Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Wow you guys. I bet you enjoy your drinks at the end of the day and look back at just what you have achieved. Its really awesome. I bet you did not you would be in this position 12 months ago, well done.

Fantastic effort guys - well done.

Looking forward to seeing it when I pick up some fish.

Just a quick update while I eat my lunch System is ticking along. We are picking hadfulls of cherry toms, hopefully we can keep them going thru winter as the plants are covered in fruit. Basil etc has all gone to seed, we are leaving them in to self seed next time. We have about 1500 small silvers feeding this system, and we are yet to register any nitrates. We have givewn up planting the nft channels until the nute levels rise, all the nutes are being sucked out by the toms and a very large pumpkin vine, which we want to see if they will survive out very cold winters.
The silvers are down to 1 feed a day since the temps dropped.
Yesterday we scored a 13.5 by 6.6m greenhouse, now we just have to dismantle it. It has a solaweave cover which needs a couple of patches, but it is a good start, and the frames are excellent. We also scored 3 big galv troughs which we will line and use for fruiting plants. The rest of the greenhouse will be filled with nft growing lettuces, basil etc, running a system with complete solids removal. When we get approval for erecting the greenhouse, we will proceed with that.
tis all for now.

Sweet Mon,
Just a thought-- If you are going t leave the Basil to self sow, then why not be selective about the seed stock you will have...
i.e. Pull out the weakest/sickest etc.
...but thinking about it you most prolly have done that
C1
Good work pays off !!! (GWPO)
Hi to H & grommies and ext Fam hope all are well!

Hey Iv

the basil was organic seeds from eden seeds, so we are happy for it to do its own thing

as an aside non ap related, we had our first on farm birth the other day (of the four legged type)- a little lamb, very cute, and it even makes it thru without ending up on the dinner table as she is a she and unrelated to our ram. The kids are very excited

as too, is the ram
good to hear!

Seed? I figured you'd be using trads or heirloom or such.
I guess it is good to have a variety of different optimal enviroment seed strains in the one crop, for variation of temps winter V winter etc

:rethinksseedcollection:

Are you sure we cant do souvlaki? I'll get KE XIV to pick up the spit from my Dad.

we have one more ewe which is preggas, so if it is a boy, the BYAP meet here is on, you bring the spit!

Was that "meet" or "meat". either way I'll be there...

Today we finally got around to doing a big cleanout of our system. We are 2 months behind in our winter veg, but last week we found a local lady who sells organic seedlings, and a very wide variety too so we are planting out 34 punnets of greens and brassicas of different varieties to hopefully see which ones do better than the others. There are many which I have never heard of.
We picked over 10kg's of green toms before chucking the bushes to the chooks, so tonight I have a batch of F&F's green tomato relish on the go. My eyes are watering from the onions Hope it tastes good !!
We have over 1500 fish in this system, and curent figures are ammo 0 nitrites 0 and nitrates 5, and we have had this going since october I think, so it is quite established. We just couldn't get a nitrate reading with the toms in sucking them all out, so the only ones left in there are the cherry toms which are still fruiting and ripening well. Maybe they will last the winter... Everything else is gone except a couple of capsicums, parsely and silverbeet. We are adding another 1000 fish to the system over the next couple of days to crank up the nutes. Obviously when spring comes and they start to feed better, we will seperate them again, our ultimate goal is to stock this system with 300 kg's of fish.

oh yeah, one bed still has about 2 square metres of watercress. We took out about 2 more square metres and chucked it to the chooks, stuff gorws like mad and that's without much nutes. I fear the bed will eventually become one big mass of cress

Yea green tomato relish havent got much left of the first lot left family love it

Is that a big mass of cress or a big mess of cress Stu. Gotta get the rhyming right mate

I haven't had any success with cress so far. Must give it another go. Which variety are you growing mate?

Probably souvlakian water cress.

Lebanese? water cress... the same stuff that Joel has. It takes over the bed, sends runners, strikes roots and the only way to get it out is to dig with a pitch fork