Aquaponics - Strawberry runners

I cant tell if the reason the surviving strawberry plant fruited so well, and so deliciously, because it just happened to be thriving, or if it's more suited to aquaponics in some way.

Most of my strawberry plants died, but I suspect the one that did survive was one of those I pulled from my original grow bed. If so it may have survived because it had an enormous root system, where as most of the others were store bought when they were transplanted, and had roots that didn't quite make it out of the cups they were in.

All of them had roots that touched the water in the end, but having a huge root system might have stored some water during those 4 times the water was off. Some of them spent 4 days in my bathroom sitting in a dry bath tub.

Lucky for me the one plant that did well is sending out runners. They seem quite healthy, and if it did thrive because it's extra suitable, I'll at least have some more to go on with.




















120 Things in 20 years not just one plant hanging on by the skin of its teeth, but actual aquaponics strawberry runners!

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Aquaponics - Retired strawberry towers

I finally gave up and decided the risk of running my poorly constructed strawberry towers, was greater then the strawberry return.

I pulled everything out and found homes for it, either in the compost heap, as many of the plants had died due to being dry so often in their lives, or in the case of things that were still ticking along in spite of my treatment, into the lettuce holes on the other side.

I'm not sure if I'll try to fix the towers, or retire them to the rafters of my shed as spider homes.

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Aquaponics - Dramas and good times

All the water tried to escape again. This time the fail was in two places at once.

It seems I have sprung yet another leak in my strawberry towers. Last night at 4 am I heard the terrible gurgling sound of my powerhead trying to shift air instead of water. At least every time the water gets low its the power head and not the pump that's kicking up a fuss and sending out the alarm. I get the feeling the pump would fail if it ran dry, but the powerhead shifts so much water, it starts sucking air way before its dry. so it makes a lot of noise as early as possible to let you know something is wrong.

I think it's time to either rebuild the towers, or throw them away and move onto something that works

aquaponic

The rest of the system is growing really well, to the point where I'm starting to get crowded out of the grow house.

You cant really see it from this photo, but the tomato plant isn't just growing up, it's also growing toward the camera, and as a result taking up my head space whenever I'm sitting in their.

One of us will have to go.

And I own scissors.

Actually I've been pruning it a lot, but the latest hot weather has seen it going nuts, and seen me being to busy/air conditioned to go out and deal with it.

The other interesting thing in the garden at the moment, is that my bean density experiment is well on the way.

I haven't counted the sprouts, but it looks like there will be plenty enough to get a sample of which density produces the most beans.

I'm starting to think they would actually grow to maturity just sitting in their shallow water. It goes against everything I know about aquaponics, and oxygenated water, but who knows. I think I'll leave them in the seed raising tray, at least until they show signs of needing a better environment.



120 things in 20 years, Aquaponics - Dramas and good times

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Aquaponics - Capsicum pollination fail

I don't know enough about plant reproduction.

I don't like not knowing enough about plant reproduction, so I'm going to do something about it.

Since I put up the grow house, I've had some concerns about pollination. With the door closed and when the weather is cold there isn't a lot of insect life around my plants. Most things seem to take care of themselves, but I have a cotton bud that I use on the first flowers I see.

The first flowers I see of something like my strawberries are more important then the next, because I want to taste the fruit, and I want to get photo's for this blog. As a result I try to take care of them a bit, and make sure they don't get eaten, or knocked off by my clumsy moves around the grow bed. (it's amazing how much damage one person can do when chasing a tiny bug around with a camera).

I also take the extra effort to make sure they are pollinated. To do this I have a cotton bud in a little jar that I keep in the grow house that I stick into flowers. I don't bother with it as an ongoing thing, but I almost always do it to the first of a new fruit or vegetable.

When my first capsicum flower opened, I didn't have another to cross pollinate with, but I thought I'd collect some pollen on the cotton bud I keep around, so that I'd have some for the next flower at least. So I took a swab. The cotton was already yellow with pollen from the first tomatoes, the first strawberries, and whatever else I'd used it on. 

That first flower turned into a fruit, so I didnt bother doing it to the next few.

The odd thing is, that the next few failed to be pollinated, and the fruit did what un-pollinated fruit do. They shriveled, died, and dropped to the ground.










On hot days when the grow house door is left open, I get a lot of visitors from the bug world, including some bees. I suspect that a bee or someone with a similar taste for pollen, visited my first flowers on my strawberries, and before I took a swab, left behind some capsicum pollen from a nearby garden. I took it up on the swab and passed it on to my capsicum's first flower.

Maybe.

I might be wrong, but just in case, I wandered out into the garden and, using the same cotton bud, collected pollen from a random selection of flowers.

