinet…

 

Glass Gem Corn, and other heirloom jewels of the corn cabinet….

This is pretty amazing, I wish I had the room to grow corn. I would love to grow several of the heirloom varieties. This blog  has some great pictures. I will have to investigate the seed trust and see where they can be attained.

Ooops Not the Mans Fault after all

OOOps I checked on the status of the income tax return and it told me that the form was complete but not filed. Man that sucks , no one to blame but me. So I have definitely filed it now. You know before I started using a computer to do every thing, I didn’t seem to have as many problems like this.  If I had done the taxes on paper and actually mailed it I would be sure it was filed. Oh well still waiting on the refund, but hopefully not to long know.

 I have some more photo so of the garden . Some of it is doing well and some not so much. These are from Tuesday. We had a good rain last night so the garden looks a little better today.  

Here a shot of the fish , added another dozen of the small Comets and 10 larger ones. They are much more active now, more competition  for the food, I would guess.

And here is the vertical garden , seems to really like the sunny spot in the yard.

The corn and beans are coming along. I think I planted cucumbers in with the corn so it can climb the stalks, but it could be cantaloupe….should have marked them….oh well either or good with me.

The tomatoes are looking good . Seem to have bounced back from the pepper spray. The patio tomato has half a dozen tomatoes on it, and the cherry tomato is putting fruit on also. Old Strawberry hanging planter. Have to figure out something to put in it.

 The herbs are just doing great, they love the earth box self watering system.



The rest of these are just random of the garden .you can see the Peppers and the Eggplant are still struggling but coming back. Hopefully they will recover and have a good season.



These are of the trimming I did, the first is the pile of limbs I pruned off. and then you see the results . Not such a Jungle.

Still some work to go , but it is coming around.

Waiting on the Man!!!!!!!!!!

Making do until we get some gravel. It is kind of depressing , we are waiting for the income tax return to get here to get the gravel and a few other things . It really sucks that it takes them so long to get your money to you.  If it was the other way around they would sure be hounding me , sending nasty letter, nasty calls, and putting me on all kinds of lists. Any way it all comes down to money, that is the hold up on the Aquaponics system. The fish are doing great the water is testing well with in normal range on all the test. 



Until then I am still a dirt farmer…lol. I have been working on a few projects , most of which I got the ideas from Pentrest. If you are not aware of this site it really is a great place for new ideas. As the above shot shows my Herbs are doing really well. My tomatoes suffered a attack of the du’mass( its French ) I was trying to take care of pest in a natural way. I read about a spray made from liquid soap and hot peppers, well I made up a spray according to the directions that i had found. Except that I didn’t have any hot peppers to blend in to the mixture. So I used some very hot sauce that I had. Any body know what happened next?  Every plant that I sprayed it on started getting brown spots and curling up. I am thinking that the hot sauce might have been to hot., Then while looking for a natural weed killer I came across a article praising the accolades of white vinegar as a “Weed Murderer” . After a few moments it hit me , the ingredients in Hot Sauce are hot peppers salt and Vinegar. Duh , so any way the tomatoes have made a come back and my patio tomato even has small green tomatoes on it. The egg plant did not do so well, it looks pitiful . I have bought some more plants and I will replant them once the sun gets behind the trees this evening. Can you believe they are calling for 90 degree weather for the next five days, in May , In NC man what is August going to be like.

These are a few shot of the garden now.







You can see the Pepper plants didn’t like the vineger spray either. aI still have to find out what is eatting my plants.



This is the only squash plant that made it the others were eaten, I have more planted and they are starting to come up now.









Ok these are something I saw on Pentrest and decided to try . Had the old ladder I didn’t trust any more . Now  tool this picture to show the bean sprout but also noticed the mushrooms here. The soil in the buckets is composted cow manure and top soil…..so what kind of mushrooms are they….they are out in the morning and gone by the time the sun hits this bucket….interesting….yes  I am a child of the 60’s …let you take it from there.



I have also started another Pentrest inspired project. They have tons of thing that can be done with pallets. This will be a standing planter in a couple of weeks, once the roots get a good grip on the soil. 



The whole thing is planted with annuals, here you can see the top where I have planted the colorful bedding plants like vinca, dusty miller, coleus , marigolds…ect.. the front is planted in ornamental sweet potatoes poticala , and petunias. These should fill out and cover the pallet.



My helper…



Another idea gleaned from Pentrest , was these wine bottle tiki torches.



Here you can see that it is EMT conduit, and pluming hangers. 



Still have to straighten the pipes I put in the ground to slide the conduit into. I have cut them to size and painted the conduit black. Not to bad I think.

You can also see the system which is just waiting. 



Shot of the fish… there were a lot more visible when I started to push the shutter button ..lol



 This shot shows the beans I have in a tub on one side of the ladder. Hoping they will climb the ladder. But , to my wife’s  skepticism  I planted about 5 or 6  kernels of corn out of the pop corn in the pantry. Well as you can see there are a couple of them coming up. The beans can also climb on the corn, 2/3 of the 3 sisters.



This last one is a cauldron that I planted cucumbers, since the cukes in the beds all got eaten and the seeds I planted there to replace them haven’t done anything. This is on the opposite side of the ladder from the beans so they can climb up the ladder on this side.

This ladder should look pretty interesting in a few weeks. With beans and cukes climbing up it and cantaloupe coming don from the top. It also has herbs like flat leaf parsley , cilantro, oregano, basils…and such….. we will see how it all turns out. It is sitting in the spot in the yard that gets the most sun all day. I like the idea of vertical garden. in the space I could have grown one maybe two tomatoes I am able to grow a whole garden of veggies and herb.

Well  that about it for this up date ….really hope that check comes soon , want to get those plants in the system up and running. Think i’ll go check now.

Later

Eddie