Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The little bugger almost looks like a toy with the fake eyes on the sides of its head.

Man, you have Cantelope already? Good on ya.

Got recent pics of the entire system from different angles? I'd like to see all those lovely blue barrels in rows. With plants, of course.

Horn worms are the devil.

Yep I have some and will use it tomorrow. I found another dozen or so this afternoon. Today it was really hot. My wife said it was 115oF.....

I just got back in from spraying Thuricide on the tomatoes and peppers. I found 4 more worms at first glance and 3 more got sprayed with the Thuricide. Bottle label says they will be dead in 24 hours. I sure hope so. Came in to get my camera and the batteries are dead so I have to wait a bit for pictures.

The heat is so bad here for the gardens that they seem to be dying except for the really hardy plants cantaloupe and watermelon are still doing great. The tomatoes are dying. The Squash got stem borers and died too. No Squash this year. Wife says it was unofficially 118 here.

OH I be some of you might know why my Squash for the last 3 years only blooms male blooms for the longest time before the female blooms come out and produce. Last year we got 3 squash off of 15 plants with about a 100 male blooms Before the stem borers killed all the plants in a day or two.

I got pics....
Looking down the barrels shows the whole garden. Even my little helpers is there on the ground. That creeping vine is an ornamental sweet potato vine. I see evidence of a leak also.

Here is the nasty Horn Worm I sprayed this morning and left to watch him die. I want to make sure the stuff kills em dead. I sprayed Thuricide on everything a while ago. I killed over 2 dozen of the worms yesterday. 7 already today.

Here is a pollinator bug that does all my flowers. We do not have any bees around here for some reason. They disappeared about 4 years ago. I hope to see their return soon.

Here is a cucumber and cantaloupe up the same trellis. The cantaloupe I ate yesterday is from these vines. Another one is ready to pick tonight.

I find it hard to take pics of bugs cause they are camera shy and keep moving like a bunch of kids. Any way the flower in my hand is what the big ole bug was pollinating when I was trying to take his picture but he flew away. I got him later on another flower. I better start getting my hoop house up cause the shade cloth I ordered would be here next week, I hope early in the week. Probably get a cool spell when I get it up.

There you go Mr Bill. Have a nice day.

Don,
What type of fields and farmers are around your land? Do they rely on pesticides for their crops? Wonder if that is why you don't have any bees around.
When you get your greenhouse put up, you can start a small hive or two and have them do the pollenating. I believe they have around a 2 mile radius, but with all those growbeds, they probably wouldn't wander very far.

I do not know about the neighbors. But there are no farmers close that would be using that kind of chemicals.

Bees are not so easy. I have been studying them for a while. Seems easy if you listen to the salesman. But you know how that goes. They need flowering plants to live and my garden would not supply them with that much pollen to live on. My dirt garden is not doing well either and I think it is because of the heat. 30 days in a row over a 100. maybe 5 days in a row over 110.

You would feed them sugar water in the winter months to assist them. May be surprised at the things they would find to eat/drink long after the flowers stop blooming, fruit is gone from the trees, or no AP grown goodies to help themselves to.

There are uninvited, but certainly welcome honey bees and bumblebees at my AP growbeds helping themselves to the water flowing in, so I would imagine that they would be there during the winter months as well. There are quite a few in the dirt garden as well when I roll out there in the early morning. Busy little buggers.

They say that bumblebees can pollinate about 30% more than the honeybees, so that might be an option. If you have no natural pollinators available, it shouldn't be an issue to have some shipped in.

Bumblebees are what I have the most of. Over a month ago I saw a single honey bee but it never came back. I have never ever seen such large bumblebees any where. It is utterly amazing what they can get into. I am reasonably sure they did all the work last year and this year as well. I have heard of a guy a couple of miles from here that does bees and have tried to find him. If I can get him to bring a hive here for a while it would be much easier than having to do it myself. I just have not found him yet. I have not even seen his hives or the honey I presume he sells.

Your plants are looking great considering the heat and that you have no shade over them.

Looking nice and healthy there Don....

Shame you have a lack of bees over there, I'd heard your bee populations had crashed in the States.. We have loads over here, very obvious in summer as they seek out the water in the AP systems.

I used to be allergic to bee stings but seem to have out grown that. Now I really do not want to get any more bee stings but pollination is more important. I have read that the bumble bees do a 30% more than honeybee do so cant complain. They do not sting unless provoked a lot. Honey bees just like to sting I think. I believe that the problem is the Killer bees taking over the hives and killing the queens and moving on to the next one. The bees don't realize that the real queen is not being fed or producing so they all die one hive at a time. I think there is a virus being blamed on it here also. With out the bees doing their thing Japan nearly lost all their cherry trees when it happened to them about 25 years ago. I do not know why their bees died but they did and it was a big deal. Their country relied heavily on honeybees for pollination. There food production went way down for a while. I saw a story on TV about them and the recovery that is happening now.

I would have had better looking plants if I was not so lazy and had the shade house up already I think. I could use a magic crystal ball to tell me what to do when so it would all work out right the first time. I could just go to Hogwarts and get cracking. They would just call me a MUGGLE though.

I started the Hoop House a couple of days ago and took some pics. Left side ground anchors, Right side ground anchors, and first few hoops. I hope it looks better when I get more hoops up. I do not like what I have up there so far. I started with a hoop bender that is supposed to do a 20 foot hoop with 30 foot of pipe . I stretched the hoop by flattening the hoops and adding a 64 inch length of pipe to make the required 24 foot span that I need. I was afraid that the top would not be high enough so I made the ground anchors 30 inches taller so it would clear the top of the vine hangers. It is taller than I figured so I may insert the hoops about another foot in the anchors to shorten the top height. That should help stabilize the whole thing. I need to put up the three perlings, the pipes that run length ways to hold it all together in a solid unit.
The shade cloth arrived yesterday on Fedex. After it got here I made a trip to town to get the cables I intend to use to suspend the shade cloth. I hope to get the hoops up tomorrow and the cable up also. I will have to make some clips to hold the cloth eyelets to the cable. I will probably bend up some wire to make a type of shower curtain hook of some arrangement like that. I am trying to make the shade cloth to be able to pull it down the cables to cover the garden when it is too hot and pull it back when it is not so hot.