Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

A few more pics, spring onions and parsley gone to seed


I never did get around to harvesting the 3rd Peruvian ground apple, and it has resprouted and is growing really fast. It seems to have encouraged an outbreak of white fly again too, they are all over it, but nothing else. Chives gone to seed in foreground



The Fordhook giant silverbeet- we cant eat it all, but the chooks love it and it is making up for the lack of grass due to the hot dry weather of late


I'm also going to plant a couple of varieties of blueberries today - in pots with soil, partially sunk into the GB media

Your post tweaked my interest, going to have to get some yucon now.
Like weird and wonderful plants.

Temperature plot up to this morning:



I managed to catch the largest of the Murray Cod on my phone this morning- it would be about 15cm long, and I will post some phone video of them feeding soon.

I'm going to have to thin out the strawberries, as its getting very thick and bushy in the GB#3 patch, and I'm losing a few to mould. Perhaps related, they don't seem to keep very well at all- ok when eaten immediately, but 24 hours in the fridge and a fair proportion of them have started to turn mushy, although with no obvious mould growth. This is a real PITA, as I need about 3 or 4 days worth to make jam in a decent quantity. I'm getting 100-300g/day ATM. The variety is Red Gauntlet, they've just started to send out more runners, so the thinning will have to be sooner rather than later. A few of the leaves are showing a deficiency, perhaps Iron, so I might have to increase the B&B additions until the Murray Cod eat more each day than their current 20-30g of pellets, similar weight of Blood worms, and an occasional worm from the worm farm. They really go for the worms, if not swallowed fast enough, they often get pulled out of their mouth by another fish.

Today's pick after eating a few:

I had the same problems with mulberries (not in aquaponics) until someone told me to freeze them as you go. Works a treat!

So yacon in AP

Yep, it grows really well, I've posted other pics of the last crop 10 or 20 pages back.

So I got some and planted in the Dirt Garden - Can you harvest another tuber next season and just plonk it in AP, what depth, which media works best, sun or shade, wind or greenhouse?

Keeping the tuber in moist soil over winter should work fine, and plant in spring. Mine in the GB over winter kept well and re-shot in spring. Just bury it a little bit under the GB surface so that it gets wet at high tide in flood and drain. I'm not sure how it would go if submerged all the time, I haven't tried that. I've only grown them in my ~3/4 river gravel / 1/4 Canna clay mix, and it grows really well. Mine is in the greenhouse- outside would be ok if it is protected from strong wind, but it would probably be damaged if the wind was too strong, as it has large leaves. Mine varied in position from shade most of the day to mostly sunny and all grew about the same.

Mine grow with neglect in my soil garden. Did you mention that they're packed with inulin which is a prebiotic and nourishes your intestinal flora. They're prety good... When you eat them raw tgey oxidise quite quickly so cut and eat within a few mins. I have left tubers in over winter and next year there's many and a few large ones. They naturally grow at surface level. If allowed to go to flower, they're quite pretty...

so that is all roots? looks like a block of rockwool

Yes, all roots, all the larger plants end up looking similar to that! If I cant get the huge root blocks out easily, I chop them off at the top of the media and mash the remaining roots up a bit with a garden tool I have. The worms seem to like it, and after a while the roots disappear.

There was a first with the Murray Cod this morning, I've been in Creswick Vic. for the past 3 days and left my wife to feed the fish. She did, rather sparingly, so they were hungry this morning and all came over when I lifted the lid. I held the cup of Blood Worms just below the surface and a few of them brushed against my hand when eating, which is a huge change from hiding on the far side of the tank as they used to do. Normally they eat when the pellets have sunk well below the surface. I did spot a quite large fish on the bottom, which didn't come anywhere near me, but it has to be well over 15cm, and looks like a small adult fish, whereas most still look like fingerlings, size and shape wise. It's the sort of size that could easily eat the smaller fish if it got hungry.

Meanwhile on the water temperature monitoring front, 'Files though the air' have changed the format of the data for the free version, which means more work is required to get it into the format I want for combining with my weather station air temps. CSV export is only available with the paid version, (@ a minimum of $US8/month). I can sort it out, but it requires quite a few more steps to do, after cutting and pasting the blocks of data.

Yesterday was a hot one, a record high for November, at 39.1C. I didn't take any special measures to keep the system cool, other than the Air-cell wrapped around a few of the GBs, and some poly insulation on top of a few of them in open areas of media, much of which has been on place a couple of weeks now. I was using lots of ice in hot weather to keep the water cooler for the Rainbow Trout last year, but the Murray Cod are fine at 27C.
Part of the waterproof shade cloth roof has blown off- 40% of it- both end sections which run across the GH, and the fruit fly netting over the ends came off too. Strong winds did the final removal, but it was assisted by water rotting the wood used to secure the shade cloth (it lasted over 4 years) and sunlight weakening the poly rope, which was threaded through a sewn section of the end shade cloth covers. Its been too windy to do much about getting it all back in place, but I'm hoping it will ease tomorrow. The removal of part of the roof has meant a bit more direct solar heating that I'd otherwise have, as the shade cloth stops direct sunlight.

The new aerial bulbs have formed, and now it is preparing to... Walk like an Egyptian ... walking onion




I harvested about half the garlics on the weekend, and noticed some had thrips around the top of the bulb, which made the tops go a bit limp and lean over, not helped by all the recent strong wind.

It's cooled back down after a few unpleasantly hot days (the Nov average max. here is about 26C), and I managed to keep the AP water at a reasonable temperature. On the 41C and 2nd 39C day I diverted water circulation ST->FT for a couple of hours in the hot part of the day, which slowed the temperature rise by removing the GBs from the circulation. The water was sprayed into the FT, making the water circulate a bit faster and splash a bit, which may have provided a little bit of cooling via evaporation, with pump running continuously, rather than the usual 20m on/40min off.

I've been picking heaps of strawberries and beans, and the tomatoes are growing quite fast now. Some of the strawberries are suffering a deficiency of some kind, but not all of them. There are a few capsicum fruits growing nicely now too.

I've now got the shade cloth back over the GH, and fruit fly netting back over the ends.


6am 16/11 to 10:30pm 25/11/2014