Dirt Farmin'

Quick update on the traditional garden here at Tiny Mansion.

I got home from Fruita on Thursday to find that my pickling cucumbers had sprouted and are looking very healthy measuring up to 1 1/2" tall! The strawberry trays worked excellent!



This year I decided to grow garlic after indulging myself with all of my friends homegrown garlic last year. If you have never had homegrown garlic... you should. It's simply amazing! Garlic is planted in the fall (just before Halloween) and it sits in the ground through the winter. The other day I peaked outside to see that they had sprouted. The weight of all of the snow this year compacted the soil so much that some of the cloves were sprouting and the clove itself was sticking out of the ground. So I buried them a bit more and over the past couple days the sprouts have doubled in size. When I got home yesterday amidst a April 1st snow storm (winter won't end around here) this is what I found.



The snow has melted today, and they still look happy!

I went to Let It Grow again today to get some more seeds to start indoors and to round out my seed selection for my garden this year. I bought some Cherry Tomato seeds, Snap peas, Scarlet Runner beans, and Sunberries (which are supposed to be a bit like a blueberry). I started the Cherry Tom's, Sunberries and Nyagous Tom's today in more homemade "trays" made from a juice jug and yogurt container.



Even though it just snowed, the worst of the winter is over (I hope) and the ground is soft enough to work. So today I put in the ground the plants that can withstand a bit of cold. That includes: Lettuce, Snap Peas, Dragon Carrots, Dill and Golden Midget Watermelons. I measured my garden today and it is about 75 square feet, which is pretty large (I think) and a lot bigger than it looks so it's looking like I will have a bunch of veggies this year!



For the outdoor garden this year I will be attempting to grow: Tomatoes (three varieties), Scarlet Runner Beans, Snap Peas, Lettuce, Arugula, Basil, Cilantro, Dragon Carrots, Garlic, Sunberries, Golden Midget Watermelon, Dill, Cayenne Peppers, Bell Peppers (?), Pickling Cucumbers, Bushy Cucumbers and hopefully not too many weeds!

Still Kickin'

Well, after 5 days away for work, I have returned to find that the AP system is still running and that both fish are still alive and kicking. The plants also have grown with new seedlings having sprouted as well! What a relief! The Arugula continues to thrive with my whole second row having sprouted and growing well. The first row actually starting to look like arugula. The lettuce continues to grow as well, though slower.



The tomatoes have also made progress, the new growth from last week is beginning to look healthy. They were looking a bit yellow as they were coming up, but they are beginning to get a good green color.


We got back from work significantly early today due to weather leaving me enough time to run to Durango for additional goldfish. More fish= more food for the plants which means (hopefully) quicker plant growth and higher yield. If you will remember, my Nitrate levels were at zero last week meaning that ALL of the possible plant food was being consumed which indicates that they can and want to consume more. I purchased 15 of the finest 25 cent feeder gold fish that the city of Durango had to offer and quickly zoomed home to get them in the tank. I also purchased a small fish bowl to act as a holding tank for additional gold fish while I figure out how many my system can hold, and to act as a holding facility if I need to do any work in my fish tank. It also spruces up the Tiny Mansion!



I did a fish tank overhaul today when I returned from my venture to the "big city". After I had intentionally set up my fish tank, complete with gravel on the bottom, I read that in most AP systems gravel is not used. This is because it catches solid wastes which once built up to a certain level, can actually become harmful to the fish and thus you need to clean it. Instead of cleaning it every month, I decided to take it out completely and replace it with some extra PVC I had lying around, giving the fish ample things to hide in, under and around.


When I removed all of the gravel, it stirred up a whole lot of debris and clouded the water pretty good. Before putting fish back into the tank I strained out the big chunks, and let the pump run two full cycles to clean up the water a bit. It quickly cleared.

Before putting the new fish into the tank, I put them all in my new fish bowl (see above) and slowly acclimated them to the fish tank water by adding cups of water from the tank every hour or so. I also salted the fish tank to 3 ppt in an attempt to kick any nasty diseases that the fish from the store may be carrying. This also boosts their immune system. Hopefully this batch of fish will fare better than the last. If these fish die off, I will begin to investigate further whether or not the gravel in my grow bed is leaching bad things into the water. Hopefully it won't come to that.

Once I did the gravel removal, I tested the water and everything looks good. The Ammonia levels were up a bit, but this is likely due to the amount of unprocessed excrement that I stirred up while removing the gravel. The PH has slowly been going down, and is now a solid 7.8 which is a good level.

