Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I did not picture you with a goatee Azira...

Despite most of everything else flowering, the Romanesco has finally formed little heads, so cute!




I didn't get a chance to update yesterday but I took some photos today.

I actually think I might try it again now the weather is warming up, but this time using 50mm pipe instead of the 40mm I used, and a firmer sponge to hold the plant up and put them all in a spot where they will get full sun. It's obvious the smaller two needed far more sun, and I don't think the sponge I used blocked enough of the light getting to the carrot root, as the top was a bit green despite the foam being there. I was thinking if I put some in with the tomatoes I'm going to put in, then as the tomatoes are hungry it might help the carrots avoid forking.




I decided to pull the biggest carrot, as it's too big for the tube (it actually pulled the tube out a bit when I went to grab it, lol).

I'll add another post with those photos...

The roots on the carrot were really dense, fine but quite a lot of them, it would have probably had something to do with why the carrot was only short. The foam collar didn't end up blocking enough of the sun as you can see in the first photo, the tops ended up green.

It wasn't as woody inside as I was expecting it to be, but there wasn't a huge amount of the outer part. Taste test was initially sweet, but a bitter aftertaste, like what you get at the top of a carrot. Texture was fine.

Hmm, I think a lot of the problems were related to the way I did it, when I started the carrots and so on. I'm not going to say it's a complete write off yet, I want to try once more with a bigger tube and better GB position and planting at a better time of year. I think that will at the very least speed up the growth period.

But for the amount of root and foilage growth, there wasn't a huge amount of carrot.


Oh yeah, how can I plot evil deeds without a goatee to stroke!

I figured I might as well take a couple of photos of the tomatoes while I was at it, although there isn't much to see and the photos are terrible. Taken through the vents in the mini greenhouse as I have propped up the lid with cling wrap and chopsticks and I'm not undoing it just yet, lol.

Fear my uber greenhouse!



The grafted scions still look alive so that's something I guess.




And because I'm procrastinating, I might as well list what tomatoes I've grafted...if I can remember them all, lol.

Thai Pink Egg
Green Grape
Yellow Pear
Broad Ripple
Christmas Grapes
Snow White
Lemon Drop
Black Cherry

Wapsipinicon Peach
Tommy Toe Red
Purple Russian
Indigo Apple (Red & Black)

Cherokee Purple
Hillbilly
Black Krim

And a few of the mystery seeds I mixed up as well, lol. All grafted on random Tomato Sweetbite plants as rootstock, not chosen for any reason other than that's what I found that seemed a good size and price, lol.

So I go away for the weekend and one of the trout decides to jump out of the tank! I'm not even sure how it managed it as it jumped out of the side through a really small gap. Luckily it wasn't one of the bigger fish.

It was flopping around in the charcoal and ash I dumped beside the tank to stop it getting muddy.



I decided to check on the tomato grafts properly today and progress is varied. One of the sides of one graft fell off completely but I just clamped it back on to see what happens, lol. A couple look like they are healing alright, a couple of others seem to be drying out at the graft and parting a bit, so I can't imagine that is great.

As well as attempting to graft onto rootstock, I also clamped two cuttings together and shoved them in some dirt to see what they'd do. They seem to be doing alright, only two varieties but they seem to be healing together and I'm guessing they are rooting themselves too.

Anyway, photos!

The last one is that fell apart and really isn't looking good. But I'll see what happens!

I think I need to set up some lights to grow under next year so I can get started way earlier.

Silly fish! I don't know what's going on. In all the previous months they have been fine, now in less than a week I've had two of the small trout leap out of Tank 1 and die.

great system you have there.
hey why not just take cuttings from your tomato plants? they seam to work well enough.
are your smaller trout getting picked on by the bigger ones? I had a problem with that this year and lost a few of the smaller trout to just being bashed and bitten around the tail by the bigger faster growing trout.

I'm attempting to graft different varieties onto the one plant to see if I can have a range of tomatoes from a smaller number of plants. The tops I have cut off the plants I used as rootstock I am letting grow roots and will just use those as single variety plants if the grafting experiment fails.

The bigger trout don't really seem to care that much about the smaller ones from what I can tell. I'm not sure what has motivated them to jump out of the tank, the space they managed to get through is only small and is shaded so it's not even obvious that it's a way out, lol.

No more kamikaze fish since the last two thankfully, and a little bit of progress has been made to the AP area as a whole thanks to my husband and a friend. I've still got zero energy so not much has been done by me (yay for chronic fatigue and super low vit B12 levels!).

Anyway, a few progress reports!

Carrot tube experiment has some slightly more positive news. I moved the runty carrot into the sunny spot where I pulled the forked one from and it's doubled in size in about a fortnight. I've decided to start some new seeds of an orange Nantes 2 variety and some Purple Haze purple carrots and try them out. So far they haven't actually sprouted though.



Tomato grafting experiment went off the rails, I think they got too moist so all but one of them has gone kaput. Unfortunately it's the one I did with some of the mystery seeds so I have no idea what varieties they'll be until they (hopefully) grow, lol.



I really need to get in and clean up the GB's, but one thing I'm not sure of is when to actually pull the plants if I want to save the seeds. I'm too lazy and haven't actually bothered to look it up yet though, lol. In other news, the Romanesco has gotten huge, and both have turned purple for some reason...I'm guessing the sun exposure or something.

And thanks to my husband and a friend I now have the shadehouse up, it made an instant difference to the temperature underneath it.

Annoyingly I thought I bought wider shadecloth but turns out it was only around the 3.6mt mark wide, so it doesn't go down to the ground or cover behind it, but it's not the end of the world, I can always add more later. I got an extra 3 metres in length for free when I bought it so I can't complain, it should shade the chicken coop nicely when I get around to doing it.



Still a lot more to do but it'll do for now!

Not much happening at the moment.

Trout are still kicking along, water temps have been pretty stable and not too extreme yet, but as it stays warm I'm sure that things will start getting uncomfortable. Haven't yet harvested any although I'm thinking I might grab a couple out soon.

Planted some of the tiny tomato seedlings and I shoved a few of the tops I took from the rootstock in, and got a couple of watermelon seedlings in too, but they are small so I'm not sure they'll handle it. Far too many tomato plants in I think but I'll see what happens and pull out any that are stunted or don't make it.

I have to pull the celery out, I don't like it raw so we don't eat it unless it's cooked, and it's not the weather for the dishes I cook it in!



One of the garlic and a teeny onion I pulled by accident. Smells great!


Seed pods for the broccoli (and kale) have gotten pretty fat, I'm not sure if I leave them in to dry out or if I can pull them out now, so for the moment they are just taking up space.