Covering the System

Our aquaponic system was getting a lot of black volcano dust
on the vegetables. Spots were also appearing on the lettuce.
Some friends suggested the spots could be from the acid rain
we often receive as a result of living so close to an active volcano.

After a lot of investigation and thought we decided to
semi cover the plant part of the system with
greenhouse quality plastic.

We made hoops about 7 feet tall from PVC  pipe and put them over the plant troughs. Then we ran the plastic over the hoops but not all the way down to the ground. We brought the plastic down to within 18 inches of the plant troughs so
air can flow   across the plants and they do not overheat
in Hawaii's tropical sun. The ends of the hoops are
also open for air flow .

A month later and it is obvious this was a good idea.
The plants are cleaner and growing faster. The
spots on the lettuce have disappeared.

All is once again green and clean  in the garden.

TARO

Taro is a root crop grown mostly in the tropics.
The root is a starch that is eaten by many Polynesians .
The leaves are also eaten when properly cooked.

I planted a few in my aquaponic system and have had fairly good luck
growing them. I used 1 gallon food grade buckets for net pots.
Drilled lots of holes in the buckets before putting coconut fiber planting material
in  them, then I cut big holes in the  floats so the buckets fit.

Once everything was wet the buckets were sitting on the bottom of the system resting on the food grade expensive liner.
Not a good situation !
Solution was :
Put small chunks of float material under the buckets and all
seemed to be well.

Three months later and the Taro are growing  much faster than they did
in the garden.

Aphids in Your System

What to do when aphids invade ?  Screaming and cussing help you
feel better but you need something else to kill off the aphids without
killing off your fish.

A good beginning attack would be to make a tea with garlic cloves and chili peppers .
This needs to be sprayed on your vegetables several times a week.

To make the tea crush a whole bulb of garlic to a real mush. Do the same
with a handful of hot chili peppers. You  need to wear rubber gloves and eye
goggles when handling the chili peppers. I once got chili pepper
in my eye and thought I was going to die. (The cure for chili pepper in the eye
is cold milk in the eye…..lots of it.)

Add  two gallons of water to  the garlic and chili pepper mush.
Let it set in the sun for several days. Strain and spray on your plants.
Again, protect your hands and eyes.
Spray on your vegetables 3  or 4 times a week.

Wash your vegetables before eating.

Fish and other Creatures in your Aquaponics

Who or what lives in your aquaponic system ?
I have white Tilapia living in
tanks that drain into my vegetable troughs.  BUT  they are not the only creatures in
the system.

 Who else lurks  there under the vegetables? It probably depends
on where you live.

Here in Hawai :
Red worms magically appear after 6 months or so . Later a small shrimp that
cleans the roots of the plants appeared. These are both good guys that you want in your system.
The red worms and the small shrimp (gammarus) live on the bottom of our system as well as in the roots of the plants.

Pests occasionally found in the system include slugs , snails, and once even a centipede.

There are other creatures that you can add to your system too.
Prawns like to live in your troughs
under the plants.  They are very tasty but on the down side, they fight and kill each other
and even crawl out of the system at times.
Catfish can also live under your plants and if fed won't do too much damage to your plant roots since they are bottom feeders.

Old Guys ! No Weeding or Watering Your Garden !

Plant your veggies in an aquaponic garden and you will
never again have to pull weeds or water your garden.

Your seeds are planted in a net pot filled with coconut fiber.
Once the seeds sprout you stick the net pot into  a hole in
in the styrofoam float.

The water from the fish tank flows under the float and feeds and  waters
the plant.

Aquaponics is an ideal gardening method for those of us
starting to be bothered by age related problems.

Best Lettuce

I have come to the conclusion that the best lettuce grown in the aquaponic
 system , in Hawaii , is Butter head lettuce.

 I like the small miniature heads . They grow
quickly and they don't take over a lot of the space on the float.
One head makes a big salad for one person.

The mini Butter lettuce comes in 3 colors  green, red and a
kind of mix of red and green.

Butter lettuce  seems to not be too picky
about the weather. It grows  even when it is really hot outside
.
The secret is the  lettuce likes the  cool water in the system, so even when the weather and
sun are hot the plants have cool water circulating around their roots.

Aquaponic System needs Iron

Plants are growing again as we recover from the snail invasion.