It hadn't occurred to me that the bees would not just leave the correct pollen for the plant to set fruit, but it would leave a stack of different pollen. And perhaps not just the pollen it had collected, but probably pollen from everything the entire hive had visited. And given that flowers between hives are vised from both hives, perhaps even pollen from other hives. Pollen is small. really small. Small enough to be in the air and make allergic people sad. I'm told that today the pollen count is high, but I cant see any of it.

Small.

For the next few days I'll be taking my cotton bud around with me and stick it into flowers to collect a decent sample of everything that's currently flowering. Then I'll do it a few more times at different times of the year. Eventually I'll have every kind of pollen I'll ever need. It seems the stuff stays viable for a while as well.

It's also possible that capsicum flowers don't need pollination, thus my need for further education.




120 Things in 20 years, sometimes plant romance needs a helping hand, because sometimes aquaponics capsicum pollination fails.

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Thinking - Six in one solar toy sets

After my post on solar flying toys I actually went out and bought some. Or at lest sent away for one.

Actually it's one of those green six in one solar toy sets you see around on the internet :)

Your never too old to play with toys.

It occurred to me I'd never owned a solar toy and probably never would unless I did something about it myself. I spent a few cents on myself for my holiday season invention time. I guess my own subliminal message seeped into my head and got me attempting to contribute to the solar toyosphere.

Actually none of my toys fly, and I don't think there are any that do yet, but time will prove my theory correct in the end.

Now all I have to do is to pull the bath out of the wall and put it out in the sun so I can use my solar powered boat.

I wonder if my fish would like it.

In reality other than being genuinely interested to see what they can do with a tiny panel, and what I imagine must be a very tiny motor and gearbox, I also have a feeling I will need it's parts for an invention or two, if I can keep it from turning into a last minute gift for a visiting kid.




*by the way I have no idea if these things are any good or not. I haven't even seen them other than online, so don't take this as some sort of endorsement.




120 things in 20 years, not just thinking about 6 in 1 solar toy sets, but contributing to the world by encouraging the manufacture of yet more solar stuff.

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Aquaponics - Heat stress

This is a bit of a worry.

It's a 32 degree c day out there and fish tank water is already 30 c. The air temperature in the grow house is 40 c, and we get days of 46 c+ ever now and then.

My first bulk bean experimental planting cup is showing some serious signs of heat stress.

As are the coz lettuce.

The tomatoes on the other hand are loving it, and don't understand what all the fuss is about.












I'm not really sure what to do about it.

I draped some shade cloth over the grow house yesterday, but it actually made it hotter. I think if I leave an air gap it will work, but dark coloured shade cloth touching the grow house roof absorbed a lot of heat.

I think I'll try to add a frame and perhaps a water spray with a temperature probe to start the spray if it gets too hot.

I sprayed some water around and the temperature dropped by around 7 degrees, so I should be able to work something out.

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Aquaponics - Bean seed density experement

As mentioned earlier I thought I'd see how densely I could plant bean seeds before they started to suffer.

To this end I've planted different numbers of bean seeds in plastic cups to be grown in my NFT tubes.

I started with six of my standard plastic drinking cups with holes drilled in the bottom to allow water to flow through. If you make some, don't forget you can drill a stack of ten at a time.

I added one, two, four, eight, sixteen, and thirty two seeds to each cup in turn.

They will grow to seedling size in my little seed raising grow house, until they are big enough that their roots will reach down to the water in my NFT tubes.

I tend to wait until the first signs of their real leaves rather than the two first leaves that the seed turns into. In previous tests where I've pulled up seedlings, I've noticed that by the time their first real leaves appear, their tap roots are well developed and reach the bottom of the cups. This seems to apply to every variety I've tested.

I guess roots are pretty important things to grow first. Plants manage for quite a while without light, but only hours without water.

With a lot of small seeds I don't bother covering them as their is a steady rain of water from the roof of my little grow house, but with the bean seeds I worry that they might dry out as they stand up much higher than the damp media, so I cover them with scoria.








I water them with fish tank water, and on this occasion I added a little seasol ( a seaweed extract plant tonic) because there are going to be a lot of seedlings and I don't want them begging for trace elements.

The fish tank water stands around an inch deep or a third of the way up the cups.

There is also a pot with my twice weekly lettuce planting, an experimental seed raising method that I'll talk about later, and also an additional cup with 20 pea seeds buried because I love peas.

I've only just done this, so it's going to be a while before I can report results.

Unfortunately this isn't going to be a case of "and here's one a made earlier".





120 Things in 20 years - Still trying to rob perfectly innocent giants of their golden egg laying livestock with Aquaponics - Bean seed density experiments in an attempt to build a better magic bean scaffolding.

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