Just a update walk through Clip....

& an update on the Bucket experiment... (lazy I know....)

Shall do a proper post soon on whats been going on in the patch later this week...

Have a great one all!!!

: )»

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This is a small sideshow that the students will see tomorrow at the Bronx Writing Academy

If you want to support my project with the school, but that you cant volunteer, you can give a donation to Chfermette see the donation button on the top right corner. Any donation will be used to finance a trip to one of NYC rooftop farms or to insure the continuation of the project after the end of the spring semester. Also, I am in the process of making it a non profit. Please If you enjoy the blog content, comment and/or subscribe.

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Kang kong is a short vining, water loving plant that is used in many different Asian cuisines.. It is related to sweet potato & Morning glory with flowers very similar to both.. Mainly grown in boggy areas & have become a pest weed in some water systems where it has been introduced..Should be very easy to grow this plant in the heat we get here & cant wait to get our first large harvest..



 We are growing it as a leafy green to be included in salads & our fruit n veg "Smoothies" as well as for stir fries & Asian curries..

For more regular updates about the patch come visit us at https://www.facebook.com/Bitsouttheback
Have a great one all...

:)»

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This is one post I am very happy to be able to do as I think we are finely there… It has taken us a while but I am now happy with the way the Aquaponic system is going… The last 2 grow beds have finely been plumbed into place after being used first as de chlorinating trays then being invaded by tadpoles… Although it was great to see 2 different species of frogs use them to grow into fully functioning members of the amphibian community it is great to see them used for their intended purpose…To begin with we were tossing up with the idea of using gravel in the grow beds but as We already had 3/4 of a bed worth so it & had been very frugal in other parts of the budget we decided on splurging on Aqua Clay for these 2 beds…  The pipe work was another part of the system that I had been undecided on… Initially I wanted to stay away from ridged pipes but found them the best way to plumb up the system.. The clip bellow brings you up to where we are up to at the moment…

Something I didn’t mention in the clip is that the Ammonia & Nitrites are only showing trace readings at best & the Nitrates are not really showing up at all.. The pH has been stable at 6.5 so thats also good.. Fairly happy about that as it means all the nutrients are being used up by the plants.. It will be something I shall be monitoring over the next week though with the added grow medium..
The first thing that was planted into the new beds was some purple Vienna kohlrabi & some rainbow chard seedlings… The first bed had some of the strawberries thinned out & moved over with all but 1 green onions also being transplanted as well..  I must say that I had no idea how many strawberry runners had taken hold I the original bed.. There are now over 25 from the original 5 or 6 that were planted in there originally.. All the smaller spring onions got a trim then were planted out into Bed #1.. All but 1 of the larger ones got a trim & were planted into a new Grow bed..  The one that was left is being  used as a guinea pig for a detergent based aphid spray along with the bulls horn Capsicum & the Chinese red shallots we got from a You tuber on the Sunshine Coast.. I think the Strawberries shall be pulled soon & added to a grow tube or 3 to make room for more greens in the beds in the future..
The only part left of the system that really should have been completed is the backup air system for the fish tank just in case of a power failure.. We have the pump & the Relay used to allow power from the car battery to run the pump... All that we need is the battery itself & a small 9v adaptor to run the Relay..  We have the sparky lined up to set up a permanent power supply to the patch & a utility light for night time viewing as well as attracting fresh insect food for the Jade perch.. The only thing stopping the power being laid is my motivation & a few extra coins in the jobbies jar to pay the sparky..

Thats about it for now... Shall try to post at least once a month for anyone who is still following..
Have a great one....

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Considering setting up an aquaponics system to feed your family?  Heres a few thoughts for the home gardner.

An aquaponic system with ten square feet of growing space can cost 1500 dollars and will feed you for about a week.  Think Im wrong?  Heres the facts.

The aquaponic system in question comes with a 100 gallon fish tank.  A one pound fish, lets say a tilapia, will yield two 4oz. filets.  A one pound tilapia requires 3.74 gallons of water to survive.  A 100 gallon tank will hold 26 one pound tilapia assuming you could fill it to the brim.  The fastest growing tilapia, a hybrid between Orange Mozambique and Black Hornorum (Wami), will grow to one pound in 6 months if fed a very portion controlled amount of food.  This means that you can get 13 pounds of fish every six months from this system under optimal conditions. A value of about 51 dollars at the grocery store.

