Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Mint means.... growbed full of roots.... fullstop....

the roots definitely aren't down the drains as i've checked, only got mint in one of the grow beds and that are both blocking up, however they all have a huge tomato bush and either mint or basil under that so i'm guessing the bed is totally root bound.

yup, tomato roots are what got to my drains..

so, continuing the Solids Build Up thread, how does one keep the roots from building up in a grow bed? If, say, an indeterminate tomato plant (continuous growing) is in the system for 6-8 months and the roots build up to a ridiculous root ball, does the grower have to dump the gravel bed to rid the bed of said roots? Or might there be a better way of cleaning out all those little threads of nutrient suckers?
Will wormies take care of the orphaned roots after there is no longer a tomato plant growing to the heavens?

Really need to lay off the beer. but I write so much better this way...

Another point about the little patch of media right under the water inlet to a grow bed where it tends to get slimed up and the water starts flowing over before draining down into the gravel....

This is often caused by bio-slime as well as solids and algae and sometimes roots but the short term I've been using for it (perhaps KP actually came up with it) is Fish Poo Pavement. It seems that any grow bed with constant inflow tends to have problems with it far more than beds with timed inflow. Quick solution is "poke it with a stick" a bit of stirring of the media right under the inflow will often break up the slime enough to let water flow down into the gravel. How long this helps will depend on the bio load and the amount of roots under the inlet as well as the amount of worms to help keep things flowing.

I've found that a square of filter material right under the inlet can help and to break things up one often only needs to flip it over, and worms love eating fish poop out of the filter media square too.

Add worms any time that things are not frozen.

Yes worms will help eat away the roots that are left behind after you pull out the main root ball from the big tomato plant (often cutting off the main plant and waiting a few days before yanking out the base of the stem with the roots will be easier.) Roots are always growing/dieing back/growing and that helps keep soil aerated and feed the worms too, in grow beds the worms are very important to keeping the roots from building up too much.

However, warning about mint, it can clog a bed big time. Same could be true of water cress, sweet potato, and my banana broke a grow bed on me (but that banana produced fruit from a sucker in less than 8 months rather than 14.)

Oh, yes there are ways to distribute water around the grow beds. BYAP uses distrobution grids around the outside edge of the beds. Basically a rectangle of PVC with holes drilled in and facing down where they won't grow algae. I always figured they would block up with slime and fish poo but it doesn't seem a problem in the byap systems, just spray out the grid once or twice a year I guess.

I've found that the fish poo pavement seems to be far more of a problem where constant inflow to the bed is the case, intermittent or timed inflow to the beds has not shown me much in the way of water flowing over the gravel in my systems. The issue does seem to get worse with time on the constant inflow as the system gets more mature and can restore the bio slime more quickly after "poking it with a stick."

Always good advice TC.... Poke it with a stick....


Many things can actually be fixed in this way..

I've poked a lot of people "with a stick" through the years... didn't seem to fix any of them...