Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

If you are asking me, my current results consists of a big gaping hole in my patio that is almost big enought to bury my sump. It will be tomorrow. Like you I currently plan to plant some trees. Iambic pentameter has nothing to do with it, unless you want to read your trees Shakespeare. That may help with the wellbeing of the trees. Maybee it is time to start on a new thread on what to read to your AP plants. Would they like Moby Dick, or would they be sick of water and want a drier tale like Grapes of Wrath?

Hey!

Hoping for some updates on AP trees
was thinking a mango or longan tree in an aquaponics system but i dunno how much fruit it would achieve in a half barrel.

Cheers

I doubt weather half a barrel would be enough for a mango or a longon....even drawfs...buuuuut ive been wrong countless times before....

Papays would be good in half barrels...but I mean, you have to be a pretty hopeless gardener if you cant grow papayas really well in the soil....so in many ways papayas probobly take up valuable GB real estate, when they could just be out in the garden....Ive got 2 going in my system tho just to compare growth rates....and also to make more use of vertical space....

Im lucky (in a way) that my grow beds are round (about 2m dia.) and pretty deep. 50cm+ so I reckon they are pretty well suited to have a tree in the center, and herbs around the outside....

I planted a Lime tree in a GB about 2 weeks ago and its got a flush of new growth already which im stoked about....and Ive planted some limes in the soil to compare and they have no new growth yet....

Not so sure about that - don't see many paps growing on the beach - the ones I planted in my backyard beach (garden here in WA) in the washing machine grey water run off carked it - maybe I'm just a hopeless gardener

I do recal showing a pic of someone growing a papaya in a 10cm hydro GB - thing looked like it was about to structurally compromise the show!

I'm thinking of wacking a Paypaya in a half barrel along with a mango in the other half. Though do you need two of each for fertilization?

nope. you can get bisexual papayas, and mangoes are self fertile I believe

IMO get red papaya, waaaaaaay better taste.
Great big ginormous ones or the smaller solos, no matter..

I'd be interested to know if papaya have any better or worse tendency to get phytophora in AP since it is a fungus that is particularly prevalent in the wet tropical north, especially after a couple of years of cropping the same soil.

Any others with fruit trees in AP?? Quite interested in growing these fruits

So far my trees are doing just okay. But then again, trees take a while to get really established. I have harvested some grapefruit, and limes, but not many. Like other plants, I believe that they will be slow to start in AP, but will explode with fruit later. For instance, my parents have been harvesting tomatoes and cucumbers from their dirt garden, but I have more tomato trusses filled with tomatoes ripening now than they will get.

I've been reading up on bonsai techniques. I want to try using normal fruit trees and bonsai'ing them when they get to the size I want. From reading so far, it shouldn't be too hard to do - there are many examples shown so it should only be a few try-outs to get the root cutting right.

Of course there are some 'shoulds' in that and shoulds often bite you on the bum...

Bonsai'ing... Interesting... (Mustache twirling emoticon)

Biggest trap for the dwarf fruit tree enthusiast is not getting a rootstock with equivalent stem diameter growth rates as the graft. If the rootstock outgrows the dwarf graft it time the bark at the graft develops a fold that within 5-10 years will ultimately lead to either tree death or significant yield damage to fruit but usually both.

Yes... isn't it? Although I keep having pictures of (say) oranges the size of marbles. Cumquats anyone?

Well it is time I updated the thread. I am unhappy but still working on it. I got some buckets from my cousin. He was using them for a drip irrigation line of bucket plants in his yard. Looked great for my dwarf tree project. The buckets were originally used for Molases feed for cows. They are about 20" x 20" so are pretty big.

I got 20 of them from him and cleaned them out. I drilled and taped a 3/4" hole in the side for the over flow or hi fill line for the water. We put a 6" pot upside down in the bottom of each bucket to increase the water in each one. We split a 2" pvc pipe and slotted it for a gravel guard and a way to see the water level.


I got this far when the plants arrived. I put 2 trees in each pot so I would not have to clean and shovel more than one truck load of gravel. I was being lazy then. The trees started out ok. BUT. Being lazy I left it that way for a while and was just filling the buckets with a 5 gallon pail and just let them set. My wife kept telling me that they were not going to do well because they were going to be too close together so I finally decided to finish the setup and do it right. I moved the buckets to the new location I decided would be best.

I used 1 1/2" pipe for the return line to the fish tank. I used the standard 1/2" drip irrigation main line for the supply line and 1/4" tube to get the water in the pots and a 2 gallon per hour dripper in each one.

Since I had two trees in each bucket she was very insistant that they be transplanted to one in a pot only. Well that was too much work and it looked like I was killing all the roots trying to remove them be hand. I came up with the idea to use the wet dry vac to suck up the gravel and distrubing the roots much less. That seemed to work ok. When I got the gravel out she helped me move each plant to a new barrel. I filled them all up to about 2 inches over the hi level drain. Seemed ok for a while then the trees started to look bad and dying. I found spyders in all the buckets and webs all over teh leaves. So I thought it might be the spyders killing the trees which still may be but. I also think that the transplant shock was the problem. The ones with the least leaves and roots seem to be the least affected. I am sure it will work and am going to order a new set of trees to start over.

I started reading up on bonsai. It seemed somewhat appropriate since it literally means tree on pot. And the techniques have been refined for about 500 years. Like any good horticulture sight they have a section on diseases. They mention mites that act like aphids and suck the sap from the trees. The telltale sign is webs. Their prescription to end it is not compatible with Aquaponics, but I am sure that some ladybugs should do the trick. The other interesting thing that they do in bonsai is annually repot the tree. When doing so, they trim the roots. This is to prevent the tree from becoming root bound. Basically, you train the roots to give the tree the maximum amount of nutrient absorption in the minimum space.

I decided to start a thread on bonsai'ing techniques specifically. http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17307