Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Made pesto twice today, once for lunch and again at dinner. Just now realized I didn't use garlic the second time. Made it with walnuts, basil, less of parsley, lots of Parmesan from a can, and a little bit of oil. Tried using the mortar and pestle at lunch but at dinner just used the little chopper processor we use for nuts. Used it on chicken and mixed with noodles. Very good! Also got enough lettuce for salad for everyone tonight.

It's gotten really cold here today, below 60 and rainy. Don't expect the tomatoes will ripen in time, just now have some little ones on the plants.

Sounds delicious, but you get Parmesan in a can?

Are you asking because you don't have this in Australia or because it offends your culinary senses?

Long ago my wife told me not to buy the canned stuff. I thought she liked the cheese from the wheel better, almost twenty years later I found out it was because she couldn't stop eating it. I had to laugh because I would have kept buying it for myself had I known. I like both but they don't taste the same.

We always have Parmesan in container in the fridge. Great for sprinkling on pasta etc

Yes it's what we had already and I didn't want to go to the store for pine nuts either. Some day I'll get the real stuff!

oooh yeah pesto is awesome. you can use cashews or almonds too (probably any nut really). it keeps pretty well - put in a container ( I used takeaway plastic cups) and cover with olive oil and stick in the fridge - it will stop it from gowing brown. Sorry if im telling you how to suck eggs. mmmm free range eggs poached with a bit of pesto...

AP insomnia again. Sigh.

Ok, so what's the new idea that kept you up all night this time?

This is your only clue until I post some diagrams: LOL

Here are some pictures from this morning. We've gotten so much rain over the last two or three weeks that it's been ridiculous. The pond overflowed into the gravel, so much that the fish could have swam out over it. The lettuce on the rafts were blown over the other night but they appear to have uprighted themselves yesterday. I already took out the longest banana pepper, these are the others. The cantalope probably doesn't have enough time to develop anything before the frost, and I pinched off the tops of the tomatoes to try to get them to develop the fruit fast.

The pots on the flood table are planted with green beans, all of which have sprouted. It warmer in there. Also a picture of the nemesis parsley plant which I am always trying to find a use for.

BTW the drain net pot in the lettuce sump is a 10" square pot to give it some scale.

OK, so this was on the first page of this thread back in January, one of the things I wanted to work on this year.

LoL stands for "lattice of lettuce", which is to arrange plants in a 3D lattice, using minimal support. Ideally the plants should just float in space and not obscure or be obscured by each other and the plumbing, support, media, etc. This is inspired by The Land exhibit at EPCOT, where you see squash plants whizzing around with their roots just hanging in air.

The gist of the current experiment is to use a tee fitting to support the plant, distribute water to the plant roots, and let the roots hang down.

I bodged up this plant on the flood and drain table. Some of the water gets diverted to the tee. The pepper plant in there hasn't died yet so I am continuing with this to see how far it can go.

In Ryan's thread he has a picture of DWC lettuce where it looks like the plants are just being supported by the hole in the thick foam board. I thought about how to support the plants in the tee for awhile. I learned about neoprene plugs that are used by dope growers to propagate plants, by supporting the stem in a slot in the plug, and then the plug is put in a net pot. Those are too big though at 2" for a standard 3/4" tee.

So the current method to support the stem while the plant is small is to use a short pipe, drilled with a hole through, and to wrap a wide rubber band once around the plant stem, and tie the band. This seems to hold the plant plenty well without strangling it, and it's cheaper and requires less material than the plugs.

The reason I've had AP insomnia is because I think this can be used to make a nice lattice of plants, without costing a lot. The goal is to have a volume of plants rather than just a flat plane, or even just a vertical wall of them.

One way is to use soda bottle as root chambers after the tee, ala Window Farms or like Farm Fountain does. I think this setup doesn't limit the size of the plant as much as those, because only the stem diameter needs to be accommodated in the tee. You can easily go up to 1" or 2" tees if you had to, although a lot of plants' stems will fit in a 3/4" tee.

The root chambers are optional, if the squash plants at EPCOT are any guide. The idea is to control the water flow so that the plants can be built up into a lattice or tower. If this were not necessary then they could just drain into a gutter or sump or FT.

Here is the basic module for the lattice and towers I'm thinking about ATM. A tee and two 45 degree fittings, with two soda bottles joined to make the root chamber. Standard bottle fittings fit into a 3/4" fitting after filing down the ridges a bit. It costs $1.50 per plant.

The bottle does not have to be there, or it can hang straight down or at another angle.

I've hooked two of these up to the rail troughs, by diverting some flow. One uses a 45 degree angle fitting and the other one is vertical.

Twine is held to the outside edge of the tee to support the structure. This supports the structure but is also something to tie or clamp the plants to. I used the string to secure the bean plants.

The structure can be supported from above by wire attached to the tee, or from below by some kind of thin pipe or posts.

You can see the roots in the top chamber. I plan to spray paint the bottles in the future silver to reflect light back to the plants and to further minimize shade from the structure onto the plants. The bottles are siliconed for now.