Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thanks Scotty, I think that may well be the problem! The GH is mostly covered in to keep parrots and Fruit Flies out, but the ocassional moth, bug or butterfly gets in through some small gaps, but I haven't seen any bees in there.
I'll do a bit of pollinating brushwork on the strawberries today, which are covered in flowers ATM.

TCL, I think the heat may be making them a bit less firm that they should be, but not much I can do about that. 36C yesterday and the whole of upcoming week is forecast to be the same or hotter. At least it is slightly cooler in the GH.

Time for an update... I've now picked 104kg from the 8 tomato plants- the 3 that produced the most, in the outside GB#8 are not producing quite so many tomatoes as previously, and are showing a few signs of various deficiencies here and there in some of the leaves, and I am thinking of pulling them out, or at least seriously pruning them back, to make some space for some autumn plantings. I have more than enough sauce and salsa to keep me going until the end of the year. I'll have to dig the media up a bit first, as there are some solid masses of roots in there. I'm also about to add a 9th GB, inside the GH, just one more bit of steel to weld into the stand and it will be ready to go this arvo. This one will be filled with ~9/10 river gravel and 1/10 Canna clay balls (1 X 45l bag), whereas the other GBs have 3 bags of Canna in them.

The Murray Cod remain disinterested in pellets, so I'm still feeding them mainly Blood Worms, although they will eat some of the beef heart+Green Prawn+Blood Worm+crushed pellet mix first thing in the mornings. Later on in the day they don't seem interested and most of it stays in the bottom, which is due for a bit of a clean-up before too much accumulates.

Since I've started manually fertilising strawberry plants (usually with the end of my finger), the fruit has been much more consistenly larger and properly formed, although mostly still a bit soft, probably due to the heat, but it has started to cool down in recent days.

Water temperature maxima have been in the low 20sC, down from mid 20's about 10 days ago.

When I was feeding them a lot of Blood Worms only (they will eat over 80g/day, but it's too expensive to keep that up), the pH did decrease into the 6.4s range, so I added some KOH for a few days. When I try to feed them other things, they eat less and the CaCO3 buffer keeps it in the pH 6.6-6.7 range.

White flies continue to infest the tomatoes and Earth apple in part of the GH, with the ants helping them along it seems impossible to eliminate them, even with frequent sprayings of eco oil. A couple of capsicums are suffering from aphid infestation, and mass hand squashings and applications of eco oil only partly control them, also due to the ants working hard to oppose my efforts. I'll soon be removing all the Air Cell surrounds from the GBs, and will treat the legs with something to stop the ants travelling up and down.

GB#4's corn is growing well, with most plants having small cobs forming on them. Dipel keeps the caterpillars at bay, as it does on the tomatoes and capsicums. The 4 asparagas crowns in GB#5 continue to each yield a few spears each week, and I recently planted a Thai chilli plant in there, and it is yielding abundant chillies of various colours.

I'll be planting spring onions, chard, parsley and lettuce in the new GB in the near future, once I have it plumbed in.

Salinity remains in the 1.4-1.5ppt range, depending on how recently I've topped up the water levels.

I'll be a consultant soon Friends down the road are interested in setting up an AP system, so I'll be helping with the design and set-up, in exchange for some excavator work- which will be required to bury the 10500l FT and ST of the next landscaped (design by my wife), mostly wicking bed, system, which I'm told has to look reasonably like a conventional dirt garden. It will be terraced into the slope of the existing abandoned dirt garden area.
By my reckoning, I should just about be able to keep trout over summer in such a system.

I've had quite a few split tomatoes over the past 2 months, and it's a bit annoying having to chop out the splits when preserving or eating, but it hasn't cost me much in the way of fruit. The chooks or worms eat the shopped out bits anyway.



As for why it happens, the internet seems to suggest fluctuating levels of moisture. In a dirt garden that is believable, particularly in hot dry weather with intermittent watering. In my AP system where the media is always damp to wet, it doesn't really stack up as a reason, IMO. There is always a sufficient supply of water for the plant. It certainly is more prevalent on larger fruit, but is only evident on a small fraction of the fruit, and it also occurs on smaller fruit.

Has anyone discovered a way to stop it happening, or not seen it at all in their system?

I've picked 107kg as of 2 days ago, but the ripening is slowing down now as the days are shorter and nights cooler. I don't plan to get stuck in the autumn "leave them a bit longer to see if they ripen" trap I often did with the dirt garden, so the 3 tomato plants in the outside GB#8 wont see me coming until it's too late, and I've chopped their heads off! The other 5 plants in the GH will have a bit longer life, as the fruit is still ripening at a reasonable rate in there, and there is still quite a bit of it.

