IBC Aquaponics Update for Earth Day

Happy Day After Earth Day! Between work, an exciting HS soccer game, feeding the herd and working around the farm, there was just no time to add anything yesterday, but I am making up for it today.

One of the classes I attended at the SC Organic Growers Conference back in March was an Aquaponics "How To" class. During the class, I picked up a number of good pointers and things that I wanted/needed to change on our small aquaponics system that day. So, this year for Earth Day I updated our IBC Aquaponics system I built last year.

In the system I designed, our pump was always on and the growing bed was always filled with water. One of the things I learned in the class was that the water level needs to rise and fall. This is because there needs to be some level of oxygen in the growing medium for the health of the plants and to keep the stuff that gets trapped in the rocks from becoming a stinky, anaerobic mess. There are two good options for doing this; build a bell siphon or put a timer on the pump.

There are lots of resources for building a bell siphon. Here is a link to instructions on how to build one if you would like to try. If you do a Google search for bell siphon you will find thousands of great resources on how to make one. One day I might try to add one to the system but for now I took the easy route and added a timer. I chose a simple indoor timer (the pump plug is in our sun room) that I found at Walmart and set it to power the pump for an hour and turn off for an hour. This setting seems to be working well for now but I may make some changes to it once things get warmer.

The second addition I made to our aquaponics system is the addition of red wiggler worms to the growing medium. Apparently, no aquaponics system is complete without worms. They eat all the crud that gets added to the growing medium; fish poo, dead plant roots, bug pieces, etc. Occasionally a worm will fall into the tank below and provide some tasty protein for the fish. I only added a handful of worms to our system at first. I want to see how they do before I add more.

Worms are not affected by the water in the growing medium. They do not drown as I once thought they might. Worms conduct transpiration through their skin and can take in oxygen from water. Again, the trick is to let some oxygen in to the bed occasionally so they can breath.

This year I found a great local source of tilapia at Southland Fisheries and added 35 tilapia fingerlings to the tank instead of the goldfish we used last year. Tilapia are a good choice for a small aquaponics system for a number of reasons. First, they are fairly hardy fish and tolerate a wide range of water qualities. Second, they like and need warm water. This is especially important here in SC where it gets pretty darn warm in the summer. I should be able to keep the water in an acceptable range through the end of Oct which will give the fish plenty of time to grow.

Our final addition to the IBC Aquaponics system was to add some plants. Thirty-five fish will create a lot of waste that will need to be filtered out by the plants. We added a variety of lettuce, spinach and tomato plants to start with and I am looking forward to seeing them grow.

Just a word of caution on adding fish... Consider adding your fish gradually so you can condition the beneficial bacteria in the growing media. If you add too many fish at one time the waste they produce can overwhelm the nitrobacter in your system and the bacteria won't be able to handle the amount of nitrogen in the water. This can cause a major fish kill. Make sure to monitor the amount of nitrites and nitrates in the water and do a partial water change if it gets too high. You can get water test kits in any fish store. In our case, we kept goldfish in the tank all winter and added 10 tilapia about 2 weeks ago to get the nitrogen cycle started.

Well, that's it for this entry. If you have any questions about the things we did to our IBC Aquaponics system, please drop me a line. Happy Earth Day a day late!

Free Straw!

I got a call this week from a guy cleaning out a barn. He asked me if I wanted the old straw he found in the loft. I made a trip (actually a couple of trips) to pick it up today.

What does one do with 84 bales of free wheat straw? Hmmm..... Let me count the ways:

1. Straw bale gardening in the spring.

2. Sheet composting for the garden.

3. Adding organic matter to the lawn and pastures.

4. Erosion control.

5. Sell it.

Items 1-4 are very possible. I don't know if there will be any left for #5.

More on what we do with it later...

Home Grown Luffa

Everybody has seen a luffa at least once in their lives. Luffas are those rough, sponge-looking things that people put in the shower and never use. I'll have to admit, I was a little ignorant about what they were. I never gave them much thought and always just assumed they were some sort of natural sponge from the ocean. As it turns out, I was wrong.

I'm not sure how I came across the website, but last spring I found luffa.info and learned about growing luffas. On that website, they sell 50 luffa seeds for $6 so I decided to buy a pack.

