Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Ha, nice! There's something oddly satisfying about salvaging a plant that way.

So very cool when you can yank one and poke it in the GB, but holy cow, 75 more peppers?!! That is outstanding! Your system must be in tip-top condition. I didn't have anywhere near that off of the 20 or so I have transplanted, I mean it was good enough, but wow; 75!

Growing Peppers are easy. They are really a Perinneal plant from S. America but are considered a Annual in N. America.

But if you have a GH, you can get them to grow year round.

Think of growing them as the same as a person growing Bonsai plants.

You want to get height, let them grow by themselves and they get tall.

You want more peppers per plant give them a pruning once every so often

The more times you prune the terminal buds, the more side shoots you will grow which in turn produces more peppers.
But at the same time remember that Peppers and Tomato's are heavy feeders of Phosphorus.

Case in point is a farmer I know that grows Okra, they grow like peppers, straight up with very little side branching.

So he gets the plants up to 2.5' tall and then prunes them with a Sickle bar at 2' height, and increases the side branching which increase the pods per plant. Another Sickle bar pruning at 3.5' to 3', at about 3/4 of the growing season, he has switched from a Sickle bar to a Brush hog for pruning.

So remember give those plants that respond to a top pruning, a chance to give you more fruit.

I, know it hurts to do it but that's life.

yes it felt pretty good to save the pepper plant and I have done others the same way. I learned I could do it by accident. When some plants were pulled that were looking like they had had it were left on the beds and not carried away they recovered. My tomatoes always want to keep going and when they lay a vine on the bed they grow more roots out of the stems. Tomatoes will keep going in the green house for years.

My father lived in Bremerton washington area in very good soil area. He always said if he pulled weeds and did not hang them on the fence to dry out they would be standing in the garden the next day again. I wish I had his soil here on my place. I do a lot to ammend the soil and it still does not do well. The PH makes the AP garden not do so well as it could also.,

The American Indians use to bury a whole fish and then plant corn, Have you tried that.

Don't see what your Dad had that you can't have the same. It depends on what you are using to amend your soil and the steps you are using to do it.

Have you had a Soil sample tested?

How about your Well water tested?

And your AP water tested?

And I'm not talking going to a pet store, or using a test kit at home, I'm talking about tests done by a reliable labs that the farmers in your area use. It'll cost you, but in the long run your better off.

My wife wants to do a sphagnum moss experiment to try to get the PH to go down and I am going to try it. Just put in a bag of sphagnum moss in a bag in the water and an air bubblier in it to keep the water around it circulating. I hope this works because if it does not I might give up. Stuff just does not do well in 8.6 PH. It even influences the taste to me. I cleaned up my air pump again and am going to put it in my top up water tank to air up the water there to see it that will help also.
Actually I think I probably have plenty of O2 in the water as each of the 48 barrels has a splashy drain into the drain lines. There are 4 main drains along the beds that drain into the Fish Tank with a splashy return there of about 12 - 18" while the beds are being filled. The pump runs 24/7 so when it is not filling the beds it creates a whirlpool effect in the Fish Tank. The drains are arranged so they help the whirlpool effect also. The water is never still. I don't think I am feeding too much as they viciously attack the food when it is put in. More like Trout than Catfish.

Oh so cool. For certain keep us abreast of the Sphagnum moss experiment. Our water comes out of the ground @ 7.2 pH as soon as it's in a tank or bucket it heads to the Base side. Are you or do you have a way to add fresh Sphagnum moss and or is that what you will do?

While I've used Sphargnum moss for years although living in the southwest, I don't know anything about it, hence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphagnum
It's actually fascinating stuff.
What properties are you looking for to affect pH?

She says that a friend in the fish business uses it to make the PH go down a lot. He used it to make PH 4 or so for Discus fish. That was all he used to treat his make up water for all his tanks. He raised beautiful Discus for years so I will try to get my PH down to 7 at least. Cant hurt anyway.

Gets used to lower the pH of soil for blueberry planting as well

What are you going to use, fresh or the stuff in the bales?

She is going to order the bales but has not done it yet. I did get my air pump out and clean it up and get it started in my top up tank. I am still pumping water out of my outdoor pond as the PH is lower there or was. I have not checked for a while. I guess I should.

Bales okay, how will you contain the fluffy material then? Sorry I don't mean to grill you. I've got to something about our 8.2. Been reading @mwdesign's thread as well as Druzzy's and can see that high pH limits the type's of plants we can grow.
I don't need no stinkin' limits.
Ha ha no seriously I need your experiment to work.
It also sound's like from those threads that I need to take our strawberry towers off line from the AP and I don't know what I'll do yet.
I'm open for ideas. Between the salt and the pH they look pathetic.

Ok I dont know about fresh Spagnum Moss, What do you know about it? We plan to put the moss in a poly bag and suspend it in the top up water barrel with an air supply bubbling in it.

Yeah salt is really bad for strawberries. If you salt more than 1 PPM you are going to see problems with them. They would be better separated to a different water source, the aquariums might be an answer too.

Way back when I started I did strawberries and killed them with salt. never got around to restarting in the AP. I have some in barrels outside and some in tire gardens but they died back in the winter cold. They may come back in the spring. The tires did last year.

Actually I would like my beds to not have so much rotting stuff in them but that is what is making the system work I think. I am going to put more worms in this year again and see if that helps also. I do find worms still when I did in some of the barrels but not all of them.

Haha no I was hoping you knew about the fresh. I was thinking the stuff in bales is so fine it would be difficult to contain. I sure hope it works too.