Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Oh my god!!!!!

Red light district and poles to complete the mental picture

lol, yea, but do u like my lettuce?

:-)

it's a beautiful lettuce and I am jealous

Yeah - really like the lettuce mate...kinda got a bit obsessed with that beautiful line and never got round to anything else that was happening, certainly shows where my (mature) mind wanders too

Yep the lettuce looks T-riffic!, might have to come up and steal it!

Those are definitely Broad Bean plants . theyre both self pollinating and bee pollinated , dont worry , they'll sprout beans soon enough

when the first flowers start going black / dropping off this means theyre ready to start pumping out beans , as soon as you see flowers blacken - pinch off very top greenest shoots at the top of the plants to get higher yeild

last two years I had the same thing , the flowers just sat there for ages and I wondered when the beans would turn up , then all of a sudden the plants went crazy

30 plants, I was picking more in a week than the three of us could eat ( so this year I planted 60 plants ... )

With the peas,,,pick often and pick young,,,tastier and will influence the plant to produce more.
Cheers

I subscribe to Boris' planting theory

Hey there Roy!
Was hopeing to make it up to your place these hols but time has got away from me (and a list a mile long of things to catch up on)... Perhaps end of term 3!?
System is looking good mate! Glad to see that it has all come together so well...

Thanks guys for the great responce...

The broad beans have been flowering like this for 2 months and now starting to a little yellowish and sickly...
- Still no beans (Maybe the fact that its winter)

Aquamad - Yes ive been meaning to catch up mate...

Ive now pulled 2 nice lettuce from the system. Quite sweet and no trace of bitterness. Im very happy with the lettuce and I will be planting 1.5 growbeds when I grow some more seeds soon...

The cabbage is growing, The hearts starting to group and clump more together though I wish they would move faster.

The pea plant is dying off a bit. Got a few peas from it though and they were VERY nice. Im going to try to have 4-6 pea plants next time. My wife said you wearnt spose to eat the shells - but I coundnt resist - they wer too sweet and tasty.

Ive now put mint into the system. Is starting to grow now too. Could this be a mistake.
1. Beause it will try to take over the growbed
2. A waste of good growbed space that I could be growing somthing better.

But they grow so WELL and I love the smell of mint. So ive put some into the ground underneath the system anyway and its doing well too.

My Priorities now are:
a. Starting to look at planting seeds so in a couple of weeks I can replant the growbeds
b. Want to think about eating my fish with the goal of getting 20-30 barra fingerlings once it warms up a bit

I want to see how barra goes by next winter and nows the best time for it...

Egad . Lost a jade this afternoon after I cam back from work...

It was brownish - extremely slimy and bled a little.. buried already sorry so no piccies...

Thats all good, but the problem in my area when it is cold, there is no Solar to do the heating, and when there is sunshine water doesn't need heating

I've got 300mts of 13mm black pipe on the roof of my shed. It was used to heat my pool. Ice cold water once through came out warm. Another 300mts and you wouldn't be able to put you hand under it. Changed a 55kl pool by 10degrees. A friend of mine used 100mts of 1inch for a 20kl pool, forgot to turn it off one day and could not see the pool for the fog coming off it.

Going to use some of it for my AP system the rest for a hot tub. 30mins of an afternoon should get it pretty hot.

Ok yes I stillthey live... few updates...

I still have my 9 Jade perch. Around 25 - 30cm long though I have run into a couple of issues I wish I took the data for.

First of all, At the peak of my growth, (as you might have seen from the previous pictures), my Nitrates fell from 40, down to 5. So as your plant growth goes up, they obviously consume more Nitrates out of your system, and this may efftect growth.

The crops that did quite well I found were tomatos, Lettuce, mint, peas. My Broccalli Got the #$%#$$# eaten out of it, and im pretty sure that they were not growing well either. They might have gotten large, but the cores after like 12 weeks just wearnt what I expected and some of the leaves were extreamly rigid, double to triple width of normal leaves, sometimes deformed, deep green and just didnt seem right.

From a nutrient point of view, I dont feel I have enough in my system "once" it gets established. In the past we have talkd on the forums about the min fish kg/ water ratio and, not thinking from a eating fish perspective, Weve thought in the past that it probabily takes 1.5kg/100 Ltr water minimum to make sure you have enough nutrients. I have 9 Fish prob around 1kg or just under each and about 900ltr of water.

So Do I:
a), get rid of my fish and get like 40 barra fingerlings now (end of winter) or
b) Keep going with what I have...

Ive since pretty much came up with the decision I think to get barra fingerlings... Just havent done anything about it.

Since then also I have cleaned out the system so it looks bare again, and planted 8 more pea plants, 6 capsicum and 6 celery to see how they go.

I intend to put in about 8 lettuce soon as well.

Whats your thoughts...

25 - 30cm jades should be a good weight, so I'd eat them and get barra.