Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Quite a view there! I have climbed many trails on that mountain range! And you have quite enough property for all us BYAP members to come stay a week or two on your couch lol Where do I book a room/couch at Len Fa Farms Bed and Breakfast?

If you're not producing flowers at all then this wont help you much, but I had to share anyway.

We had that happen with soil "big max" pumpkins (actually a squash, not a true pumpkin) we had 3 plants on the property all had 10 meters long of huge vines that grew rapidly over a 120 day grow cycle. The plant leafs would rotate all day to face the sun like an array of little solar dishes. We had lots of flowering but no pollination occurred. After that I spent some time reading up on which veg requires pollination as well as which ones can be hand pollinated. I don't usually admit this to people but, I have been involved with Q-Tip (cotton swab) relations with my plants from time to time.

If you can test for Calcium and General Hardness, you can calculate Magnesium. Details are on my blog( http://scottspridefarm.com/magnesium/ ), but the idea is:

General Hardness = Calcium Hardness + Magnesium Hardness.

Thanks for the suggestions. I started adding potassium to the system via baking powder @ 1 tsp/wk. I may add a 2nd tsp during the 1st week just to give the system a little boost. After that I'll monitor for any changes.

I have yet to add worms to my AP system and I never see any when I'm digging around in the media. Do you think worms would help?

Add them, if nothing else, they'll keep the dead roots under control.

I'm meeting a guy today who posted an ad on CL for worms. He's got too many and will sell me 350 for $9. I'd like more so I think I'll try and contact a few other places so I can add a good number of worms to each GB as well as my wicking beds and raised bed and maybe even start a worm bin of my own. I also need to pick up some oyster shells while I'm out to help bring my PH up a little nearer to 7.

The worms will multiply quickly, 350 will probably be enough.

Well, I ended up buying 2360 worms... or so I'm told. Not sure I could ever count them even though the couple I bought the 2000 from needed a few hours to count them. I split up the 2000 among my GB's, the wicking beds and the raised beds.

The 360 will be used to start my own worm bin. I bought 4 - 10 gallon bins dark blue in color and 1 - 28 quart clear bin which is kind of short and flat and will be used for the bottom to catch the worm sauce. Tomorrow I'll drill holes that match up among all 3 blue bins so I can stack them and the holes will match up so the worms can move from bin to bin. This way, when the bottom bin gets full I can place the empty bin on top and start adding scraps and likewise for the 3rd. By the time the 3rd bin is full the bottom bin should be pretty clear of worms and will be nicely filled with castings and ready for the garden. Once emptied I can start the process all over again. I'll post some pics when I'm finished.

I also picked up 3 lbs of oyster shells, put them in one of those paint straining bags and dropped it into the ST. I'll check the PH in a week or so and post any changes.

Sounds like a good idea for the worm condo. Post some pics. I have a 55 gallon drum with several thousand worms, but so far haven't been able to collect much vermicompost from them. I just keep feeding them scraps and throwing them in the AP system.

I cobbled together a worm farm today out of the bins I bought yesterday at WalMart.
The bins consist of 3 - 10 gallon bins and 1 - 28 quart bin. The 10 gallon bins looked to me to be not too deep. This was important because I plan to stack these bins on top of each other and I didn't want the sheer weight of 30 gallons of worm castings to cause my little fellows to become unhappy.

Here are the bins before power tools.


I started off by drilling through the bottom of the first bin while it sat on top of the next bin's lid. This ensured the holes would match up. I then placed the drilled bin on top of the other 2 lids and drilled through the holes to help ensure the pattern would match up. The theory is that when the bottom 10 gallon bin fills with castings I will place a new bin on top and start adding scraps and bedding to it. The holes will allow the worms to find their way into the upper bin. As food on the bottom bin become depleted the worms will move upward toward the new food source. As the months go by and the 3rd bin is full of castings the bottom bin should be well depleted of food and the worms should have migrated upward leaving 10 gallons of casting for my garden. The bin is emptied and re-used as the top bin again and the cycle repeats. The 28 quart bin is only for catching the worm leche as it leaks through the bottom.


I then took the lid of one of the bins and placed on the bottom of an inverted bin and drilled through the holes, again, to ensure the pattern would match up. This was done on the remaining bin as well.


I then placed one of the 10 gallon bins on top of the 28 quart bin and drilled through the holes and through the white lid, again, to help ensure the holes would match up. I noticed that if I mistakenly turned one of the lids or bins around the holes didn't match up well with the bin below so I marked each bin and lid with "FRONT" so the holes would match up. I'm good... but I'm not that good. I then drilled a series of holes around the sides just under the top rim to allow for additional air flow.


So, I placed the worm hotel on the shadiest side of my house, covered the bottom with a single layer of news paper, wet it down a little with some rain water and then put in about a 1/2" of compost. Then I added the 360 worms along with castings they were purchased with. I tossed in a couple of handfuls of green waste from the AP system, covered it all with some lightly damp cardboard and closed up shop. Hopefully, they'll like their new home and will provide me with LOTS of castings and worm tea.

.....

I think you'll end up needing to take the lids off and rest the container bottoms directly on-top of the stuff there. If there's an air-space the worms won't migrate up... or so i've been led to believe.

But other than that looks good to me!

I kinda thought the same thing. Leaving the lids on would force me to fill the container to max capacity which would probably be hard to do since the material would inevitably settle as it is processed by the worms. Maybe I'll just cut the center out of two of the lids so the bin will sit down inside. Hmm...

I've had this problem with tomato plants since I started my system. I've lost more than one to what looks like some kind of disease. The plant will look fine and then one day I'll go out to check and it will be wilting terribly. It isn't from the heat. It just wilts. I managed to kind of save one plant. I pulled it from the AP and potted it and trimmed off all the wilting parts. It is very slowly trying to recover.

I just pulled my last cherry tomato plant as it was attacked by the wilt. It was pretty big too. It reached all the way to the top of my trellis. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Nothing chewing away at the plants?

Post a photo?

Nope. Not that I can see.