Update: 1/12/16

Coming up into my second season with this system.  It has been amazing how well it has done so far.  I wish I had a greenhouse but here in Phoenix I managed to get through most of the grueling summer and only had to cover my system a few days this past winter.

While replanting at the end of summer I noticed that the Coco Coir does break down some.  I added about a 5 gallon buckets worth of Perlite back into the grow barrels.  And in the last new grow barrel, now up to number four, I didn't use any Coco Coir in it at all.  In stead I used a mix of Large Perlite and Clay balls.

Here are some pictures from this morning.  This should be coming out of our colder winter days and getting into our real growing season.  A few of the plants are looking a bit stressed but over all I think I have a good head start.  :-)

I'm losing how much water a day? Evaporation rate for my garden.

Seems like there has been more than a few questions about evaporation and water loses in the forums

lately.
I have been adding 10 to 20 gallons a day here lately. I was even concerned that I might have a leak or something somewhere that I wasn't finding. The question of evaporation came up and I did a search on "Evaporation rate for Phoenix Arizona" and came to a report from the Western Regional Climate Center for several western states.

    Click on a State: Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii & Pacific Islands, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming

As it turns out the evaporation rate for my area is around 11 to 14 inches a month for June.  That is about a half an inch a day.

To find out how many gallons that is for my system I first needed to find out how much area I have that is subject to evaporation.  That is my sump, all of my fish tanks and all of my grow beds.  Any area that is moist and open to air circulation.  For me that is around 8750 square inches (+/- 60 ft^2).  Then multiply the area times the average daily evaporation rate (0.5in) to get the volume and then convert that to gallons (+/- 18 gal).

So that is what is happening to all of my water!

Below is a spreadsheet that does all of these calculations for you.  You can overwrite my numbers and fill in your own.  You can use either or both rectangular or round beds and tanks.  Be sure to find the evaporation rate for your own area and enter it as inches per month.  The sheet will find the average gallons per day that you should be losing  and even tells you how many inches that should be in your sump.   

These calculations are pretty much the worst case for evaporation.  There is nothing to allow for shaded areas and doesn't account for the water that the plants use or transpire.  But it does give you a good idea of what you could be losing each day.

Get your feet wet!

Start a Aquaponic Garden.

Aquaponics is fast becoming the new way to garden (even if it is as old as the pyramids)
By growing veggies and fish in the same closed system you feed the fish and the fish feed your plants.  You get much faster growth from the plants because everything the plants need to thrive is always at optimal levels and available to the plants.

My single barrel system consists of using two haves of a 50 gallon Food grade barrel, making a 25 gallon fish tank and a grow bed that has 12 square feet of growing area.  With a pump to circulate the water and the built in worm farm, it is a high quality system to get into Aquaponics that is easy to setup and start gardening.

By adding a worm farm to the system we've introduced the means to add the micro-nutrients that hydroponic systems either neglect and everyone wonders why the tomatoes are tasteless. Or pay big money for chemicals to add in extra nutrients to get some of the taste back into their produce.  Just feed the worms with plant scraps from your kitchen that already contain the nutrients in a plant usable form.  No more wondering what type of chelated iron should be used for what PH level.

Order a single barrel system for $300 today and get your Auqaponic Garden Started.  Then add more grow area.  The grow containers are very modular and can be easily combined into a bigger system, or added to an existing system of a different type.

Day one, Other side.

Day one, Setup and transplanted

From day one you can start seeds or add transplants to the growbed.


You can order this system Here
Single Barrel Aquaponic System

Get Your Feet Wet!













Day 1


Day 9


Day 13


Day 20


Day 25


Day 28

Now I have it over a barrel!

So I wanted to go outside with my gardening this year and decided to put together a small aquaponic system.

Since we are still renting I wanted it to be modular and easy to move.

I wanted a small footprint, but I wanted to be able to grow some bigger veggies.  

My mom had four blue barrels she had given to me from when my stepfather was planning to do an aquaponics system. One of the barrels was even already cut open on one side so that it would make a nice tank.  My step father had been planning to cut the barrels vertically and make the more traditional clamshell style grow beds, but I didn't want the extra cost and fuss with having to make a rigid frame to keep the sides from bowing out.  I had even been thinking about cutting the ends into shorter tubs and making a vertical garden more like my indoor garden is configured.  But in the end I decided with the extra cost of the much bigger PVC  needed for building towers, and the fact that I really wanted to be able to plant larger plants so I wanted open space above the growing beds.  

So now back to thinking about my design considerations, if I go with the clamshell design I get almost twice as much grow area but then I would still have to build a rigid frame.

If I cut the barrels in half horizontally then I'll only end up with about six square foot growing area using both halves......  unless I used the sides too! 

I had previously seen a few projects where people had cut pockets in the sides of barrels and made Garden Towers or by adding sprinklers inside and making it into a aeroponic system.  By putting in the pockets I am adding an additional 9 square feet to each half of the barrel, giving me a total growing area of 24 square feet, quadrupling my grow area.  

Nice, I think I'm good with that!

And I still have two more barrels I can add in.  

So what do you think?