Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey Matt, those egg are from our Araucana chooks - they lay blue eggs.

Strawberries - I carefully plant them in my growbeds in direct sunlight and totally ignore them. Easy They mostly came from a friends garden bed, they had runners ever where so we just cut them off and chucked them in the grow bed. I have never tested for salt levels only calculated them. Usually chuck a 25kg bag in at a time directly into both fish tanks, the strawberries haven't complained so must still be under the 3ppm.

thanks muz - how much below the Gb surface do you flood to? Thinking maybe where I've been flooding high to get seeds to germinate I've upset my strawberries - mine never seem to produce runners either, though I've not had them planted in a 'field' like that - just dotted round the edge of the gb's.

water level is 25-30mm below the surface - constant flood, same as all my grow beds

Climate plays a big roll in effective strawberry production, where I live, people plant strawberries as annuals since we don't get a consistent enough cold season to really prime them for optimum production as perennial plants.

AWESOME! I will be steal...er... borrowing some of your ideas very very soon!!

Muz did you tack weld the wire mesh to the posts or fasten them some other way?

Opportunity knocks - just pull them out of the grow beds and put them in a refrigerator for as long as it takes to prime them before popping them back into the grow beds. Here you go - http://news.ufl.edu/2000/10/13/cold-fruit/

Just keep in mind that pulling out bare root plants and sticking them in the fridge might not be all that good for the plants, take into account that most household refrigerators tend to dehydrate what you put in them so while you don't want to suffocate or drown your plants by wrapping them up too tight in plastic, you also want to make sure they don't dehydrate while being chilled. The refrigerated trailers or containers mentioned for chilling the plants are probably set a bit differently than the average household refrigerator and the plants could well be in plug trays with their roots protected by moist potting mix so that when they are pulled out and planted they experience less root trauma and are ready to start producing fairly quickly without the transplant shock bare root plants would experience.

That said, most strawberry plants are shipped bare root packed in paper bags and peat moss. If they get some chilling time in that state before being planted out, they may be well primed to produce, trick is making sure they do not get too dry or too wet during that time.

The way they get shipped is the way I'd put them in the fridge - allows them to breath but minimizes evaporation and transpiration. Refrigerators tend to dry the air and I doubt it's much different with the commercial ones. Some plants you can just make a frame over the bed then cover the bed heavily and use an air conditioner to induce bloom but it has to be something of high value to make it worth while. Because you're always running water into the beds, this air conditioner method wouldn't work as well for AP

Well household refrigerators and air conditioners tend to dehumidify but it would really depend on the type of cooling unit being used on the trailers since for agricultural purposes most veggies really need to be chilled but at far higher humidity to keep well so if the trailers are normally used for agricultural purposes of chilling down field crops (like celery, cabbage, lettuce in crates etc) they are probably designed to keep the produce at 32-37 F but at like 70-90% humidity depending on the crop.

To put strawberries into a household fridge, I would probably loosely wrap the paper bags in plastic before placing in the fridge and I might also add some extra moisture but not too much and check to make sure it hasn't totally dried out a few times during the cool storage..

Might require some experimentation to get it right but I think it's worth it if you really like strawberries or have a market.

Hey Muzz, your GBs look like they are made from form ply are they?

I am thinking of using form ply to make some GB, and was wondering how it holds up.

Any problems with yours?

Did you put any protection on it.

Hey mwdesign, wire mesh is just Tec screwed to the RHS.

Hi Slowboat, Yes my grow beds use 19mm Form ply inside a steel RHS (patio tube) frame with 4 layers of brickies plastic as a liner. Other than a few water stains no dramas at all.

Unfortunately my tubs under the trellis hasn't been a successful. Need to increase the size of the equalising pipes between them, and I have concerns about the drains blocking. Or better still, replace them with small 2m growbeds.

Rest of system is cranking, SP are going through 6kg of feed a week plus heaps of duckweed and there still hungry. Don't want to buy any more than a 25kg bag every 4 weeks. Looking forward to having my first taste of them in the coming months.

Not sure what I'm doing with trout this season as I'll be away from mid August to the first week in November. Think I'll still get some but maybe not as many as last year. Then again I don't have many left in the frezzer

Hope everyone is in good health...Muzza

Hi Muzza - going anywhere nice I'm in a similar boat - away for 4 month July to Oct - off to do the gibb river and north WA coast. So need to find a house/fish/duck and dog sitter ! Would still like to have a few trout to greet me when I get back though

Thanks Muz, in the process of building a deck over my pool (as suggested by you)

going to use form ply for the deck and GB's.

my SP are ravenous as well but it's more like 250gm per week in my case.

enjoy the holiday.