Lots of green beans have been planted  in batches 2 weeks apart. They are jumping .

Summer squash is growing but has a lot of yellow on the leaves.

Taro is also growing but looking pale.

Butter lettuce is growing fast now and looks good.

Thai Basil is producing lots of tasty leaves.

Kale is just starting to grow.

Swiss Chard is speeding up too.

The yellow showing up in the squash and 

taro is a message. The plants are telling us that there is an iron deficiency in the system. So we will dilute some chelated iron 

and slowly add it to the system. The yellow leaves should disappear within a week and things will grow even faster.

System is Back

Everything is  restarted and kicking up a new plant storm !

Cleaning everything out then flushing the fish tanks into the plant troughs
with added water  made the lettuce jump !

 Green beans are poking their heads out
and starting to vine.

The taro is jumping.

Watercress loves the new
cleaned up system.

Basil is taking off like gangbusters.

Marigolds  here and there are getting ready to keep the bugs out.

Aquaponics is great !

Starting Over

We ran our system for 5 years before the snail invasion .

The fish did not seem to eat many of the snails.

 This week we shut down

the vegetable troughs  and kept the fish on standby. 

We emptied the water from the vegetable troughs , cleaned out the sludge at the bottom , bleached the troughs,

washed the rafts , let everything sun dry , washed out again  and refilled with clean water.

We let the water sit for two days to burn off any chlorine  before  hooking everything up to the fish tanks.

Pumps are on and  water is flowing . 

Today we plant new sets.

To prevent a new invasion of snails , slugs etc we bought 50 pounds of diatomaceous 

earth and spread it on the ground around the plant troughs. 

Hopefully we  are good to go for another 5 years.

Big Island Spring Cleaning

After 5 years of aquaponic activity we needed to cleanup the system.
Slugs  are always a problem and we had been keeping them under control .
This year however we let a child help us with the system and she put a snail
into it.  Then we had hundreds of little water snails. At first I tried to just catch them
and kill them. After a month or so that was not working and the snails were really multiplying.

The cure ?  Clean out the whole system and start over ?  Maybe . I am not sure but we are trying to control them naturally before we go that route.

We cleared out the vegetables and put fish into the vegetable troughs. We are not feeding those fish
and we hope they will kill and eat all the snails and slugs too.

I'll let you know in a few weeks if it works.

What Not to Plant in Your Aquaponics System

Some lessons are only learned the hard way.

I planted a yellow cherry tomato in
my system . It grew over 6 feet, had a handful of tiny tomatoes, and created a root mass
that totally choked up the water flow in the system. Lesson learned ?  Plant only determinate type tomatoes.

Water Cress. I planted a little sprig  and it grew and grew and grew and tasted good.
But, it totally choked up the water flow in the system. Lesson learned?  Control the
damned water cress . Feed it to the chickens if you can't eat it all and prune the roots.
Also just tear it all out every few months and start over with a little sprig.

Peppermint. I planted a tiny start and it tried to take over my whole system. The chickens do not like to eat it and you can only drink so much peppermint tea. Lesson learned ? Plant the mint in the ground and
keep it away from your system.

Basil. Wonderful to have an abundance of basil . It is so nice to have enough for lots of pesto.
The catch is after about 2 or 3 months in the system it grows a woody trunk almost like a tree.
When you try to take it out of the system it tears up your foam floating board that holds the plants.
Lesson learned?  When that stem starts to thicken take the plant out of the system and stick it in the ground somewhere. If you water it good it will continue to grow, ….sometimes.

Marigolds. They are so pretty and they keep the bugs away but they do the same thing the basil
does if left in the system too long. Pull them out before they tear up your foam board.
They will definitely continue to grow if planted in the ground and watered.

Beat Food Inflation

Worrying about the price of food increasing more and more
each time you go shopping ? Then you need an aquaponic system in your backyard .
You don't need a huge operation , just a space the size of a small carport will do.
Find a space that size that gets lots of sunshine and you are ready to go.

We have a book for $100 that tells you everything you need to know
and has blueprints for the construction of a small system.
Friendly Aquaponics  wrote the book . They have a huge system
and years of experience growing and teaching others to grow .

http://www.friendlyaquaponics.com

Aquaponics cheap and easy

Even Zero Hedge is getting on the aquaponics soapbox.
See what they say about food shortages and easy ways to grow your own.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-09-27/guest-post-two-no-brainer-ways-play-rising-food-prices

Here on the Big Island at the End of Summer

Here on the Big Island, at the end of summer, my garden fed by
fish droppings is  once again flourishing.

