Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thanks Desertrat.
Free is allways better, for me anyways, don't want to give the wife anymore ammo. The buckets are collected at a local coffee house and filled with about 45-50 pounds of used coffee grounds and paper filters. I collect an average of 8/week. My compost bins love the stuff. Plus, I'm saving the landfill some volume. Been doing this for 2 years now, I've got buckets galore.

Found out the foam I've seen in the ST is from the coco burlap bags, not chemical but rather coco oils. It's starting to dissapate. The fish are happy, i.e. they are eating and pooping as normal and there have been no deaths, yet. Anyone had coco oils in their system before? Any effects/dangers? Do I need to do a water change?
Plants are still looking good, but I'm thinking I need more fish soon. Lettuce starting to get yellow on the edges. I only have 9 small goldies and 3 smaller mosquito fish.

This really is'nt "AP", but ...I've heard talks about the "old farm" and how they used to grow potatos. They would take an old tire, fill it with dirt, and plant their potato in it. When it would get 10-12" of height they would stick another tire on top of it, fill with dirt around the plant, and repeat this process throughout the growing season. Sometimes reaching five or six levels of tires. The idea was at harvest time you only "knocked" the potatos out one tire at a time, as needed. The potato would keep through winter in the earth filled tire. Thinking of trying this with a bucket and some bucket collars.


Just thoughts,...

Hi DD
I have tried the potato growing method in plastic garbage bins would put about 6" of soil on the bottom place about 6-8 potato seeds on top and then cover with 2" of hay/straw mix, when the seed sprouted above that layer I would place another layer of the 50/50 mix. This would continue to the top of the bin. When it came to harvest time I would simply upend the bin have had prolific harvests with this method. Each layer would produce more potatoes.
A good tip is to keep the layers light (even just using straw will work) the lighter the cover the larger the potatoes
I would avoid using old tyre's as there is good evidence regarding the leeching of some nasties!
This is a shame as tyres are in such abundance, I have always said that if you come up with a safe way to reuse tyres you can print your own money
Perhaps you could utilise those buckets for a potato tower