I had great success starting the seeds in our sunroom. Unfortunately, we hardly ever go into the sunroom so I killed most of them with my neglect (it was a busy time). I did manage to salvage four plants. I put two next to our deck and two in the garden. Both grew very well and produced some nice luffas for us. As they grow, luffas look a little cucumbers when they're small, and grow into something about the size of a large zucchini.

We allowed the luffas to stay on the vines until well after the vines were dead this fall. This gave the skin of the gourd time to dry and made peeling them a little easier. Still, peeling the skin off was not easy.

Once they were peeled, we knocked the seeds loose and collected those for use this spring. Finally, we rinsed the luffa in a bucket of warm water to wash off the left-over luffa juice and let them dry in the sun.

We're going to try to grow some more this coming summer from the seeds we saved from these luffas. In the meantime, we are going to put the ones we grew last year to the test and see  what we can do with them. A brief search of the Internet revealed some great ideas for using the luffa fiber.

Here are some uses for the luffa:

- Use as a shower sponge to exfoliate the skin.
- Use as non-scratching pot scrubbers, particularly for those non-stick pans.
- Use as a bug gut scrubber the when washing a car.
- Mount on a stick and use as a back scratcher.
- Use as a filter medium in ponds and fish tanks.
- Use in arts and crafts projects.
- Use to texture painted walls.

The Persimmons Are In!

A small bucket of persimmons

We have a large persimmon tree in our front yard and I can tell it's Fall when the persimmons start falling off of it. This year looks as if it will be a bumper crop! Persimmons just taste like Fall to me and I look forward to all the great goodies we can make with them; persimmon pudding, persimmon bread, I may even try my hand at persimmon wine if we get enough. That might be good.

These are the native species of persimmon, not the big Asian varieties one can buy in the grocery store. They are small, seedy and kind of a pain in the butt to use because of all the large, black seeds they contain. After we gather the fruit, we rinse and dry them, remove the tops and then throw them in our food mill to make a persimmon pulp for use in our recipes later in the year. Most don't look very nice because they are very soft and get a little mangled after falling from 20-30 feet to the ground. I grind them up anyway so it doesn't really matter what they look like.

We used to take the time to pick the seeds out of the food mill and get as much of the pulp as possible, but this year I have decided it is not worth the effort for the little bit of extra pulp we gain. I am just running the persimmons through the mill once with a big screen and discarding what doesn't go though the holes. I then run the pulp from that through a smaller screen to make it just a bit more fine. A medium Tupperware bowlful of persimmons will make enough pulp for a double batch of persimmon pudding (about 2 cups)... Mmmm Mmmmm!

If you would like to learn a little more about persimmons, read this Clemson University Info Paper. Also, here is a great persimmon pudding recipe to try from food.com:

1 cup very ripe hachiya persimmon pulp (Editor's note: Of course you can use the wild species as well)
3/4 cup sugar
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup milk
1/4 lb butter or 1/4 lb margarine, melted
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Directions:

Combine persimmon pulp with sugar.
Beat in eggs. Mix in milk, then butter.
Sift or stir flour with baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg.
Mix with persimmon mixture.
Pour batter into a well greased 9-inch square cake pan.
Bake in a 315-325°F oven for approx 60 minutes or until knife comes out clean.

Do you have a favorite use for persimmons? Leave a comment.

Aquaponics Update

Just a quick update on the aquaponics experiment....

So far, the goldfish are doing well. I've not found any floaters and they are self-sustaining, subsisting on the algae growing in the tank (of which there is PLENTY). 

The lettuce is doing well. In fact, it is taking over. It is crisp and tasty and makes a great salad. The tomatoes are OK.  I have some sort of fungus developing on them. I think we also have spider mites as well. I'm not sure what to do about that. The pepper plants have been crowded out and are not doing much. I many have to move them around.

The arugula did not do well. Apparently, it does not like to be wet all the time. It bolted quickly then died.

I have recently planted some luffa gord plants in the grow bed with the intent of letting the vine grow and cover the water tank. If it works, then hopefully the plants will shade the tank from the intense SC summer sun.

Happy Earth Day!

Today is Earth Day! Take a little time to do something good for this wonderful, beautiful planet that supports and sustains us!

