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?

Into week three.

So since finding plants this time of the year in Phoenix is not so easy I decided to try restarting a couple of things from the produce area in the store.  The celery stock is finally showing a bit of new life (maybe) the center is starting to push up a bit and it looks like there is a bit of leafy growth in the center.  I think it has been going a couple of weeks now.

New from seed this past week are some Chinese Cabbage and some Pickling Cucumbers.  I went with the Pickling Cucumbers since the fruits are smaller so I am hoping that they will be easier to support.  Even though I have a nice trellis to train them to I am thinking that weight will be a big factor in successfully growing plants with this system. 

 

 It already looks like it is time to thin both of these plants.

I also cut another nice sized sprig off of the Rosemary last night to use with a pork roast I made for pulled pork sandwiches.  Yummy!  

The second of the plant I am trying to re-root is a Romaine Lettuce.  It is not doing as well to start with.  I had just bought the head and put it into the bottom pot on my stand (whole).  I probably should have cut the lettuce leaves back and used just the stock like I did with the celery.  But I was thinking that the lettuce might keep for a bit longer this way.  But it seems like without some roots already started the plant just wilts fairly fast.   So I did trim the leaves way back this morning but not all the way back.  Lets see if it will do better with less leaves to support.  

 The Philodendron cuttings that were the first plants I started with in my hydroponic experiment kept falling out of the top bowl as I worked on the system.  So I moved them down to bottom.  I am now seeing more roots finally starting to show on them now too.

Project wise: I built a shelf up under the systems so I would not need to move them to change the water.  I am using a siphon to empty the buckets so I wanted them up off the floor to make starting a siphon easier.  I also didn't want to move the system once plants start to climb onto the trellis.  

I also built a second system from my third gen ideas.  Still having a bit of problems with the air pump chamber but I think I have it worked out now.  Also I cracked two of the bowls trying to drill through them this time.  I need to be more careful I guess.  I will need to replace at least one of them now.  I also want to get four three inch net pots to put into the lid of this system.  I added a six by five inch rectangular basket on the first one.

Hopefully I will be writing up instructions to build this system here shortly.  I took lots of pictures with this second build.

Time to thin the heard!

After about 2 weeks it is looking like the tomato plants need to be thinned.  They are doing great!

#tomato #hydroponic #hg

tomatoes from seed planted 7/24/14

Roots coming out the bottom.

Split the tomatoes up and spread them around a bit.

I will need to pare down to just one or two, but not just yet.  Might as well make sure that they hold up to splitting them out.

Found a Rosemary plant.

While I was out and about last weekend I stopped in at Whitfield Nursery to look and see what veggies might be had.  They said it was much to hot out for them to carry much but I did find some Rosemary.  This is a trailing type that should do well in the hydro system.  But I will need to keep it trimmed back.  This is the same type of Rosemary that I had on the pool equipment planter wall at the old house.  It cascaded from the top of the four foot wall all the way to the ground.  

I did actually take a bit of it to put into some chicken and dumplings last night. Yum!

#plants #rosemary #hydroponic #hg