We donated and delivered a couple of boxes of them and some other fruit preserves yesterday, one to the Pilliga anti-CSG protest near Narrabri (I might even be on ABC 7:30 report tonight, in a crowd of about 180 others), and one to the Leard State Forest protectors, where Whitehaven Coal wants to replace a small patch of wildlife abundant remnant forest with a bloody big hole in the ground.

Impeccable timing with your question, Guna. I was about to upload some photos of my split tomatoes in order to ask the same question, ie how can an AP grown tomato suffer from fluctuations in watering - the usually stated cause of the splits - when they are permanently inundated (well, mine are, anyway)? In my case the splits generally get penetrated by one insect pest or another so the tomato must be trimmed quite soon after harvest for fear of its total loss.

Could it be potassium related? K has a significant role in water transplant in plants and tissue development. Were you getting splitting earlier in the season when you were regularly supplementing with KOH? Toms are K hogs.

Ditto Gordon with the timing and I also have been regularly supplementing with KOH but doesn't take long before I start getting deficiency symptoms.

So was going to ask if its ok to use KCl because there's only so much KOH I can add due to its pH effect.

And I'm going to hijack yr thread cause my toms all look like this on the outside and beautiful on the inside. What's the reason for that? It's not a variety problem as I've planted many varieties. They're fine to eat but not marketable (which isn't a problem for me).

Annoying, isn't it PLJ!
Mine are reasonably immune from pests that might take advantage of the splits, being protected by fruit fly netting, although there are a few small gaps in the GH nets that the occasional Superb Fairy Wren manages to find. Mostly the splits dry up and the damage doesn't spread any further in.

Matt - I think there are more splits now than earlier in the tomato harvest, but even then I had a few. Unfortunately the actual number of split toms each pick wasn't something I kept a record of, as it hasn't been a big problem. The brief burst of KOH additions ~2 1/2 weeks ago when I was feeding lots of Blood Worms didn't appear to make any obvious difference.

Yikes Carolin, the skin doesn't look too good! I've never seen anything like those, and can't even see anything here that it might be: http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell. ... rtKey.html (Thanks Scotty435 for that link in the Rotten Tomatoes thread)

Re KCl, I suspect it would be ok to add some, since NaCl in concentrations of 1-2ppt isnt generally a problem. However, if you are already NaCl salted, I dont know what the extra Chlorine might do to fish or plants. Maybe it off-gases eventually, as the K is taken up by the plants, do you know any biochemists that might have an idea?

I no longer have salt, so I suppose adding the KCl won't be a problem. Not sure about the chemistry of dissolved Cl, will investigate...

When Nate Storey was talking about KCl in his vid, he said to only use it as foliar - he did not say why though. I've been thinking the same as I've been adding HCl to lower my source water ph, so I can then add potassium bicarb to raise it and get potassium in the system! Think that is effectively the same as adding KCl.

Don't forget you are looking for around 1ppT of NaCl, so thats alot of potassium as you'll be adding that in the ppM range. Would be good to know if excess Cl off gases though (or gets used by plants).

Yould be better adding sulphate of potash if you are deficient in K. It is more expensive per unit of K. Most market gardeners have to use this form of K because the KCl form is essentially pure salt and will burn tender leaves and roots. Also gives you a free S boost. Good luck

Yes good point slantalum. Might be a better option than my KOH because it draws moisture out of the air and I now gave a 25kg lump of KOH.

There are some additional reasons for this on this site - http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/Portals/0/Gardening/Gardening%20Help/Visual%20Guides/Tomato%20Fruit%20Problems.pdf

Even though it's not listed, Potassium seems like a possible contributing factor to me as well. I seem to recall temperature issues with potassium uptake and you have a warm weather plant in a cooler environment where it might be struggling a bit. Still you'd think the leaves might show this

As far as colours tomato with the skin that's odd looking, I'm not sure what this is either. Could be infected with a virus (looks kind of mottled and might have a ring or two on the fruit). Could be spider mite damage - look for stippling.

Its a little mottled but looks to me like its just not list the chlorophyll from the fruit skin despite it being ripe on the inside. The toms I have now from the same vines are red on the outside. The weather has been cooler, my thoughts are the extreme hot we had earlier in excess of 40 for some days. But who knows. They taste fine and I guess that's all that matters?