Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

It is not likely to be unable to recover rainwater. Especially with all the evil that you gave yourself.
Don't t you think that connecting the tanks you have buried would improve the stability of your system?

You are the second person sending me back it's experience with IBC tank buried.
I have a good friend who love hand digging by pick, so I will try.

About municipal water, you know, in France it is said that bottled water is more possible to be poor : less regular tests, soil pollution, storage plastic bottle ...
So I drink muni french water, but I eat my purpose kitchen garden food, and soon my fish.

Glad you got the muni water reference Pascal, I didn't know how strong your English is but it seems pretty good.

Regards, Martin.

G'day, Ron.

Just wondering, do your tomatoes have fruit on them yet? They looked as though they were well on the way to flowering a few weeks back. Also, what's the latest on your fruit trees?

Some of the tomatoes are just starting to fruit. I have some limes growing on the lime tree. My cherry trees have gotten quite large, and I am keeping them pruned up at the moment. I haven't seen any blossoms yet. I pulled out the peach-plum tree. It did not survive. It looks as through the pear tree is dead too, but I haven't pulled it out yet. My citrus trees are doing fine, you can see them when going through the eggplant trees, err, plants. I broke down and bought some organic seedlings today. Normally I wouldn't, but I just got some cash as an anniversary gift from my in-laws, and they were variety packs. One was a bell pepper variety pach with chocolate bell, mandarin bell, ivory bell, lilac bell, and purple bell peppers. The other was a hot pepper mix with habs, Serrano, cayenne, jalapeño, Caribbean, and super chilli.

I have been wondering about your fruit trees. So far I have avoided spending the money to get a few dwarf's and semi's. I'm learning towards upright half blue barrels with an AP drip or wicking and soil. I have plenty of yard for them but don't want to battle the bugs like the neighbors. Bare root are also non existent around here so they would have to be small mail order.

There is a season for bare root trees. Here it is in January. Chat up the nursery folks, they will tell you when they get some. They are much cheaper than potted trees. Otherwise, absolutely make sure you remove all the soil from the trees before planting them. Stagnant waterlogged soil does no good for the root ball. None of the potted plants grew like the cherry trees are growing, and I am sure that it was due to the soil.

That's too bad about the peach-plum tree and the pear tree but good news re your citrus trees, Ron. Will you give the types that died another try, this time with completely soil clear roots? It would be an interesting and potentially valuable test of your hypothesis.

Next January I will be looking into some more bare root trees. However I am going to be more particular with the species. Chill time plays an important role too. Chula Vista does not exactly have much chill time, so low chill time plants are important. Citrus was Chula Vista's main industry for quite some time. So it is no surprise that it does well here. I was disappointed in the olive tree too. It should have had no issue with the climate, but it died also. Again, I think that I bare rooted it too late. Also, I don't think that I will go with a graft of two types. I found that once bare rooted, you can strap two trees together. That support each other wonderfully, and is usefull when you need to cross pollinate, as you do with cherries. I might strap together two stone fruit trees next year.

Man I am so jealous of you folks who have a long grow season but then again I dont have a problem with fruits that need a chill time either. Bare roots are tougher to come by locally. Have you had any luck propagating from stems ie cloning the trees? I would think an ap setup would be ideal for this but I may be mistaken (it happened a lot).
Would wicking beds make it easier than grow in straight ap? You could always be watering with changeout water or topwatering with effluent from an rff.

I have not tried cloning. Really the trick is to find a good root stock and graft a cutting onto that. It is the root stock that makes trees expensive. Again the toughness of finding them comes from the seasonality of bare root trees. They really are a winter thing. A quick google search for bare root trees in Michigan brought up three nurseries. Cold creek farms was on top.

Ron, I heard about an earthquake over your way this morning. I hope that neither you nor your family have been badly affected by it.

+1

When you hear about it in Australia, you know it's a bad one.

I could imagine it causing a few leaks in the system as well.

The earthquake was in San Francisco, hundreds of miles away. That being said, I have always lived in earthquake prone areas, and barely notice them. 6.0 would be noticeable though!

We had two earthquakes in Johannesburg recently. A 5.4 which did some damage and a 4 point something which woke me up when the bed moved. I was sleeping on my own in a bare/empty room with a wooden floor and the bed slid and made a noise at about 3am freaked me out a little. Waking up while moving can really mess with your head.

Just arrived in Auckland and have noticed no seismic activity so far.

Regards, Martin.

Keep clear of Christchurch, MartinC, if you're not so keen on seismic sensations!

On a serious note, I really hope things go well for you in Kiwiland, Marto.