Before leaving for the week, I decided to make a poor mans reflector for my grow lights in hopes of enhancing the amount of light that actually reaches the plants. I did this my draping strips of aluminum foil over the tops of the lights. By doing this I have reflected the light that was escaping out of the sides back into the grow bed. It makes a visible difference, I hope my plants appreciate it. I will be working on a more permanent reflector here soon.



All is well here, hopefully the fish will remain healthy and begin producing mass amounts of food for my food!

Cycled and Silent

Much has happened since my last AP post! Everything is doing very well and noticeably growing by the day. The Arugula is the most prosperous, though the tomatoes are looking pretty fine as well. I have been having new cilantro growth and the lettuce keeps plugging along. The basil still is stunted, and has not grown much at all since it sprouted. They are at the other end of the grow bed from the input pipes and I am wondering if they are not getting enough nutrients, though they may just be storing up energy for a HUGE growth spurt here soon (fingers crossed)!

Arugula and Lettuce



Lettuce and Tomatoes



Cilantro



I decided to plant another row of Arugula and I literally watched them sprout over the course of the day today. Just 4 days after I planted them!

The other big news is that my system cycled! Meaning that I have all the proper bacteria to convert ammonia to nitrites to nitrates, giving my plants fertilizer and the fish clean water! This is very exciting because now I do not have to worry about my fish getting brown blood disease or other illnesses due to too many Nitrites. Below is a photo of my test tubes showing no ammonia, no nitrites and no nitrates and a graph showing my systems levels cycling through.




You may ask, why are the Nitrates at zero as well, and isn't that bad? No actually it isn't. All that this means is that the plants are able to absorb all of the Nitrates that my system is producing! This means that I can feed my fish more so they produce more waste, and I can add more fish into the system. I will start feeding my fish twice a day and see how my levels do. I will likely add more fish next weekend when I can get to Durango and purchase more. I would like my system to be able to produce a more Nitrates than the plants can handle, this way I know that they are getting the maximum amount of nutrients.

Since I live in the Tiny Mansion and my AP system is in my living area, it has taken some getting used to the sound of dripping water 24 hrs a day. Today, I finally got around to making the system a little quieter by decreasing the distance that the water has to fall both getting into the grow bed and draining out. To do this I added a PVC coupling and elbow to the input and 2 more elbows to the drain. My what a difference it has made!

Input piping



Drain pipe



After I put the worms in, which I wrote about a while back, I learned that I had used the incorrect worm... I used Night Crawlers instead of Red Wrigglers...Not that the worms aren't doing their job, its just that the Red Wrigglers do it more efficiently and quickly. Ohh well, live and learn. This morning before I turned the aerator on, and it was quiet I could hear a worm moving through the gravel and I looked on the front of the grow bed and sure enough I could see him up against the clear plastic. So I know at least one of them is alive and well.



This worm was seen below where the water is pumped into the tank. The worms like to be close to the input because of a higher concentration of solid fish waste (ie more food) at the beginning of the bio-filter.

Anyway, lots of progress around here. I am really wishing I was able to give these plants sunlight instead of artificial light, as I think that they would be doing even better but that will have to wait. Hopefully within the next couple of days I will be seeing continued growth of the existing plants, and maybe a couple more new sprouts! Stay tuned.

Economic Recycling

So, I initially said that this blog was just going to be about my AP system. Well, I have decided that every once in a while I will post about regular dirt gardening.

With the end of winter in sight, I have decided to start some seedlings inside to plant outdoors when the time comes. This year I am going to dedicate part of my garden to dill pickles! So I am starting my pickling cucumbers inside.

The other day I bought two 2lb boxes of strawberrys from the supermarket (I know, they are not in season and are probably full of chemicals and have been shipped from 1000 miles away). After I cut and dehydrated them, I was about to put the boxes in my "take to Durango because Cortez doesn't recycle plastic" pile when I realized, these would be excellent seed starting trays! They have ventilated lids and bottoms, and are a good depth.

Today, I went to Let It Grow, the excellent local nursary/ gardening store/ awesome cafe and bought quality seedling soil and filled my trays. I have what I hope to amounts to 6 cucumber plants in each tray. From a very informative seed starting pamphlet from LiG, I learned that when starting seeds, it is best to water from below, so as to not disturb the seed before it becomes stable in the soil. Since my trays are vented from the bottom as well, I placed the trays in a lipped cookie sheet and put in a few cups of warm water and have been watching it wick up into the trays.



The main point of this post is use what you have at your disposal, and improvise. I saved ~$5 and the eliminated need to purchase more plastic by using what I was going to throw away.

France has it right!

