Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

naw... just like to grow things that most dont....

jT

Pulled out one of the red onions didnt want it to get to big....

Pulled out the rest of the leeks to make room for some more winter tomato plants.....

it was a job pulling them.. .as the roots didnt want to give up..

will be making some leek and potato soup today as its supposed to get cold tomorrow...



jT

Wow! Proof that we shouldn't believe ~everything~ we read about AP. I was under the impression that onions wouldn't work at all.

I've been getting leeks and onions from a local farmer who sells out of a shed on their farm. Green beans and, most recently, fresh pinto beans (which are AWESOME and completely different from dried or canned), and other stuff. I've been patronizing them for about a year now. The pinto beans were way too expensive considering how many of them it takes to make a pot of beans.

I can't wait to harvest from my (as of yet unbuilt) system!!

i've had good luck with everything.....

the main problems I've had is letting my PH get to low.. then the peppers don't like it very much.....

jT

Nice onion! I have trouble getting the right kind of onions to plant for my latitude I think so few of mine seem to bulb up, that thing is beautiful. The leaks look great too.

And don't believe when people tell you root crops don't grow in aquaponics, they grow fine, it's just if your gravel is too difficult for the root to push aside, you might get very interesting shapes to your tubers but they still grow.

Another thing about the leeks is that you can cut them off and the green parts grow back Nice harvest there JT

thanks faye.....

I think I am finally coming to grips with AP.... and becoming more at ease and more certain with the decisions I make....

It's a nice feeling to know what your doing rather than guessing

jT

So I'm curious: has anyone had any success with a "softer" medium? Sand comes to mind. A simple mesh would allow it to drain (and wow your return water would be cleaner!!). Cleaning the sand, should that be necessary, would be a pain though. Maybe a smaller gravel, like aquarium pebbles? It'd be neat to see daikon or carrots go nutso with this technology. Maybe even, at least for the carrots, some kind of suspension with a NFT bath or something... I'm still in the guessing stages here so pardon me if any of this seems dumb. The trick I think would be getting the root "space," large enough to accommodate the size you're after. I'm not sure how carrots work but I know that they have a whole network of shooters off the carrot part itself when I yank them from the ground.

I'll look up commercial carrots to see what their tricks are. We may be able to adapt them to our projects.

smaller media will clog up and cause some toxic zones, sand would be a nightmare.. it's recommended to go bigger than a half inch or so...

I know some people doing some testing with things like sand for growing root crops but it is definitely in the testing stage and one would probably want to send only filtered water and be able to adjust the flood and drain times for such beds independently since they would have a different characteristic. for general media bed aquaponics, 1/2"-3/4" media is definitely the better choice.

JT, I have carrots growing in 3/4" rough gravel. Growbeds are of the blue barrel beauty variety, cut lengthwise. Carrots were started with flood and drain bell siphon. A few months after starting them from seed and seeing the tops but no root, I decided to turn the tap off from that bed and just let it fill up once per day until the siphon kicked in. In my opinion, I thought that the things were flooded too often and wouldn't make a root. Probably should have just left them alone, but the tinker gene is alive and well.

Crooked, stubby roots are what I usually harvest out of the gravel bed. Probably won't try it again with root crops. Not anything to do with AP, it's just that I have good dirt in raised beds that I'll use for the root crops.

I wonder if using smoother stones or hydroton would be better in the growbeds.

Anyway, there's my 25 cents worth. (Inflation don't you know.)
And all that green you see on the root is no good. Should have heaped up some more gravel around the tops of each to keep the sun off. Hindsight...

Don't be afraid to go down to 1/4" gravel. It's the only size I've ever used.

Those carrots would look a lot worse if they were coming from volcanic rock.

ugly carrots are still edible, just maybe not marketable.

Yep, tasted just fine to me.

JT, will you be giving the carrots a go in your AP system? I haven't looked to see how deep your river rock went before the lower level of lava rock. Hopefully you give it a go and let us know how they grow with your setup.

How was the potato and leek soup?