Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

moringa leaves are supposed to have an abundance of nutrients....

you can eat the leaves, flowers, and young pods...

they can grow in poor soil and grow extremely fast...

though I would give them a try...

also planting luffa this spring..... mostly as a fence between me and my neighbor

JT

Did a quick read on Wiki regarding Moringa plants. Nice going on getting the seeds to sprout.

I've posted this question before with no reply, so I figure no one has tried it yet. Wondering if the harvested luffa sponge can be used as growing media? Possibly in an AP system in strawberry towers? Keep me posted on how they grow in our southern soil. I'll give it a try eventually, just haven't gotten to it yet.

Lufa will rot fairly quickly if you try to use it constantly wet as media.

Beware the Lufa Vine, if it gets plenty of moisture and sun, it could eat the neighborhood!!!!!! I had one grow up and completely cover the trellis and go across the shade cloth and collapse it then continue up and over a 30 foot oak tree. Looked like I had a zucchini tree! Beware the power lines.

The big bull carpenter ants tend to like the vines and don't seem to hurt the plant but they will occasionally pick a dry lufa fruit to make a nest in so be careful when you bust open the dry fruits to make sponges, pay attention to what you are doing because you want to have a place in mine to toss the ant filled lufa when you discover it before the ants are all over you or the other Lufa. At least that is something I have discovered down here.

The Lufa vine was able to completely root fill a 100 gallon rubbermaid stock tank bed and it sucked a huge amount of nutrients. We are talking an annual that grew a vine as thick as my arm in 7 months.

Wiki'd the Moringa.... wow.. looks very beneficial.

Searching for sustainability on the farm. If it works I won't have to buy any seed starting materials anymore (I use peat pots). It should work as a sprouting medium in a shallow water filled pan. Wick the water up, sprout the seed, plant the whole thing into the dirt or AP system.



Um, someone said something about good fences and good neighbors? lol



Good again. So if we put one in an AP system, we could theoretically run higher numbers of fish in the tank because it can handle the nutrient load.

Oops, sorry for the hijack JT.

Hilarious post TC!

Dave, yea, if you can laugh at yourself while you are 20 feet up in the oak tree with a 14 foot pole pruner and you still can't get all the lufa down.

JT did say something about planting Lufa so I figure this isn't really a Hijack.

I have tried packing a slice of lufa with some compost for seed starting but it was really tedious and labor intensive. Probably easier to just get a soil blocker Bill. I've found 2 parts peat, 2 parts sifted worm castings and 1 part coir have worked well for blocking for me. You will have to experiment a bit to find the right consistency for your materials.

As to lufa and higher stocking. Well you might get away with a deep bed sucking down more nutrients but beware the solids from higher stocking could actually become a big problem with root clogged beds so be sure to rotate which bed gets the lufa vine and don't go too overboard on the stocking. Make sure you have plenty of worms.

Fences and good neighbors as long as your vine doesn't swallow any of your neighbor's trees or head out across his yard or eat his house.

- Good thing it was an annual!

well I was planning on making a 12' high trellis along the fence line.... and planing this in dirt, not in AP....

thanks for all the heads up..... guess I will be doing a lot of cutting back...... every day or so.... well... just add it to my daily routine on the moringa..

JT

Yeah.... its spring time in North Carolina.......

well we didn't have much of a winter..... this year.....

just waiting for the ground temp to come up to 60 before planting the moringa outside...

it's still in the cups and have started pinching it back every other new sprout...

back to the GH system.....

I am starting to pull a lot of plants that have been growing all winter.. and getting ready
to plant the new summer picks...

Had very good growth over the winter, since we only had a couple days in the freezing zone.....

jT

How are you going to protect the moringa for future years outside? Just chop it back and mound up a huge amount of mulch over it to protect the roots from freezing?

Mine has frozen back most winters but has been coming back each warm season. I haven't quite figured out what to do with it though. It is really tedious to pick the little leaves off to use for anything.

WOW those are some great looking onions!!!

hey TC

ya will mulch the roots.. the ground never freezes here.. so really dont need to cut it back... it will lose the leaves over winter.... and come back when it hits 60 degrees

love the onions.... got more ready to go in ... for this fall harvest


JT