Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I know what you mean, I have been trying to make lots of smoothies with it, and cook with it but for some reason the more we have the less we use, and the more we buy other greens!

Bob, I will not make another bed quite like that!!!!
Weaving the pipe in the panel was difficult and we only wove it in half way and joined them in the middle with a coupler.
I will NOT do it again that way. This was a test bed that we did do gravel in it but too difficult and NO cost savings.

The plastic is 1/16" HDPE plastic, not really a liner and really difficult to fold (required heat gun and fasteners.)

And securing it to the top pipe didn't last, the plastic broke.

Hence why it has been relegated to wicking bed since the move.

I have a new method for making metal rail and liner beds.
Aquaponics non wood liner grow beds and troughs
That page has pictures of the on the ground version but I will be posting eventually about how I can make them up off the ground too and it works for light weight media at least. I won't recommend it for heavy gravel yet without more testing.

Hi folks!

Just wondering if there are any plants that you would not grow in wicking beds, due to their strong tap root...

For example, does anyone grow the really tall sunflowers in wicking beds? I am paranoid that if i plant anything with a strong tap root, it may punch a hole through the plastic liner of the wickign bed, and wreck it...

I am about to re-vamp my whole veggie patch, and turn all of the beds into wicking beds. I just wanted to know if the above scenario is a possibility, and if i should leave a few veggie beds as 'normal' beds!

Thanks,
Josh

I have grown sunflowers with no problems... I grow all my trees/bushes in wicking barrels As I think they may break the plastic..... We have a small mulberry in one that is 18mths old & producing well for us.. I think I should probably set up a wicking IBC for it just to give it's roots more room..
Hope that helps some..

Thanks BnBob!

Just realised what I said, all out citrus are in the ground but think they would do ok in a wicking barrel... Might just have to get a mandy to find out..

for trees, I would probably recommend doing an open wicking trench between the rows of trees but letting the trees be in the ground. This would basically be a trench dug down and the bottom of it lined so that you are creating a reservoir of water that you can then cover over but it is a handy way to provide moisture to the trees while not restricting the tree roots in a barrel or taking up your high value wicking bed space with trees that only produce for short seasons each year.

Would you recommend LDPE for that? Or can you go lesser quality such as builder's plastic?

Uh, I think most builders plastic is probably LDPE plastic isn't it?

Provided you are not trying to do any sort of recirculating for the open wicking trench, you can probably get away with using whatever you have available. Keeping in mind that buried in the ground you may never know how damaged it becomes. All these sort of wicking beds are doing is just providing a bit of a water reserve and an easy way to water the plants. Keep an eye on the plants at the far end of the row, if your "reservoir" becomes clogged with sediment or if there are too many leaks/rips it might be hard to get water all the way down to the far end.

True, but their are varying grades of LDPE, are there not? I would consider Builder's further down that list compared to say this.

Socked agpipe running as a fill and overflow would solve sediment, would it not? Probably crush under foot traffic though. Bamboo lengths could handle foot traffic and would break down for replacement each year as another train of thought.

Right the high quality liner is going to of course be closer to "food grade" and stronger than builders plastic. You have to set your own priorities for such things.

I would use a sturdier pipe running over to the trench and only used the socked agpipe in the actual trench. Light foot trafic probably won't be as big an issue as vehicle or cart traffic would be, you probably want to try to avoid driving the tractor with a wheel track right on your irrigation trench in any case.

A mock-up before wrapping the crates and agi pipe in weedmat and filling in the sand for the wick. Fill pipe will be 90mm, just need to procure some (rather than pay for it). Then painting of course.

I've left the base on this, and the cutoffs up so I can bend polypipe hoops for summer protection. The top half will be cutoffs down and plants that don't need sun protection.

Shade mesh over the overflow, cap on the fill pipe will be the mozzie guard. Not shown is a overflow pipe joiner length which will allow flooding of the bed if required.

If I had socked agi, I'd probably put lengths in the empty spaces to increase the capacity. Maybe it's worth buying some...

Really like the look of that one

CcBear helped a lot, through PM, so I owe a lot to the back and forth I had with him.

I wanted to keep the overflow and fill clear to allow quick filling and easy emptying so certain things with the placement fell into place. Freakishly, where I placed the uniseal on this was what I though too high but when positioned against the crate, all I had to do was snip 2 small pieces of plastic with a pair of secateurs and it fit snugly rather than holesawing or grinding.

Talking with Bear, and reading other threads, indicated that a low overflow, elbowed up, would allow emptying if required and at least with the bottom halves of the IBC there already is a tap in place which I will attempt to use. The top halves will need to be designed differently and the only holesaw I have is the one for the uniseal, a smaller one would be better for the crate to allow a snug fit.

Seriously debating about whether or not to go get 10m of socked agi, replacing the fillpipe with that and filling the extraneous voids will allow far greater water-holding which, with our Summers, can only be a good thing. I just hate spending money, the crates and all the parts bar the uniseals, IBC and pressure pipe were recycled.

Here's one I made for a friend using poultry trays and weedmat.