2012/05/25 - Aquaponics Community affiliate!

I've become an affiliate of The Aquaponic Store.  I buy nearly everything from them already, and they've just started an affiliate program.

NOTE:
I encourage people to start aquaponics because I love it and think it's wonderful.  That will not change.  I will never use my relationship with them to encourage you to buy something you don't need.

But if you've already agreed that it sounds like something you want to try or are already an aquapon, and are looking to purchase components or food or other AP items, would you consider clicking this banner to visit The Aquaponic Store?  Yes, I will earn a small commission from sales.




But I do buy through them myself for anything I couldn't get just as easily up the road.  They have extremely high quality products, helpful staff, and are true aquapons themselves so they have a vested interest in making sure their products actually work as they should.

Silvia Bernstein, owner of the store and of The Aquaponics Gardening Community (the forum I always recommend) has always been extremely helpful to me in learning about aquaponics.  Her book came out last year and she's got quotes from many of us from the forums about how we got started in AP gardening.  In fact, someone from my very small town had bought the book, noticed that there was a quote from someone in our tiny town, and found me to ask questions.  He and his mother stopped by last weekend to see the garden.  What a small world!


I do encourage you to read the About Us page from The Aquaponic Store.  I assure you from my personal experience that they are exactly as wonderful as they seem.  And I hope that whether you use their products or not, you consider joining the forum there. 

Here's my page so you can start off right away with a friend:  http://aquaponicscommunity.com/profile/Andrea
I started that page with my first tentative exploration into the world of AP and it has grown with me.  :-) 
I look forward to seeing you there.

2012/05/21 - In which fish are caught

First a picture of the underside of the seedling raft:

We separated a lot of seedlings last week.  Some of them got a little big and interwoven so it was more traumatic to them than it needed to be.  Lesson learned: things grow too quickly to be put off an extra week or two.  Get to them as soon as they're ready, or pay the price.

But a MUCH more important lesson has been the balance between fish waste and plants.  I knew our fish were getting big, and I knew we didn't have very many plants (or at least not very big plants), but I hadn't water tested in a while so I didn't realize how bad it had gotten.  Our nitrates were SO high, and even the ammonia was starting to increase.  Also, our plants are suddenly getting really pale and my plant guru told me (without knowing the status of my water) that excess nitrates can cause this.  So we've done several large water changes in the hopes of bringing it all back under control. And we've decided we need to buckle down and start pulling fish out.

Here's the seriously leggy cilantro (I cut the top foot of stalks off and put them in a flower vase in the kitchen to be easy access).  To their left is the happy basil, and to their right are one of the many clusters of flowers from a tomato plant that thinks it's going to take over the city.

Clusters of cherry tomatoes that will, no doubt, ripen at the same time as all their brethren, causing me to have a panic attack in my attempts to capture and cope with them all.

Tomato plants that are 6 feet tall and literally pushing the top of the greenhouse out in their attempt to get larger.

Freshly cut bunch of cilantro on its way to the flower vase in the kitchen

Cucumber plant starting to get tall enough to use the trellis

 Itty bitty cucumbers

Lettuce (with another cucumber plant behind them)

Brussels sprouts

Since we had to drain a lot of the water, it seemed like a good time to also shut off the air long enough to get a few pictures of the fish.
In the top center of this first one is my algae eater.  He's fat and happy.

 

And here's one separated out for dinner:

 This one is just over a pound.  I think most of ours are about that size.

And here's our neighbor on his way to catch one for us and teach me how to clean it.

I had videos of a fish being caught, and another of the fish swimming around the bottom of the half empty fish tank, but after uploading them to Facebook I deleted them from my phone.  And I'm evidently not smart enough to pull videos back down from Facebook.  But don't worry, you didn't really miss anything.

We did eat the tilapia a few nights later.  Plus fiance bought some more tilapia filets at the store.  We could both tell the difference without any trouble.  Ours were sweet and had a wonderful texture.  The store bought fish was mealy and tough and nearly flavorless.   It's official, we've eaten our fish and they're the best!

2012/05/06 - Seedlings going crazy

Haven't had time to do much, but wanted to at least post a pictorial update.

The seedlings are just going crazy.  Fiance had to move the peas away from the other plants so they wouldn't start climbing them.

 (The seedlings in the front left are the neighbor's sunflower seeds.  Wow, huh?)

Tomatoes need to be whipped into shape again:

Cilantro, Basil, and Strawberries doing well:

I'm hoping to get some good trellis netting (plant hammock) this week so we can start moving seedlings to their forever homes!

2012/04/28 - Wow, things grow fast!

First the BEST news: we caught the critter!  It's a rat.  Cute little bugger, but doesn't need to be in my garden.  I asked fiance to drive him to somewhere with a field and drop him off.  I don't feel any urge to punish him for being a rat, I just don't want him eating my veggies any more.

We pulled out the last of the leeks last week.  They had a huge ball of compacted roots and clay pellets.

We also got the tomatoes tamed.  We pruned them back and caged them in.  Between that and removing the leeks we gained a lot of space.

