Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I see no bullying going on.
The big cats were smaller than the comets when they moved in. Maybe the respect lives on... or maybe the stratification helps! The catfish stay way down mostly... The comets are all you see until the catfish rise up to eat.

I took some veg and fruit pictures today. May try to catch some fish pics too, if they are willing (feed at twilight).

No fish piccies. But to prove that the media is still wet...

Sweet! What kind of grape vines? My reseach led me to belive Fry, Summit and Cowart were good varieties for me to try.

Under the grapevine there's eggplant, in the middle we have Ghost Chiles, and onions carrots and lettuce are spread thoughout...

Mortensen Hardy. Resistant to Pierce's Disease and yet yummy for table eatin'.
Descendants of hybrids- cuttings sent to Dr. Bob Randall from Florida. They sell these at the various Fruit Tree Sales, I will have plenty of cuttings next winter for ya if you can wait.

I tried corn in soil in the summer of 09. Grew a few smutty ears (not that I mind the delicate quitlacoche fungus) but poured a LOT of water on the ground never to return.

This season, Aquaponics Year One, my entire growbed is smaller than that corn patch was, I have more corn plants (in a 2-square-foot corner of the GB ) and they are doing very well. We got 'baby bumps' already! This is Silver Queen.

You can never have too much cilantro.
Even if ya don't like to eat it...

...it keeps the beneficials hanging around...

...like a blooming do-nut shop.

I watch them track and target stink bugs. Awesome hunters, just like a...
like a...

Because of you, I planted Cilantro. Hopefully I get the same result = assassin bugs. No issues with bad bugs yet, but planning for the future.

Great growth on the plants, man. Way to go.

Awesome stuff,
Big deep GB seems to = great plant growth if yours and OBOs systems are anything to go by.
I think for my GB extension I will use IBCs cut in half.
Has anyone done this for GBs.

Yup I halve all my IBCs. I saw pics of someone's system and they were cutting them to exactly 1 foot deep. I'm thinking "why would anyone do that?"

I have done them two ways; one where I cut them so the two halves have the same depth, and the other where I cut them so the two halves are the same height when sitting in the frame. So depth of my beds vary from 14 inches to around 2 feet.

One reason for cutting them short would be height considerations. If your tank was two foot and the bed was two foot then you could be at 4+ ft depending on how it was set up, which wouldn't be the most comfortable gardening level.

Whall I finally added my self to the Members Systems Large Club page.

I should be right at the Legend threshold too... any post now and I will have arrived.

Yes this is a gratuitous post. Let's see, yada yada media depth yada yada
check my new WordPress site sminstudios.com yada yada



dang, still just "bordering"
Rick

How's your weather Sminfiddle?

Clear blue sky this week, highs in the upper 80's F.
We have about 4 years of rain to catch up on though.

Rick

We've been unseasonably cold most of this year in California. The tomatoes took forever to ripen. I had some tomatoes rot on the vine without ever ripening. It's been a strange set of weather patterns, here and there.

Plants are so hard-wired to respond to certain temperatures. That kind of weirdness will freak them out, yeah. Pity, esp. if they were good tomatoes.