Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Pork boiled with watercress - yum !

Welcome back Steve

Are you sure there is no one hiding in that jungle looks great ss

Plenty of spiders

Doesn’t look like a jungle any more.

Have pulled out all of the peas and replanted don’t remember with what, but whatever it is, it coming up.

Three watercress cuttings taking off, some salad greens sprouting and a tomato showing just a leaf at far right.

When temp close to 20°C and hungry, the cats in IBC are coming to the surface as soon as I get close.

Been a while, with other things on my mind and my AP sys. ticking along nicely so just a short update.

Water in the FTs got pretty clear after the latest rains so have managed a usable pic of the cats in the Green Tub FT.
The Green Tub FT’s GBs are not protected and get snowed under by my neighbours gumtree leaves and bark, tainting the FT’s water.
I try to keep it clean and change the water (partially) if needed.
So far I had no problem.

Fish are feeding well and growing (bud so slowly), may take another year before big enough for the plate.

Toms (Roma and “from Cyprus” I were told) and cucumbers are doing nicely bud have pulled out eggplants from AP.
Those pesky mites are nuisance.

Everything looks just fine & dandy Steve...

Thank’s ROZ

Were getting some worm castings to mix into the seed propagating mix but it’s full of the wrigglers,
so I started feeding them to the fish since yesterday, just the evening meal.

I spread thinly some castings with the worms onto a garden sieve and put this on a tray with a thin layer
of fine moist propagating mix.
The worms migrate in there and then I wash them out.

Wonder if there’s any better way to harvest them.

Steve,
When I was a kid we used to drive a timber picket into the ground about 300mm and slowly cut it with a tree saw. Usually at night the worms would come out to the surface. I am guessing if you can find something that vibrates they would come out of your casting.


Cheers Rob

I wouldent recomend it but my father in law used to water the lawn and he had an extension lead with 2 spikes 2 metres apart push them in the ground and turn on the power he always had worms for fishing

And you can use similar technique for fishing as well, instead of jelly.

Have no problem getting those worms, plenty of them but how to clean them from that sticky mash (castings)?

use a heavy file on the top of the spike you drive into the ground,,
it's called worm grunting,, i can't get to youtube from work or i'd post a vid

I forget who it was that came up with this, I think it was Rupert but I'm not sure. The pictures showed it worked just fine.

take a piece of PVC pipe, about 3 inches long, 2 inches in diameter, put an endcap on it and drill a lot of holes into the bottom and lower sides. Put a piece of moist bread in and bury up to the lip in your 'worming' area. Cover the lid to keep light from getting in. Should have it full of worms in 24-36 hours depending on the density of the worms in there.

Its up here on the forum with pictures and explanation and all, just too tired to go trolling though the forum at the moment

Excellent Abdul, thanks, will do a search.

Couldn’t find that post but thanks to your description of it, Abdul, that’s what I came up with.
90 mm downpipe, it does take few slices of bread.
I may try a smaller diameter later, if needed.

Hey Steve, so my description wasn't good enough.

The piece of pipe used shouldn't be so long, and he buried it into the top of the growbed, vertically that is to say. So it could be easily removed, harvested and replaced. Your pipe though it looks exactly the same, is buried horizontally.

Will be interesting to see how well it works though.

I've heard the trick is to uncover the worm bed for an hour or so so the worms migrate out of the top cm or two, then scrape off that layer.

The "worm grunting" method (vibrations in the soil to drive them to the surface) has been shown to work for a type of worm in the southeastern USA. Apparently it sounds a lot like the sound of a mole digging and the worms, hearing their predator coming, surface to make better time in their escape attempts. Pretty amazing to see. Not sure if it will work for other species of worms.