Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

after last weeks post i made a little hot house over one growbed using 20mm pipe and some greenhouse plastic all from bunnings. Plants have grown really well over the week even though last week in response to the iron definciency i over compensated and sprayed concentrated chelated iron onto the leaves and burnt the leaves, they have grown new leaves that are unaffected and are taking off.

starting to gear up with this warmer weather. Installed a NFT "tower".


planted out with 8 strawberry plants so far:


Can see the bottom empty cups i used some natural twine from bunnings as wicks in the cups to help draw up water for less advanced plants or seeds.

cups are just homebrand party cups from woolworths $3 for a 100, burned holes in the bottom 1/3 with a soldering iron. pipe is 90mm dwv pvc because i had some spare and its by far the cheapest way to go for pipe and fittings.

Looks awesome - what size hole saw did you use?

64mm

Looking good mate.
The scoria wouldn't of been any cleaner, mine took all day to wash and still made my water look like chocolate milk for a month.

Good work!


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Strawberries seem to be growing great, flowering quite a bit and setting fruit.

lettuce's and chinese cabbages were growing well but are getting nailed by birds.

But my tomatoes that i planted recently are going nowhere and have worsened since planting, Showing severe deficiency.
with curled inwards(?) leaves and scorched edges:



chlorosis in older leaves aswell as necrotic spots:



I thought this broccoli plant was immune as it looks healthy as anything and is finaly forming a head aswell as other crowns all over it:


But a peak underneath finds one of its older leaves showing very similar symptoms:


My diagnosis was potassium deficiency because:

1. Chlorosis in older leaves
2. necrotic spots
3. cupping leaves on tomatoes inwards
4. burnt fringes on some leaves.
5. leaves not falling off(magnesium)
6. i have strawberries setting fruit, some of my chinese cabbages bolted to flower, my tyme is flowering, broccoli is forming a head and tomatoes are trying to flower. So i assume i have a heavy requirement of potassium.

Do you agree?

i foliar sprayed some potassium bicarb(eco-fungicide) last night and dosed in about a tablespoon of potassium sulphate per bed and buried some banana skins in each bed. Hopefully ill see some improvement soon.

ph is 6.5.

Still not sure im to the bottom of the deficiency issue and think i may be meddling too much. I suspect that the massive amount of algae in my water is not helping so i set about covering my tanks finally over the weekend. Got one done and plan to get the other 3 done over the next 2 weeks.



I lined the tanks with polystyrene offcuts from work as best i could and then lined with treated pine fence pailings.

Im hoping the algae will all die off pretty quickly and the system should be alot happier all round.