Healing Garden Aquaponics in Adelaide, South Australia

Sejin

Compared to the grow beds in the earlier grow beds in the lower shelves, the plants in the higher shelves seem to have grown faster and bigger. I am not certain about the reason. One reason could be better sun lights.

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File comment: Bok Choi

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I am especially impressed about the bok choi growth.

Sejin

I have been pulling tomato branches up and removing lower branches so that I can plant something under tomato plants that are tall. I planted a half dozen spinach and flower seedlings.

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Both says part shade is OK. We shall see how they grow.

Sejin

In preparation for future planting the grow beds in the system, I am using the grow trays that are unlinked to the system to start with seeds. I have thrown one tray with a combination of lettuce seeds, and another one with Australian native flowers.

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These two trays are linked and a peice of flexible tube outside is used as stand pipe with adjustable angle.
I intend to grow some native flowers in the second shelve of the third expaned, grow beds along the fence.

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This area has less sun in winter because of low angle of sun. The lower shelve would have no sun. The grow beds (actually the long channel) in the lower shelve will b used to grow ornametal plants that grow in shade.

Sejin

I have been working on hand pollination for cucumbers. Some cucumber got beyond the baby size.

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But this is not an easy work. Many baby cucumbers' flowers closed before I could do pollination. Where are bees and butter flies that designed to do this work in nature's scheme. I may have consider some bee attracting flowers.

Sejin

Correction: it was a review at the end of 5 weeks, not,of course, 1 week.

Sejin

Dave Donley

Hey Sejin, the plants and beds look great! I was wondering if your neighbors in the green village like the AP system and are starting new ones there.

BullwinkleII

Sejin wrote:

I have been pulling tomato branches up and removing lower branches so that I can plant something under tomato plants that are tall. I planted a half dozen spinach and flower seedlings.

Attachment:

IMG_2314.JPG

Both says part shade is OK. We shall see how they grow.

I prune my tomato plants extremely heavily. (I remove ALL the vine-like leaf stems that never make fruit and more than 50% of the other leaves) and it doesnt seem to bother them at all. I've read in a few places that it helps them. Many people on BYAP do it as well. I do it to let some light get past them, and leave some nutrient for other plants, but another reason is to prevent fungus.

Sejin

Dave Donley wrote:

Hey Sejin, the plants and beds look great! I was wondering if your neighbors in the green village like the AP system and are starting new ones there.

Hi Dave,

You are right. You remembered that I live in a Green Village where most people are potential converts. I will tell you a story that may or may not be interesting to you and other forum members.

Actually, i have been keeping quite about my aquaponics experiment even though some neibours may know about it indirectly. There have been some sensitive issues with my neighbours, especially with the one on North of my house. I have been waiting for a right moment to make it public and invite neighbours for tour, that is even though my work colleagues had been invited already in a house warming party.

I am a member of the green villiage community garden. But I have been neglecting my lot in the community garden partly because i was spending most of my time and energy in my backyard aquaponics. But another impotant reason was the fact that the president of the community garden association was my Northern neighbour (wife) who who were in a tense relationship with me. In an earlier entry, viewtopic.php?f=18&t=11530#p310698
I mentioned that i was in dispute with my Northern neighbour because they installed solar hotwater panels in a position that created shade not only in my backyard garden, but into my living room. Being a semi-dense residential setting, the distance from my living room to my neighbour's is only 5.5m. My Northern neighbour had installed about a year ago two solar water heating panels in a vey stiff angle at the edge of their house nearest to our common fence which was only 4.5 m from my living room with 12 m wide window facing North ( the sun directin in Southern hemisphere). This had happened without consulting us. Naturally, I was not happy. I had then requested them to shift the solar panels so that there would no shade from their solar panels inside our living room. I was willing to accept shade in my backyard even though i had a plan for a vegie garden, but not in my living room. Green houses are built to use sun light to heat the building in winter. My neighbour was blocking sunlight to my living room in order to maximise solar efficiency of their house! And they were the president of the community garden and one of the vocal spokes persons of the Green Village! I did not want to advertise this issue to the community or the community garden members. I wanted to resolve it as a private neighbourly dispute. It took them a year to do what i had requested. No wonder we did not have a good neighbourly relations and i did not feel like inviting them to my place.

But I intend to be an active member of the community and introduce aquaponics to the community in time. I also had to be sure of the success in my own experiment with aquaponics before inviting others. I only started in February, and do not feel i have enough knowledge and experience to preach or teach others.

If the community members here, including my Nothern neighbour, become exposed to aqaponics, some if them will read my entries in this forum, i guess.

