Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

.....and I forgot to mention that these raised beds are likely to become gravel grow beds if the water restrictions continue for much longer.

The problem is that they are each 1000 litres (about 500 litres when full of gravel) so Ill need a large tank (and everything else) to run them.

Gary

you could fill them with sand half way if they are too big ?? then put a liner on the top

i was thinking of gettin soemthing like that for my fish tanks but wasnt really sure where to look

i think ill be goin for IBCs now

AJ, do you have tank water? If Melbourne moves to stage 4 water restrictions how will the veges get a drink?

I don't have a tank/s yet, but as I mentioned I've only watered a very small handful of times from mains anyway. That has been through hotter weather so now that we are heading into wetter/cooler weather and I'm not too worried for this crop.

If it does get that bad by next summer, then I have a heap of 200L drums on the way and I'll just rig them up to collect every drop I can out off the house and use that.

However, I am still on the lookout for a second-hand water tank/s. It would be nice to be able to water a little heavier in the hotter months.

Just on the water thing… I built my chook coop over a year ago. It has its own water tank (100L), collects off the 3.5x2.5 meter roof and has a self-levelling waterer. I filled it up the say I installed it and have never added water since. I’m pretty damn happy about that!

AJ

gotta love self watering chooks

They those things you stick on the sides of glasses ?? LOL

AJ-- that roof area will probably product 8000 ltrs over the year- with 1 mtr of rain.
We have about 400mtrs roof area and 1mtr rain + per year = 400KLs.
There is a lot we don't catch!!!
C1

This is my garden.

More hope than actual food at this time.

I recognize another fan of Square Foot Gardening. With grids and everything. Yeah Julien! I'm not so careful with the grids anymore, but Mel certainly revolutionized the way I garden.

Here are some photos of my current gardens. We grow as much of the fruit and vegetables that we eat as we can manage. We don't eat meat, so we can theoretically live from our backyard produce + eggs from the chooks. I also bake our bread, put up preserves and make much of the food we eat from scratch. Another big plus now is the fish and the AP garden, but to be truthful, we are only growing vegetables in our AP garden that are growing in the soil gardens.

We also grow a lot of fruit. There are the last bananas (Feb), we also grow passionfruit, loquats, lemons, oranges, mandarins, pink grapefruit, avocados, grapes, rhubarb, peaches, nectarines, raspberries and blueberries.

Newcomers to the garden - pink blueberries.

These lemons are growing in the chook yard.

Here are our new chooks - pure breed rhode island red pullets.

Bloody hell Forest.... Nice productive garden..