This same system has 10 square feet of growing space.  That about the area of a standard computer desk.  What are you going to grow in ten square feet that can possibly justify the cost of the system?  Lettuce? Some peppers?  Forget corn or most root crops like carrots.  Regardless of the claims of the aquaponics cult, there are far more crops that will not grow in hydroton balls without real soil than there are crops that will.  Okay so you might get about a weeks worth of some salad greens.  A street value of less than 50 dollars.

It doesnt take a genius to figure out that its going to take you several years (if ever) to recover the initial costs of any aquaponic system assuming that nothing wears out, like the pump.  So unless you have a die hard cultist attitude with a huge bank account, I highly recommend you just buy your lettuce and fish at the grocery store.

Now,  whenever I write an article debunking the claims of an industry or business, I always offer a solution to the problems that I expose.  The problem here being the costs.  So heres my common sense solution.

Go to Walmart and buy a 14 dollar blue plastic splash pool.  Its about a foot deep and six feet in diameter.  Thats about 28 square feet for 14 dollars.  Drill 4 one inch holes at the bottom edge as a drain and cover the holes with coffee filters so the soil doesnt wash out.  Then fill it with 12 cubic feet of garden soil from Lowes for about 36 dollars.  And theres your grow bed.  It costs about 50 dollars.  Now set up a kiddie pool.  A 12 foot diameter pool with just 24 inches of water will hold almost 1700 gallons.  Thats big enough for over 450 pounds of fish and will feed you over 225 pounds of filets every six months. You can buy your tilapia at BackyardTilapia.com for about a dollar each.

Now, every day, grab a five gallon bucket of water from your fish and give it to your plants.  Your plants will grow just as fast as any aquponic system and you can plant a greater diversity to suit your taste.  Oh and the time it takes to recover your set up costs?  About six months.

In my own yard, I use splash pools for short root crops, three row high cinder block beds for deep root crops (like carrots) and I plant 72 corn stalks in plain old dirt about 8 inches apart in 4 rows. I grow over 30 different varieties of fruits and vegetables and they last all year.

Commercial aquaponics offers an exciting business opportunity with great income potential, but for the typical backyard gardener its just an expensive hobby.

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Tilapia hatcheries that throw out non-GMO claims are playing to an audience shrouded in fear and ignorance for financial gain.  The truth is, the term GMO was invented by journalists, television writers and newspaper reporters as an acronym for another made-up term, genetically modified organism.  Today the term non-GMO is used to market products to consumers who are fearful of a process that they dont understand.

Genetic improvements have been developed by breeders and growers for over 8000 years.  Moving pollen from one plant variety to another to generate new seeds with traits from both plants happens in nature with the blowing of the wind or on the bodies of bees. But even if the pollen is moved by the hands of a farmer, the results are still the same. In more modern times, scientists use other methods to induce changes by using chemical compounds or irradiation.  Obviously when people hear chemicals they immediately think of all the skull and crossbones warning labels on their household cleaners and bug sprays. But remember, to a scientist, H₂0 is a chemical, to the rest of us, its just water.  And irradiation is also used to cold pasteurize hundreds of everyday foods. Even farm animals are selectively bred for a number of reasons, including the prevention of disease and improved production using such techniques as artificial insemination or embryo rescue.  The truth is, almost everything we eat today has been genetically modified in one way or another within the last 8000 years.

Genetic engineering is different from genetic improvements in that genes from any species are introduced. As a way to illustrate this difference, genetic improvements can be made by combining two types of corn but not one variety of corn and one variety of rice.  Rice pollen will not pollenate corn.  However in the laboratory, scientists can take genes from either plant and create a new variety of either.  This is genetic engineering.  The resulting plant may be more corn than rice or more rice than corn but ultimately it will be a new variety of one or the other, similar but different.  There is another level of genetic development called precision breeding which is sort of a hybrid between genetic improvement and genetic modification.  The methods used in precision breeding are far more predictable than anything else, and can result in getting exactly what the scientist is after.

For a tilapia hatchery to be truly non-GMO they would have to sell natural colored random sized and shaped, mixed-sex, certified pure strain tilapia exactly as they were from ten thousand years ago.  Like it or not, breeding for size or color is just another form of genetic improvement.  And we all know from the fear mongers that genetic improvement falls under the dark cloak of GMO.

At Backyard Tilapia, we sell everything from pure strain naturally colored tilapia exactly as they were 100 centuries ago to one of the most genetically improved hybrids of all time.  Yep, GMOs are served here, and were darn proud of it.

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