Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have a weird problem. I know I won't get any sympathy, but my plants don't seem to be dying and I don't get frost (not even cool weather) so I don't have an end of season to kill everything off.

So, when do the plants get too old? To give you an idea, peppers here will generally live for 5 or more years, I figure in aquaponic, that could be a tree I could cut down for firewood...

Some of you have greenhouses, or perhaps live in mild climates - any hints?

do they stop cropping at all? Maybe after that if you want to plant something new.

There are probably a few different methods you could use, most likely a combination depending on the particular plants and such.

1-when they seem to stop producing.
This could be due to age, disease, pests, weather etc.

2-When you need to put something else in that place.

3-When the plant has just gotten to big or overbearing for it's, yours or the grow beds own good.

4-When it just starts looking bad

5-when you feel like it.

You have the unique situation that you can probably do whatever you want. You might decide to pull out a whole grow bed worth and re-seed or you might selectively harvest or remove some plants throughout the system and put new ones in or different ones in.

if they stop producing and won't likely start again, i pull them out.

When they stop producing a viable crop, and they are taking up space you need for strawberries, pull em out

One thing to keep in mind is root mass. Sometimes the longer you leave things there the larger the root mass, and big root masses can be a bugger to remove..

We actually have to run a cleaner through the pipes once a week to keep the drainage cleaned out or the autosiphons stop working.

The roots are something I am wondering about.

Before just pulling them out try pruning them and see if they regenerate esp the toms and peppers. ie cut off the sickly leaves and straggly branches.

how much does that poor child get paid?

I agree about the root mass thing. Some plants I've grown - including chillis have got so big that the root ball takes up about half of the 2 square metre grow-bed. This is hardly practical in terms of use of space and also is a pain to remove. Then you remove the plant either all the media comes out with it and the roots, or you leave the roots in there - which is not good. Something I have noticed with AP is that the roots of some plants, if left in the grow-bed, seem to survive for months after the plant is removed (ie they don't just decompose). It is just unfortunate they don't throw up new plants like a running plant would.

Yes I found inch long pieces of root that were still white, and it was in an area of the growbed where its completely bare. I'm sure they are at least a month old. (that was when I last pulled out plants from that area.)

What's a pepper?

In this context, some vareity of a chilli? The thing that burns - has capsaisin or something which is the cause of the burning feeling.

The other pepper is also a spice, small round 5mm balls. Also hot to taste. (That salt and pepper thing)

(I double posted the above post so I have deleted this text)