And the seeds in the raft bed have really taken off!
4/22:

 4/28:

Cilantro, basil, and strawberries are healthy (and we might actually get to EAT our strawberries now that That Critter is gone).

And the oregano is happy to have sunlight again.

It's a green and lush world in there!

We're planning to put a net mesh along each side wall, and use that as a trellis for the peas and cucumbers.  We'll probably move the brussels sprouts to the space vacated by the leeks.  The leafy stuff can stay in the raft bed.

It's so nice to have the garden back!

2012/04/15 - Finally got some seeds started

First, check out the fish!  This was feeding time today:

They're all big, healthy, and hungry!

The leeks are beyond overgrown.  I'd left them in for nitrate control, but now that the other plants are established, it's really time to remove them.
The tomato plants are getting nice and big.  We'll need to get the cages on soon:

The cilantro is well established, and we'll have to start pinching it back so it doesn't get too leggy:

Basil and strawberries are well, though That Critter still gets every strawberry as soon as it's ripe:

Oregano and one lettuce are okay:

And I put a bunch of new seeds into pots in the raft bed!

But that's just one small part of one raft... out of 5 rafts:

Progress again.  What a relief!

2012/03/22 - Short and sweet

No pics this time, just an update on where we are.

The critter is still unknown, untrapped, and unwelcome.

The greenhouse will not be replaced.  We shopped around, looked at every option from prebuilt to kit to DIY, factored in the discount I can get on glass since I work at a window manufacturer, calculated the DIY with our company windows at a deep employee discount, every possible variation we could think of.  And the lowest we could get the cost for the size greenhouse we want was still *way* over our budget.  More than twice what we're willing to spend even with dad's help.  So instead we're going to work at making our existing greenhouse more weather- and critter-proof.  We can probably get it fairly well protected for less than $200.  That's be our project over the next month or two.

We got the rafts sized correctly and into the raft bed, though there are no plants in there yet.  That same "leg" of the system also has the half-barrels and I'm pleased to say the tomato plants in there are thriving.  The cilantro, basil, and strawberries we planted last month are doing well.  The lettuce appears to have been completely demolished by the critter.  But it's just lettuce - I can replace that easily enough.  I really just wanted it in there to help keep the water healthy.

As for prior plants: the old strawberry plant has berries on it!  One will likely be eaten (by US not the critter!) this Saturday.  The broccoli was so ravaged by the critter I want to pull it out.  Fiance wants to prune it back and let it try again.  I'll probably go with his plan, since I really need the plants in there to balance the system.  The leeks I hadn't harvested are ridiculously huge.  I'd say 3" diameter.  I won't eat them at this point - they'd probably be too fibrous.  But I'll leave them there to soak up nitrates until I get more plants going.

The fish are big.  And definitely ready for harvest.  And I don't *think* I'm being squeamish about their fate as dinner.  But we haven't harvested any yet - even though it would help balance the system while the plant volume is so low.  It's a messy job, and our neighbors have volunteered to help clean fish, so I'm putting it off until we have some warm weather and they don't have plans.

We had snow last weekend, so all my fine plans for garden work went out the window.  But this weekend is likely to be nice, and I don't have any plans for Saturday, so I think we'll finally get some more work done in there.  Hopefully my next update includes pictures of a raft bed so full of plants you can't see the rafts.  :-)
And possibly we'll haul out a fish or three.

2012/02/26 - And we're back!

The weather finally warmed up enough, and I had a few extra oomph of energy, so we got things going again.

The critter (type unknown) has been ravaging the plants.  As soon as the broccoli gets the slightest growth he eats it.  It looks like someone attacked the poor plant with a weed wacker.  And the little *^$% is too wily to step into the rat trap.  But my dad is going to help us put up a "real" greenhouse, so that'll fix the problem.  When we finally get around to doing it.

Meanwhile, the tilapia are big - probably big enough to eat by now.  And today we got the raft bed and the half barrels hooked up and all the plumbing works beautifully.  Except we're one outlet short as long as the heater is plugged in, which it still needs to be for at least another few weeks.

Remember the tomatoes I'd pulled out, and how the ones that went *splat* seeded the whole bed with plants?  Well evidently one fell into a crack in the cement, because we have a tomato plant there now, complete with tomatoes!

We also bought some plants at the nursery today, just to get the system back in balance.  Yes, I'd rather start from seed.  Yes, if I'm going to use plants I'd prefer organically grown ones.  But for now I had to get *something* in there to keep the fish healthy.  So we got Early Girl, Sweet 100, and Roma tomatoes; two cilantro (can one ever have too much cilantro?); sweet basil, two strawberry, and a lettuce.

And here's the long view of the whole thing finally set up!  We'll get the rafts in probably next weekend.  And I'll start some seeds for that.

(That tall, dark green thing is a bunch of overgrown leeks.  Oh my goodness do the leeks love aquaponics!  And they taste fantastic!)

More updates more frequently, now that it's getting fun again.  Thanks, everyone, for sticking around!