Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Awesome Gabe, great update, thanks.
What are the plans for the winter harvest?

Hi Skeg

I have just planted red cabbage, brussel sprouts, onion and the siberian tomatoes into growbeds.

Also iceberg lettuce in the DWC.

I still have some corn, cherry tomatoes and a watermelon to harvest before the season ends.


Gabe

Cool, do you plant from seed?

Hi Skeg.

The corn, cherry tomato, watermelon, Brussels sprout & cabbage is from seed

The onion and Siberian tomato is bunnings punnels

Some recent photos from my system

Firstly the Loofah (luffah) is growing really well. I hope that i will get a harvest before the season ends. the fruit is about 20 cm at this stage. They have the most lovely yellow blossoms in the morning. By midday the flowers starts fading, only to be replaced with a new bunch next morning. One can grow these for display!



I spend the weekend building a composter from 44 gallon blue drums. This is based on something i saw on the net. Here they are (lids still to be fitted). I plan to use the top one for paper composting and the bottom one for all the bits from the aquaponics system that the chooks wont eat!


The Atlantic giant pumpkin is still growing - fuel by solids from the DWC filter system. By now it is about 70 cm end to end.

Very cool Gabe, very cool.

Looking great Gabe are you getting trout i am thinking i need to rejig my system i dont have much room but want to get more out of the system

Just added 40 trout bought at Gav's BYAP car park sales. Didn't take them very long to start hitting the food.

They are somewhere in this picture!

I also started pruning the peach and nectarines in half barrels. They are all suppose to be crafted on dwarf root stock but grew nearly 2 meters this season. I nipped them back to a more manageable size.

Beautiful set up, it looks like a huge amount of work to maintain. The entire area is so tidy in every photo, that in itself is impressive. I have a small yard and I feel like I spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to keep it looking tidy. I am setting up dwarf fruit trees this year for the first time. Good to see yours are successful. I was thinking of flooding twice a day, must re read your timing info.

Hi Angel

I flood my trees on a repeat cycle of 45 min off, 15 min on in summer - in winter i flood at 90 off, 15 min on.

A quick update on the system. The cherry tomatoes is growing like crazy in the DWC. I started trellis them based on a utube video on how to trellis tomatoes in a greenhouse. Doubt if i ever will grow tomatoes again without trellising!


I planted a Cape Gooseberry in one of my growbeds. I found a plant at the great B store and had to have it. I fondly remember grandma making cape gooseberry jam when i was a youth growing up in South Africa! If I get enough berry's i hope to make jam from this!


Whilst all this is happening - the inspector is keeping watch!

What variety is that cherry?

these are "sweet bite" from that B store!

I spend some time this weekend to make a cold frame in preparation of winter. I like to start my own seedlings for the aquaponics system but struggled in past winters to get good germination.

All this was made from stuff that i had laying around. The glass was scrap from a display room, the bath was scrap i picked up some time ago - just in case.

I had the wood from a previous project. The only purchase was the screws and silicon glue.

Total cost, including the glass, bath screws & glue was around $50.

Sweet! Do you just water from the top, or is there some capillary matting under the seed trays?