Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

exactly. I'd prefer to see how the Subs do their thing more. We live in one of the poorest areas of the country so it is kind of like watching a show about how Royalty live. $80K on a reno??? We can not even relate a little bit. $15k for counter-tops is just about as unreal as it gets. Kind of takes the reality out of reality TV. We've never even had broadcast TV at home which was our preference as neither of us can stand commercials, so when my career changed from personal computer service to Internet installations I was first onboard for streaming TV. I had never watched any of these shows. Call me Crocodile Dundee in that regard; from what I've seen I haven't missed much. Youtube on the TV feels better to me, not certain how my wife feels about it though. Mr. High and Mighty likes to learn how stuff works, while she is more into distraction TV. It's a good thing she loves me, hug?

I have to agree on those renovation costs. You guys (like me) must not be in their target audience - FWIW I think those costs reflect some costs not immediately related to the work involved - like the cost of maintaining storage space or having idle construction workers when there are no projects. I'm sure those

I guess if you add up all of the time it takes me (from start to finish) to do a project (including days/weeks/months between me starting the project and then me finding time to get back to working on it) then I paid someone for all that downtime my house would probably be a $650,000 house too! Good thing my wife doesn't want me to hire the job done I guess.

I have tomatoes! Not even June yet!


potato plants starting to stick their heads out of my potato towers...


garlic, onions, radishes, carrots all popping through...

Are those just large piles of composted leaves? Looks like lots of leafy material.

I've read that potatoes don't need really good dirt to grow really well hence the leafy substrate, I assume. Planting potatoes in towers works great too, but we've do well pretty much anywhere I put them. Homegrown potatoes are the cats meow.

Yes it is last fall's leaves. We raked them in to the garden so they overwintered and broke down some but not completely. When I was looking at building potato towers they said to use straw around the outside of the towers to hold the dirt in on the inside... I didn't have straw, but I had a big pile of leaves, so I figured I would try it with leaves instead. The towers are full of topsoil inside the ring of leaves, just using the leaves to try and keep the top soil from washing away (straw would have worked better as it wouldn't break down as fast as the leaves are, but its what I had so I tried it...)

Another lesson about potato towers - do not use chicken wire. The tower examples I saw did not use posts, the towers were just free standing based on the strength of welded wire fence. Again, I thought why not use the chicken wire, and I added 3 posts to try and give the chicken wire some strength, but it is not enough. One of my towers is leaning, I am now going to go back and add welded wire around the outside of the chicken wire to keep it from collapsing even with 3 stakes trying to hold the wire up.

I don't know if I mentioned it or not, I installed one of the auto openers that markb uses in his greenhouse to open and close one of my windows in the peak of my greenhouse. After a few days it seems to be working well, I don't know how long it will last because since my windows open inwards the opener has to be installed on the outside of the greenhouse so it is exposed to weather... but so far it seems to be working well. I think I will order another one to install on the other window in the peak so it helps keep humidity down during the day and close windows to keep it a little warmer at night since our night temps are still dropping in the 40's and 50's.

I'm a bit surprised the vent opener works well enough mounted on the outside.

The auto opener starts opening around 70 degrees I think. It might not open all the way, but it does open the window at least 4 or 5 inches by the end of the day, so it will help with ventilation so it's not so humid... That's all I really care about so I don't have to open and close them every day. It won't work for winter, but I doubt I'll want it to open in the winter anyways. I will probably have to run a dehumidifier in the winter time if I want to reduce the humidity.

My wife and kid headed up to her mom's this afternoon for a grad open house tomorrow and didn't even ask if I wanted to go, just assumed I would want to stay home and get some work done..

So I finished filling up the 7th raised bed this afternoon, and I filled up the cut off top of IBC from my small fish tank as another bed in the garden, and put down some more landscaping fabric in the garden. I am going to buy one more roll which I think will pretty much cover the rest of the garden so we don't have to fight weeds anymore. I need to do a little more rototilling in an area we have never planted before I finish putting fabric down.

I ripped out my mesclun mix lettuce earlier in the week because it was all going to seed and I didn't like the lettuce, so I hung a couple of metal clothes rods in the greenhouse over my gravel bed and planted half of the gravel bed with tomato plants that were in desperate need of planting... I still have another half dozen to decide what to do with after I already gave about a dozen away this week. Plus lots of pepper plants to go yet. I think the tomato plants I will keep trimmed so they go high on the trellis so I can plant more stuff under them. The pepper plants I'll probably plant in the other half of that bed because if I have a whole bunch of peppers I'll just make extra pepper jelly this year because my coworkers really enjoy it when I bring it in so I can use up lots of peppers.

I need to finish cleaning out the rest of my lettuce because it's all going to seed now too, need to start dosing to increase my nitrates to get the new plants growing faster so we still have lettuce coming in by the time our tomatoes start to ripen.

Supposed to rain tonight, if it's decent tomorrow I might finally get back to working on siding the greenhouse.

Misread of the day "I ripped out my mesclun mix ..." Wiki page "mescaline, not to be confused with mezcal, mesclun, or mexamine." Hehe got a good chuckle for a second. My hippie upbringing rearing its head no doubt.
That's also smart using landscape fabric in the garden. Your AP is really starting to shine and I mean this in the most non-peyote sort of way. Smiles,
Brian

Most of these auto openers are adjustable with some sort of screw mechanism. You probably already know this and tried it but I'm tossing it out just in case you didn't know.

Cheers

Scotty I adjusted the opener so the window closed around dark when the temp starts falling, so that is why it only opens as far as it does.

HSM, I was watering plants in the greenhouse that are in seed trays still so I cracked the valve open for the wicking bed and forgot to close it. Worked in the garden for a few before walking to the greenhouse to put something in the trash, forgot wicking bed valve was open, bed had an inch of water above the dirt level. Now slowly draining into a five gallon bucket... Won't need to water that bed for another week...

Yikes another issue to pay close attention to
I've finally figured out that my Android phone takes voice command, such as "Okay Google set timer." This has saved my ass so many times now.