Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Faye, i am pretty sure that this is how big your plants are...

Sent from my MB526 using Tapatalk 2

Oh dear, Fayes going to get lost again. Alright everyone head over to her place to help her eat all those monstrous plants.

Oh Ryan lmao. Thats hilarious. It sure is a jungle out there.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

I brined the trout overnight and smoked them with mesquite chips.
The first batch I did over the barbecue outside but it took a long time to get the heat up. The second batch I sat the smoker on the gas cooktop in the kitchen and it was much faster. Aaah the smell of mesquite through the house, a little different. The flesh was so pink and moist.

The snow peas are absolutely abundant and just keep on coming.

I peeled away the skin and bones and it made for a quick and easy pasta dish. My up market version of fettucine, the basics being bacon, onion, garlic, broccoli, cream and parmesan, this time I added smoked strout, pine nuts and spring onions. Most of it was home grown I didn't make my own pasta this time, but could have if I wanted to.

I think faye, from now on when you cook awesome food like that you are going to have to post some up to me

Looks so tasty!

The tide has been low and the temperatures rising so figured it was time to go fishing again. Another thirty five went in to an ice slurry. Here are a couple of pics from this afternoons photo session. The winter veges are quickly looking past it so I also removed some of them as shown in the pics. Seasons produce today includes broccoli, cabbages, sugar snap and snow peas, parsley, silverbeet, sugarbeet, cherry tomatoes and celery.
Plenty of white cabbage butterlies flitting around and various stage of their life cycle obvious with eggs, caterpillars and pupas, a photographer dream A gardeners nightmare, I just try to look on the brightside and take photos for my collection.
Got a poster shot of a tiny wasp I will share another time, it is on the other memory card.
Laura said she saw her first dugite this week she told me it was only a baby, so I asked how long it was and she said 1 metre. That is no baby. Just another great thing about my aquaponic system, I have no fear of digging in the growbeds and I can see/hear anything coming, not like in the dirt garden at this time of year.
I was out picking after dark and shone the torch under the foliage in a couple of the beds, loads of earthworms at the surface, until they see the light and slurp, down they go.
Tonight David Attenborough did an awesome insect segment, I actually had to sit and watch and listen, on the edge of the seat I was oohing and aahing.

Faye,

If I were you I would have also strung up those fish. I remember my trout being very enthusiastic feeders, but if they had touched my tomato's, that would be it. To the BBQ to be smoked I say.

A 1m dugite, not what you want hanging around. My last dugite storie happened up the family farm. Was a baby, about 30cm long, the rooster found it and managed to catch it and keep it from the other chooks. It was seen alive as the rooster had it, but none of us wanted to inter fear, 20min later the rooster was found flat on its back with it's legs pointing to the sky.

One day I'll tell you the story of seeing a tiger snake attack a tractor. Tigers are the only snake which scare me, those buggers will chase you down if they are in the right mood.

I can't get snow peas to work for me...

The seedlings start off great guns in growbed or propitiatory, but as soon as they get about 30cm long, they start shriveling/dieing off from the base.

When they died in the propitiatory I noticed it coincided with me removing the propagator lid to prepare the babies for re planting.

I suspect they are getting smashed by the heat??? Any advice???

Are you still running cf? Or flood and drain ?
Ps nice fish!

Great harvest Faye

Here is what they look like now Charlie!
I have eight packs around 90g- 1kg ready to go in to the freezer. It took less than 1 hour to head and gut the fish and I was pretty pleased with that. A good tip for harvesting fish is to plan for it and don't wait until it is too hot for them , this is when the flies are around too. Best to do it when things are cool and make sure that if there is anyone sensitive to fish guts, killing and cleaning that they are no where around, it doesn't help your cause if that sort of thing is in there face.
I have a good base of fertiliser (fish guts) to plant the new lemon tree, as fish and lemons go well together Why is it that one job always leads to another?
Tip 2 - make sure that your knife is sharp - it makes it safer and quicker, and far more enjoyable to get the job done.

We've had two snakes so far this spring. The first (5 foot) was in the compost heap - it probably liked the warmth and the mice that live in the heap. The cat was playing with the second (1 foot), under the verandah.

Those littles ones are feisty and fun to play with, we had one in a plant pot (didn't like having its photo taken, but I won) and the other in a cardboard box in the ladies toilet last year, mm that was interesting.

Todays lunch consisted of warm pan fried trout on fresh bread and butter with an ap salald.
You can probably tell the difference in the two cameras that I used the DSLR has good colour, this took the closeups. will robably take more time in future than just using the one that I carry in my back pocket.


Yesterday I took this shot. As we were looking at it on the lap top, the angle that Eddy was looking at it from looked like a persons face. See if you can see it.
The face is on the left of the picture looking right. The face is the dark background, the bug is the eye and the ruffle in the cabbage leaf is the lip, and below is the chin. Good luck!