It is a bit sensitive.

Hope i have not bored you with an unexpected story.

Sejin

Sejin

BullwinkleII wrote:

Sejin wrote:

I have been pulling tomato branches up and removing lower branches so that I can plant something under tomato plants that are tall. I planted a half dozen spinach and flower seedlings.

Attachment:

IMG_2314.JPG

Both says part shade is OK. We shall see how they grow.

I prune my tomato plants extremely heavily. (I remove ALL the vine-like leaf stems that never make fruit and more than 50% of the other leaves) and it doesnt seem to bother them at all. I've read in a few places that it helps them. Many people on BYAP do it as well. I do it to let some light get past them, and leave some nutrient for other plants, but another reason is to prevent fungus.

Thanks, more to think about.
I will do some research on this issue. No need to reinvent wheels by myself.

Sejin

Sejin

Dave Donley wrote:

Hey Sejin, the plants and beds look great! I was wondering if your neighbors in the green village like the AP system and are starting new ones there.

Oh, on this matter, i should report that Bret viewtopic.php?f=18&t=12233
was an electrical and cabling contractor who did internet cabling for my new house. The green village is also an "optical cable estate". All houses here have extensive cabling and energy use is monitered at a community level as well as individual house level. Bret came to do the final piece of cabling work on my house, and saw my aquaponics sep up. He was instantly hooked, before ever reading our forum entries.

But Bret probably had a favourable disposition because he already had a vegie garden and an aquarium, i think.

Sejin

BullwinkleII

It's a difficult thing to ignore once you see it in action.

And I think it's going to be very mainstream soon. Even on my blog I see my post on the humble bell siphon now leaping to the front in terms of how many people find it after a google search. A year or so ago it didn't rate a mention on my statistics. Now all the old original aquaponics posts are becoming more popular.

Here is a graph showing the google search traffic relationship between "aquaponics" and "barbed wire". It's neck and neck

http://www.google.com.au/trends/?q=aqua ... all&sort=0

On a more serious note, a search along the lines of "aquaponics" vrs "vegetable garden" does show an interesting trend.

http://www.google.com.au/trends/?q=aqua ... all&sort=0

It's also interesting to note the seasonal nature of the searches for "vegetable garden" which I presume comes from the american-centric nature of the net, as opposed to the more consistent upward trend of "aquaponics" as a search term, perhaps due to it's global distribution. (or maybe due to our obsessive natures)

Sejin

BullwinkleII wrote:

It's a difficult thing to ignore once you see it in action.

And I think it's going to be very mainstream soon. Even on my blog I see my post on the humble bell siphon now leaping to the front in terms of how many people find it after a google search. A year or so ago it didn't rate a mention on my statistics. Now all the old original aquaponics posts are becoming more popular.

Here is a graph showing the google search traffic relationship between "aquaponics" and "barbed wire". It's neck and neck

http://www.google.com.au/trends/?q=aqua ... all&sort=0

On a more serious note, a search along the lines of "aquaponics" vrs "vegetable garden" does show an interesting trend.

http://www.google.com.au/trends/?q=aqua ... all&sort=0

It's also interesting to note the seasonal nature of the searches for "vegetable garden" which I presume comes from the american-centric nature of the net, as opposed to the more consistent upward trend of "aquaponics" as a search term, perhaps due to it's global distribution. (or maybe due to our obsessive natures)

It is intersting Adelaide ranks very high in this statistics.
I think you BW must be playing a role here.

Sejin

BullwinkleII

I suspect it's more to do with water restrictions.

Aquaponics is such an obvious direction when there's no water.

I remember a few years ago my brother had a some tomatoes growing in a dirt garden, and to keep them alive through the middle of summer, he ran the hose on them all day every day. Admittedly on just a trickle, but it's surprising how many litres per day a trickle is.

Even in my system, some of my plants wilt a little in the middle of the day. In all my previous attempts at dirt gardening, all my lettuce were bitter, and nothing ever really grew to its potential except some winter veggies that grew by themselves. I suspect it was because I never felt comfortable dumping all the water on them that I really needed to. It always seemed so wasteful.

DrLuke

Hey. While u have plenty of fans, just thought I'd say hi and that I've still been following your thread. I recon it's turning into one of the byap forums great member threads. I remember you saying a long time ago that u where drawing inspirationfrom my thread. Well now the shoe is on the other foot. The speed at which you have got such a beautiful tidy system up and running is a credit to u.

P.s hope everything works out with ur neighbour.

Dave Donley

That sounds good, hope the problems with the neighbors has a good resolution.

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