Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Too warm for trout KEII???

The weather is warm, but the water is cool. No swimming for me until we get a bit further north (still in Perth for 2 more days). Those rainbow fish would be fine (are we allowed to say trout here yet????)

heater flow rate changed today, increased it so that water in at 15 degs, water out at 20 degs, reckon this is working better, as 2 hours later, 8000 litres had risen to 17 degs

The greenohuse system is continuing to get better as it ages... We are still picking about 1.5 kg's of cherry toms per week from one growbed... the growbed which we pulled all the toms out of a couple of weeks ago is already sprouting tomato seedlings by the hundreds, so will have to thin them out and see how they go over winter... would love to be able to keep them goi9ng all year... I reckon the cherry toms will go all year, need some more pruning though . Snow peas, broad beans, bok choy etc are powering along. One thing I am pleased with too is the amount of worms in the growwbeds. I left a pile of rotting toms on the surface of the growbed for a week or 2, when I went to remove them last weeked, noticed the pile had shrunk... lifted them up, thick with worms having a field day! so I left it all there

Good to hear something's going OK for ya Stu... pictures would be good...

actually found the battery for the camera yesterday after months of not knowing where it was So maybe a few pics coming...

Shed channels are powering along too, now that we are on the winter varieties of lettuce. We are generally taking about 5 - 6 weeks to achieve a full sized head of green oak, but that is a lettuce around the size of a dinner plate!

My one regret is that the holes are too close together, they are okay for small herbs etc, but for lettuces, we can really only leve full sied lettucees every second hole. After a couple of weeks, we move the red oaks down to the greenhouse to finish them off in the full sun, gives them a lot more colour and more heart/weight to them.

We had our first stall at the local primary school last week which will now be a fortnightly affair... wish I could grow the basil in winter... it is looking very sad due to how cold it is... we have only 4 jars left of our basil pesto...

Hows the winter trout fish going?

bit of an update. Have got rid of the rat problem finally, and got the summer veg going full steam ahead. Am germinating my own seeds in trays and straight into the beds with good success. Currently planted are : tomatoes (shitloads) cucumbers eggplants, lettuce, basil spring onions, capsicums, zucchini, pumpkins, bok choy, corn.

check out the pic of the golden roma toms. There are over 150 set fruit on this one plant. Guess thats what you get by leaving the solids in and having plenty of depth to the gravel beds

Have started picking orange cherry toms which are delicious. Every tom plant in the growbeds is self seeded from last year. Am going to plant out some black cherry toms today, as well as firing up the nft again for summer... lettuces and going to have a go at growing cucumbers in the nft seeing as I have about 50 seedling in trays and not much room left in the gb's Might throw some pumpkins in the nft too.

The one bed BYAP system is planted stupidly heavily, am letting it go a bit wild to see how crazy a one bed system can get... 5 cucumber vines, numberous self seeded toms, 20 odd corn plants, zucchini, eggplant and capsicums are all in there So no pruning or training as such in this system, as opposed to the main system which is being pruned heavily so that by mid summer I can still get between the beds for harvesting

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how have you been pruning your toms?

What a strange variety of tomatoes you're growing there

better than the european ones

pruning aggressively. Breaking off all the offshoots to the sides that are trying to grow new entire branches as soon as they sprout (the ones that grow at 45 degrees to the main stem). Then as every truss sets fruit, i prune off all leaves and branches below the set fruit.

Yep, I've also got those shitload (self seeded) tomatoes.
Thanks for the reminder, time to give them a radical haircut.

+1....