Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The weather has been a bit cooler lately, but mostly still above average, keeping the water temperature up, but fortunately the weather is forecast to be more like the Feb average for the next week, with a bit of rain.

The apple cucumbers are coming on thick and fast

Much more pleasant cooler weather so far this month, so the water temp is on the way down for now.



I've been picking heaps of capsicums and cucumbers, and not so many tomatoes, as a rat has been eating them. We caught one a couple of nights ago, but there must be another, or some mice as well.

I've found a couple of completely hollowed out cucumbers in the past few days, so I've gone all out with 4 different types of rodent traps to see if I can catch a mouse tonight. Fortunately most of the cucumbers have not been attacked, and there are lots of them!

The water temperature is cool enough for trout now, but I'm waiting a bit longer in case of any late hot spells. I've caught 3 rats and 1 mouse so far, and have greatly reduced the amount of rodent cucumber chomping, but will leave the traps around in case there are more. They have been eating all the tomatoes before they are ripe though ;( Fortunately they haven't touched the capsicums, as there are a lot of them coming on ATM.

30mm of rain in the past 2 days and about 10mm over the week before that has almost filled the ST, which was getting a bit low.

I'll make some space to plant some peas and bassicas soon, as we have grown a lot of small seedlings, which are now ready to plant.

Autumn has finally arrived and the water is cooling down


I've caught a couple more rats and no nearly ripe tomatoes have vanished in the past couple of days, so I hope I've caught them all for now.
The cucumber vine is still producing lots, way more than we could sell at the market and eat ourselves, so the chooks have been enjoying a few. It's been fairly overcast and cool in recent days, and I notice the cucumber leaves are getting a bit pale, so I'll probably remove it soon, to let some more sun into the greenhouse. The vine stretches right across the 5 m wide GH, and about 6m lengthways- almost to the far end now, and not far short of the 5m high top.

I've removed most of the air cell from around the GBs so that they can collect a bit of heat from the morning sun, but the water is still running cooler than the in-ground GBs of the larger system.



The cucumber vine is now very pale due to the cooler weather/shorter days, and in a last desperate measure to beat the approach of colder weather, the vine has popped out hundreds of small cucumbers, but most wont make it to a suitable size for eating before I remove the vine. We are still getting 10-15 each week, although the size is generally smaller now.

I caught another mouse this morning, which a chook enjoyed eating, bring the total caught to 4 mice and 6 rats in recent weeks.

There are a fair few unripe tomatoes now they aren't being eaten by rats, so there is still hope of getting enough to make some sauce.

The capsicums have been producing very well, we sold 6 at the market today and about the same number last week, plus have eaten some ourselves. I've been using some in tabouli lately too.

I split up some Egyptian walking onions to plant, as some of them had been getting a bit wet in the gravel and had started to shoot, and brought the rest up to the house for us to eat over the next few weeks.

Looking good as usual Guna, what were you using to catch the rodents?

You could pickle any baby cucumbers that don't make it to the usual eating size, maybe? And green tomatoes make awesome chutney.

Skeg, I have some small with one way doors that they push into and a spring closes the door behind them- ideal for mice, and larger ones with a door that falls down when a plate at the end away from the door is disturbed, which is for rats. I've also got a bait station with rat poison, although I haven't seen or smelt any dead rats, so I think the live catch traps have worked best lately. I'm going to put a couple of traps in the chook shed today, as I know there are rats and mice in there too.

Mel, I'm not a fan of pickles myself but my wife likes them, so maybe I'll have a go at them, they look easy enough to do. I reckon I can get most of the tomatoes to ripe before I need to remove the plants, although ripening does get rather slow once we get a few nights around 5C.

Any details on your GH build looks very simple and practical

It's pretty simple, just welded steel, I had the 3 semi-circular roof sections rolled into a 5m diameter curve, and it has waterproof shade cloth over the top.
It is 8m long and 5m across, 8m being the standard length of 50X100RHS and 5m being the diameter of an 8m length (of 25 X 50RHS) rolled into a semi-circle. Vertical sections of the wall are 50mm steel pipe set in concrete, and about 2.1m high from memory.
Clear polycarbonate along the side walls, with insect netting over both ends for good air circulation.

Cooler weather dropped the water temp a fair bit more in this system than system 2 with the buried GBs, but it is increasing faster now too.



I'm still catching a few rats and mice, it seems there is a slight plague of them at the moment. Fortunately I'm catching them before they do much damage, so I've been picking quite a few yummy capsicums and tomatoes lately. I've planted some walking onions around the GBs too.

The tomatoes and capsicums are still producing well, although the cooler weather is knocking the tomato vines back a fair bit, so I doubt there will be any more flowering.



There is still at least one rat too, as I found a ripe tomato half eaten when picking some more today.

Looking good!

We've got mice in the garden - I find half-eaten tomatoes on the plants in the dirt all the time - but they don't seem to have ventured into my hoop house yet.