- Plant a tree
- Plant a garden
- Ride a bike
- Walk
- Drive less
- Reduce, Reuse and/or Recycle
- Compost
- Start a worm bin
- Find a way to reduce your energy consumption
- Sit outside and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine
- Think of ways to incorporate some of these things into your day, every day

Happy Earth Day, but lets not limit it to once a year!

Aquaponics Experiment Up and Running

40 goldfish all named Dave

After a long time deliberating and trying to find a good source of fish, I finally settled on getting goldfish for the aquaponics experiment (see related posts here and here). They were easy to locate, produce lots of waste and are pretty hard to kill. We've had some goldfish in out animal water tanks (helping to keep them algae-free) for almost a year now. They seem to thrive on neglect.

So, on Sunday, I bought 40 little goldfish and introduced them to their new home. I then planted four tomato plants, three arugula plants, three romaine lettuce plants in the planting bed. I also pulled a bunch of lettuce out of our winter garden to see if it could make the transition.

Three days into the operation with no goldfish floaters and the plants seem to be doing well. I will monitor the water temperature over the summer and see if I will be able to keep it at a suitable temperature for tilapia, or something similar. If so, we will eventually transition over to a more useful fish.

So far, so good. Everything seems to be doing well. Lettuce from our garden is in the foreground and right. Romaine is to the left, arugula to the rear, tomatoes in the middle.

Fall Leaves

My mother had 22 bags of  leaves from last fall sitting at the end of her driveway so I brought them home. There are lots of things you can do with old leaves. They can be composted, turned in to leaf mold, or used as bedding in the chicken run.

Today I put ten bags of leaves in the chicken run. The chickens LOVED it! Apparently, there were some tasty morsels nestled in the leaves because the chickens were scratching and pecking all afternoon long.

Eventually, these leaves will disappear as they are ripped to shreds and eventually buried in chicken poop. We will keep adding leaves until they are all gone. Later in the summer, we will clean out the run and spread the litter as fertilizer in the garden. It will be well-seasoned and high in nitrogen. 

IBC Aquaponics

I finally finished building the aquaponics experiment I wrote about earlier in the year. This week I got it filled with water and have the pump going to cycle the water. All that's needed now is a source of fish so I can stock the thing.

Here's a list of what I needed to build this system, cost and sources.

IBC Container - Craigslist.org - $75. (Delivered)

Two each 2"x4"x10 - Lowe's - $7.

1" PVC pipe and misc fittings - Lowe's - $23.

4x65# bags Sunleaves Rocks Growing Medium (.5-1.5" diameter) - The Urban Garden - $97.50

EcoPlus Submersible Pump ECO1056 and 1" flex tube - The Urban Garden - $82.75

All totaled, I've spent about $280. on my experiment. That's not especially cheap, but not too expensive, either. I'm not sure how much fish will cost me yet but as soon as I find a good source I will update this post or add another.

Grape Pruning Time

February is grape vine pruning time, or so I've heard. I don't think the grapes on our trellis have ever been pruned and the trellis is a little worse for wear as the posts rot from the top down and the cross beams are dry rotting as well.

Back in early January, I got motivated to cut out all the wisteria vines that had wrapped themselves around the trellis and interwoven themselves among the grape vines. That was quite a chore. Once I chopped out all the vine pieces, I shredded them in the chipper and mixed them with a pile of horse manure to do a little bit of composting. Later in the spring, I will spread the piles out on the pasture.

This week, I pruned back the grape vines in accordance with the guidance I found in the Ison's Nursery and Vineyard website here. They provide a variety of guidance on how to care for grape vines, fruit tress and more. I also ordered my strawberry plugs from them and was very pleased with the plants I got.

Anyway, here are the before and after shots. Hopefully I didn't cut they back too much. I am looking forward to a good grape harvest this year!

Here's what the trellis and vines looked like before I pruned them. This fall, there was more wisteria than grape vine.

Here's how it looks now. I replaced a few cross boards and straightened the trellis. That big pile in the middle is grape vine trimmings.

The New Garden Update

The garden is slowly taking shape!