The aquaponic system has been struggling along for
several months as we added a third trough to the system.
In the process of expanding and changing our system we unknowingly allowed 8 tiny tilapia to get into the plant troughs.  As we replaced plants and waited for things to grow , nothing happened.

 For two months  nothing happened! The lettuce starts just sat there. The 8  sneaky tilapia were
eating the roots of all the plants.

After many water tests and checks , we took the floats off of all  three troughs and discovered  eight  6 inch tilapia . We chased them down with nets and returned them to the fish tanks where they originated.

Now two weeks later we again have an abundance of vegetables.

Mosquito Control

Many people have complained about the mosquitos that breed in our plant
troughs. There is a very simple solution for this problem.
Just add a few of any kind of aquarium fish to each trough.
In no time at all you will have hundreds of tiny fish swimming around and
eating all the mosquito larva.

Soon you will notice that there are very few mosquitos in
your aquaponics area.

Lives Forever

My favorite tomato can now live forever.

Every time it gets to that stage where it is dying back I
simply cut 3 or 4  six inch green tips off the plant and stick them back into
the aquaponic system.  By the time the first plant is done the
cuttings are up and going.

This method works much quicker than growing from seed
and is very easy. Put each cutting in a net pot and have it stick out the bottom about 2 inches.
Put some of  planting medium ( wet coconut husk and vermiculite)
in the net pot and around the cutting. Place the whole thing back into the aquaponic system.

Enjoy tomatoes year round .

Strange Things

Strange things seem to come up in my aquaponics system when I
stop paying attention for a few days. the latest 'stranger ' to appear
is a Mamaki plant. There  is a Mamaki bush about 4 feet from the
system so I am sure that is the mother of this plant.

The interesting thing is that  no seedlings have ever come up under the mother plant.
Also , all the cuttings I have tried to root failed.

But fate or a bird  or an insect carried a seed to the system and it
is growing like gangbusters without any human intervention.

For those of you who do not live in Hawaii , I need to explain that
Mamaki is an endangered Hawaiian  medicinal plant  that is used by the Hawaiians.

Where to Get Seeds

I often get asked " where do you get your seeds ?" and the
answer  is " here and there".
Right now I am seeing a decline in seed germination regardless
of where I obtain the seeds. Local seeds from store racks
seem to be among the worst.

My favorite seed supplier is Baker Creek , but even their seeds
have lost the high percentage of germination rate they had in the past.

Perhaps we should all attempt to save our own seeds and see what the germination rate looks like.

In aquaponic systems it is best to have your seeds started
in a holding table area away from your main system.
That way you only put sprouted plants into your system.
I  can have over 300 plants growing at one time in my
system so my sprouting table usually has about 200
net pots with seeds waiting to sprout and grow roots out
the bottom. You really need those roots showing before you
put the new plant into the system.

Mongoose Solution

We have finally resorted to violence toward the mongoose.

Lead poisoning cures mongoose egg theft.

One old sniper with an air rifle and lots of time
will probably get the grandaddy of all mongoose .

Mongoose Disturbing the Cycle

Mongoose  live everywhere at lower elevations in Hawaii.

They were first brought here to kill off the rats.
Back then no one seemed to notice that the  Hawaiian
rat is  nocturnal and mongoose go to bed at night. So now we have an abundance of mongoose and rats!

The mongoose is deceptively cute little guy. He resembles
a Dachshund that has a tiny head. You'll see him scurry across the road
yet seldom comes in contact with cars. He is fast and very smart .
He will hiss like a snake with a foghorn and has a set of teeth
resembling needles .

Our problem is we feed all left over aquaponic trimmings to
our chickens and thus enjoy eggs via the system.

In steps the grandaddy of the mongoose world. He sneaks into the hen house
even though the 9 pound rooster in charge , Son-of -Thor, is
loudly protesting . He sticks a long sharp canine tooth into
an egg and gently puts his front paws around the egg then
stands up on his hind legs and walks out with the egg.

We have trapped and "eliminated " many of this particular mongoose's
offspring , he, however , continues to avoid our traps.