Just thought I would post an interesting article I just found online talking about the resurgence of the household garden during these difficult economic times. Gardening not only provides a relatively cheap past time, but also one with a product that decreases the grocery bill! Nothing beats a homegrown tomato, or basil!

The most staggering fact in this article is that 1/4 of all the produce consumed in France this past year was home grown!!! I bet in the States 1/4 of the population has NEVER had homegrown produce... Something to strive for.

So, This spring no matter how much space you have (1 acre of open land, or a small flower box below a window), plant a garden and enjoy creating deliciousness!

Happy growing!

Continued Progress

Hello all. Well after a week of lovely spring boating on the Salt River, I have returned to continued progress with the AP system. While I was gone Alison kindly stopped by every day to feed the fish. Unfortunately since I have last written I have had 4 fish die. 2 Goldfish the day I left, one Goldfish today and my algae eating fish yesterday. I think the pair that died the day I left may have been due to some salt which I put into the tank. Fish need a certain salinity level in order to ward off illness and to maintain other necessary life cycles. Unfortunately sometimes even small changes in the water quality can stress fish to the point of dying, and I think this is what happened. Next time I will add the salt even slower if need be.

Before I left, I added 5 earth worms (from the fishing department at Wal-mart). I was a little worried that they would have a hard time getting through the dense gravel bed, but I was wrong! They wriggled their way right in there and all were underground within 5 minutes. Haven't seen them since, but I assume they are doing well.



Another development is that my Nitrite levels are increasing. Now this is a natural thing, which eventually will be countered by Nitrite converting bacteria. But until they get established in my system, I need to keep a close eye on the nitrites. If they become to high, I will have to add more salt which helps the fish deal with high nitrite and ammonia levels. But hopefully I will start getting Nitrate readings indicating that my system has cycled. Since my Nitrite levels are on the rise, I have chosen not to introduce more fish into my tank until my system has cycled. As soon as I see Nitrates, more fish will be going back into the system.

Ok, now to some photos of progress!


Tomato plants!



Arugula (Lt) and Mixed Lettuce (Rt)



Cilantro



For some reason only 1 Cilantro seed has sprouted. They should only take 10 days to germinate, and its been 15, so today I planted 3 more seeds to see if I can get a couple of more plants.

As you can see, everything has made great strides since my last post!

Today I ordered a more advanced water quality testing kit and a digital salinity testing stick. I have a water quality test kit but it isn't very accurate and with this new kit, I will hopefully get more precise measurements.

Well that's it for now!

Growth!

So it has been 6 days since I first got my system up and running with seeds planted. Today I awoke to find that both the Arugula and Lettuce have sprouted! What an awesome experience to watch growth from a seed. One day there is nothing on the surface and the next there are 6-8 sprouts!



Over the past week I have spent a lot of time on the web site Backyard Aquaponics which has an online message board for people who have aquaponic systems. It is chock full of useful information regarding anything in aquaponics (designs, plants, water quality, fish...everything). Its also useful as you can put up a question and usually within 12 hrs someone more knowledgeable than yourself has filled the void in your understanding.

Recently I have been spending a lot of time trying to understand the importance of water quality regarding both your plants and your fish. Luckily I have started off with the hearty goldfish, and thus don't have quite as many water quality qualms as some folks raising more sensitive fish. None the less, its all important to know.

One important tid bit I did learn is that the bacteria I have mentioned before that turn ammonia into nitrites into nitrates takes a very long time to reproduce (by bacteria standards). It takes about 15 hrs for these types of bacteria (Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter) to reproduce by binary division. For comparison an E. Coli bacteria in the same amount of time would have created a population of 35 trillion cells (learned that on the forum!). So the lesson here is that it will be a while for my system to cycle (or grow a full population of this bacteria) and begin to work its wonders.

Since these ammonia and nitrite eating bacteria take a while to form, I have been watching my nitrite and ammonia levels pretty closely because if these substances build up it can be toxic to the fish. In which case I will need to do water changes and add salt to the system. But as of now, things look good!

Another interesting thing I have learned is about the magic of the earth worm. We all know that worms are great for the garden, but I'm not sure I would have guessed that they could thrive in an aquaponics system. It turns out that worms can do just as much good for a grow bed as they can for a garden bed. By introducing worms to the system any unprocessed solid fish waste will be consumed by them cleaning your water even more. In return you get even more nutrients for your plants via the worm casings (poop). I was woried about them living in a aqueous environment 50% of the time, but apparently worms can extract dissolved oxygen from the water and thrive in a water filled environment. So I will be picking up some worms as soon as I get a chance.

I hope to see the other plants sprouting here soon. I will post more pictures as more exciting growth continues!