I added four cubic yards of mushroom compost from Allen's Market this week and mixed it in with the tiller. Then, planted two rows of potatoes (both white and red), a row and half of onions (white, yellow and red) and seven cabbage plants. We're not too fond of cabbage in our family, but we are going to try it again. Maybe it tastes better when you've grown it yourself. I sure can't wait for things to start growing!

The folks at Allen's were very helpful when it came to offering advice on planting the potato and onion sets I bought from them. As I've said before, I'm pretty inexperienced in this gardening stuff. They also have some very reasonable prices on started plants. You get a three pack of plants for $1.00 - not too bad.

As for our sustainability score, I think we get an A+ for expanding out garden area. This new garden will really expand our ability to grow our own food. We probably get a D for the addition of the mushroom compost, though. While the compost will definitely improve our growing capacity, I later learned that it was shipped from mushroom farms all the way up in Pennsylvania. That's a long way to transport compost and I'm sure required a fairly significant quantity of fuel to get it here (and all the other places it was shipped). In the future, I will have to find a more local source of compost.

Prepping a New Garden

We broke ground on a new garden this week. After all, it is the season to start planing! This brings us to two garden plots now. We started one beside the house the first summer we were here.

This particular garden is going to be a challenge. It's a 35' x 30' plot on a little bit of a slope. The area where we placed it used to be grass (kind of), and I've spent hours trying to rake out all the grass roots but they seem to keep popping up. I know I will be pulling grass out of the garden all summer long! Being on a hill, I sure hope the dirt doesn't all run out of the bottom side in a big rain storm.

I will be adding some mushroom compost to it soon because it is nothing but hard, red clay with a few rocks here and there. It definitely needs some organic material in it. It probably also needs a little lime added. We have some pretty acidic soil here.

We are going to plant some potatoes and onions in the near future. I think that's all we can plant at this time. It's not quite warm enough for anything else.

More to follow...

Aquaponics

I have made my New Year's resolution! I have decided to try my hand at aquaponics. For those of you who don't know what aquaponics is, it is a merging of hydroponic gardening and aquaculture (raising fish). The fish create nitrogenous waste that the plants use as fertilizer and the plants clean the water for the fish. Plants are grown in a growing media and there is no dirt used.

I am getting my inspiration from the IBCofAquaponics website. This website has some very detailed info and you can download a great PDF from their site here or on their website. The PDF shows some options on how various people set up their aquaponics systems. There are so many ways to do this! I am only limited by my imagination...

I have found a guy who is selling IBC containers nearby. He is willing to deliver and he says that the container previously held a food grade glue similar to Elmer's Glue. He wants $75. for each. He also sells 55 gal plastic drums. I may get a few of these as well for use as rain barrels or something.

More to follow....

Strawberries

This is way too good to be something I built!

I have been wanting to plant strawberries for a while. I LOVE fresh strawberries - not including the very tasteless and sour ones you buy at the grocery store. While searching for a place to buy strawberry plugs, I saw this really cool planting tower here at this link. This seemed like a great way to plant 50 or so plants and save some space.

I thought to myself, "I can make that! It's only a strawberry tower... how hard can it be?" You'll see that "how hard can it be?" question asked often around the Red Clay Farm. Usually, I find out it's a little harder than I expected.

So I just bought a bunch of wood, garden soil and screws and I am ready to start creating.  I'll keep you informed on my progress (and how hard it really was).

Our First Compost

This is not our compost but looks very similar

Almost a year after I made our big compost corral, we finally got some good compost from it. I dug out about a cubic yard of deep, dark compost and put it in our garden today.

It was a mix of manure from our horses, our kitchen scraps and a whole bunch of bad fruits and veggies from our local grocery store (Last fall I made a deal to make a daily pick-up of the store's bad produce for about a month). The result was a deep dark compost that looked like black dirt. It had hundreds of volunteer worms in it and a few very juicy grubs. I picked all the grubs I saw out of the compost and let the worms make the short trip to the garden where I hope they'll stay.

We got enough compost out of the bin to put a 3" layer across a 4'x12' area. I didn't mix it in to the dirt, but just left in sitting on top, and planted our fall lettuce/spinach crop right in the compost.  As I think about it, that may not have been a good call. I probably should have mixed the compost into the soil a little, but now the seeds are down and I hate to waste them. We'll see what happens...