Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey CB, might want to watch your water hyacinth, over here it's a noxious weed and Faye got a phone call from the Agriculture Department, saying "what are you doing with that plant in your pond, you must remove it immediately." The downside of having your backyard shown on tv.

Bugger about the fish....

You have no idea how poor my record keeping skills are... too tedious!! That's why the wifey has the check book, and more importantly, the the checkbook register!!

I'll try to come up with some way to systematically track, but the odds are not in my (or your) favor for successful completion.... LOL!

EB, I know... There are no ponds or waterways within a half mile of here, so it would be a pretty difficult thing to 'release it' to the wild... Those little tubs are to grow it for my chickens and fish to nibble on.

CB

On the contrary CB, that is what I thought too, but if a bird comes to drink from your pond and a small part gets wrapped around its foot it can easilty be transported to the next watering hole, miles away. Our conditions are quite warm here and that weed has the potential to blanket large bodies of water and very quickly. I would not be responsible if I did not at least make people aware of it as an environmental threat under certain conditions, it is great in the compost heap though.

What's your medium in your NFT? Looks like cocofiber or peatmoss. If so, it doesnt clog your system?

SwampCreek,

First, WELCOME!! Hope you enjoy your visit/stay here on the BYAP forum!

The media in the net pots is called rockwool, I think. It is small cubes of insulation that wick moisture. It is available through hydroponic supply stores or online. Each net pot has a strand of mop head threaded through the pot and dangling into the NFT (PVC) tube to wick moisture into the pots. The rockwool does the rest. (about once a week I do run a little water over the top just to insure everything is good and moist.)

Pic below may help a little.

Two days ago as my seven year old and I were poking around the GH, he started asking about flowers, so I explained that before plants can set fruit, the first stage is a flower. No details on process, but we then started looking at different flowers and while walking briskly from the back to the front of the GH to show a different type of flower something caught my eye and I did a double take...

The first strawberry flower and the plants have only been here about 10 days... (The roots looked TERRIBLE when the mail delivered them!!)



Next we noticed the Red China Beans are finally starting to throw some of their legendary 18" red beans...



Also, noticed a couple days ago that the squash are setting fruit... There are at least six babies on this young plant right now... a couple are tough to see in this pic.




Couple more pics in next post..

My eldest called me at work today and was so excited he almost couldn't contain himself!! "Daddy, daddy! The preying mantis eggs have hatched. There are mantises EVERYWHERE!"

Later when I got home they were still hatching and all over the cover of my barrel system's header tank... Camera view screen is broken (handicapped as a photog without that impairment...) but took a few pics in hopes one would come out... Guess I got lucky!!



Some other fun developments and blooms, but these are the best for today...

Expecting more visitors from NC in the next few days... Enjoy showing this project off and teaching a new/better way to grow in a small sustainable footprint!

CB

Looking great CountryBoy !!
Did you put the mantises in to control a pest or as a preventative ??
I found some tiny aphids on my peppers today.. I just used the squish 'em method

We started having some bug issues a while back. I released lady bugs, hung a mantis egg ball and hung a few white fly traps. At this point there is not a real bug problem on anything except my eggplants. The eggplants are riddled, but continue to grow, so hoping the mantises can assassinate the army of black bugs residing there.

I googled several phrases to find 'natural bug predators', 'preying mantis eggs' and 'lady bugs.'... Took the mantises about three weeks to hatch, so that is one to plan ahead for... Expecting a fdew of the 200+ that hatched to hang around and guard the plants.

CB

Just a quick update with a few pics... No major changes with the system. Did have a great time entertaining some visitors from North Carolina yesterday. They have enjoyed this forum and are on the cusp of building a system to educate farmers in their area.

Strawberries are doing great! LOTS of blooms and tiny fruit...







Couple more pics in next post...

CB

More pics of the overall system... Wife didn't see it for a few days and came in Friday to declare, "Its a JUNGLE!"... 'Course, I think we haven't seen anything, yet, but it is nice not to have to weed the "jungle."








Amazingly, many plants are still fairly small...

Tinkering with a few ideas for the next step as we still have a lot of unused space in the GH...

CB

whats the overall dimentions of the GH CB?

20' x 60' +/-.

Looking really good CB.... great greenhouse mate...

So nice!