Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Wow. 39 pages is a lot of reading. Very instructive and such a cool system. How's it doing this year?

NEED PICs

Yes pics, I have been meaning to take some. The eggplant that I planted LAST spring are still growing, all be it, aphids have been colonizing them. I hose them off, but they just crawl back up. Because I set up a seed starting system integrated with my indoor system, I have a TON of tomato seedlings. I have a barrel planted out with them, and this year I am hoping to have a large supply of tomatoes.

Are you using soap to keep them off? This year I am planning on hosing off the aphids and then spraying the stalks and lower leaves with soap to keep them off.

You should not use soap, it can drip into your growbeds, and cause problems for your fish.

On to pictures. First is the tomato grow bed.

Next, the grow bed with the grapes, and the cucumber to climb said grapes.

The cherry trees have been performing.

Last years eggplants. They are dwarfing the dwarf citrus trees that are behind them.

You can see this chard plant is about to go to seed. It is a year old, and I am excited about saving seeds from it. To the right is the grow bed that I am using for peppers, though other beds have peppers too. Jalapeños are doing well, they are from last year too.

The raft bed. Kale is dominating right now. They were courtesy of bigcat24. You can also see the seed trays that are currently hardening off. Not all of the pepper plants look like they are going to make it... C'est La Vie.

Finally the grape vine canopy. I saw the start of grapes forming, but they died off. I guess no grapes this year too:(.

If your nitrates are too high, I think the grapes will just grow more green leaves.

I'd say add potash to the soil, but I don't know the equivalent for AP though.

Looks awesome though!

Great photo's - love the fruit trees.

Thanks for the update Ron, much appreciated.

Regards, Martin.

Ron, have you thought about putting your aphid threatened plants in the raft portions of the system? Then you can pull them out, spray the aphids off with soap and then rinse before returning to the system, or even just water away from where they will go back in, and make it a lot harder for them to return.

In regards to the grapes I would suspect nutrient imbalance as another poster mentioned. I have grapes in soil and they attempted to fruit the first year in and a few bunches actually formed on flower clusters that I missed when I was pinching them off. Year 2 and we were getting lots of grapes.... before the neighborhood kids had a grape fight.

System looks great btw, hope mine looks that good one day.

Thank you,
I feel much better now.

Lady bugs have come to the rescue of the eggplants. Plus the plants are much too big for rafts. Well, my rafts anyway.

Hi. Long but great thread (and system!). I was wondering how the water drains out of the vertical barrels as I can't tell from the picture.
Thanks!

I had two varieties of egg plants a long purple fruit and a round yellow variety,i learnt my lesson with the yellow its the colour that attracts fruit flies and they didn’t let me have one eatable fruit so i have had to dump them for some something more suitable,that with using a hormone trap for the little f……….rs.

Lunchguy, the water exits the vertical barrels the same way it exits the horizontal barrels, with a siphon.

Knock on wood, the only problem I have been having with the eggplant is that the fruit just stalls out before it is ready to be picked. I have gotten some, but with the size of the plants you would think more.

Looking very productive, Ron! Noice!