Also, you might notice the new lettuce variety front and center there. I bought some butter crunch lettuce from Costco that was hydroponically grown. When I got to the end of it, I left a few leaves and thought I'd see if it would re-grow roots and grow a new head of lettuce for me. It's looking pretty good and it's been in there for two days now.
The pea shoot in the aquaponics bed is beyond leggy, which matches the pathetic lettuce plant. Only after the fact have I finally gotten around to actually switching the lights around. The aquaponic tank now has the good grow light. It looks wonderful and produces more heat to keep the area warm (it's in the basement and it can be a little chilly in the winter). The entire set up, including turtle tank, turtle light, aquaponic bed, and grow light... I'm pretty impressed that I could create something like this (with a lot of help from Tony of course). Aside from a little algae growth, the turtle tank has pretty clean water (considering Minnow is a very messy turtle). I haven't had to siphon the tank at all since we installed the aquaponic bed. I'm not sure if it's too late for the pea plant. If it is, I think next I will try a decidedly smaller version (Tom Thumb Pea). I still figure I have space for up to three more plants. I'm considering trying a Tiny Tim tomato, but I've had no luck in previous years trying to pollinate tomatoes indoors (without natural insect pollinators). Tony suggested trying Rosemary, but I've had no luck at all with that. I've tried it in a seed starting mix under lights, I've tried winter sowing it, but have yet to get any rosemary plants out of the attempts. Maybe I'll try more lettuce varieties, or perhaps some spinach. Suggestions are welcome!
Also, you might notice the new lettuce variety front and center there. I bought some butter crunch lettuce from Costco that was hydroponically grown. When I got to the end of it, I left a few leaves and thought I'd see if it would re-grow roots and grow a new head of lettuce for me. It's looking pretty good and it's been in there for two days now. The aquaponic bed now has two basil sprouts, a pea sprout, and two lettuce plants. Unfortunately one of the lettuce plants is not doing well, so I will be pulling it out and giving it to the turtle to make space for something that might grow better. I tried a new recipe today, chicken tacos in the crock pot. Well, technically just part of the filling for the tacos was made in the crock pot. Here's the recipe: 4 bell peppers, sliced up 1 onion, sliced 3 pounds of skinless chicken breasts Taco seasoning 1 lime, cut in half 2 cans diced tomatoes (drained) Put half of your bell peppers in the bottom of the crock pot. Add half of the onion. Place your chicken breasts into the crock pot. Sprinkle taco seasoning over the chicken. Flip the breasts over, and coat the other side with taco seasoning. Squeeze half of the lime over the seasoned chicken. Add in the diced tomatoes, then the other half of the bell peppers, followed by the other half of the onion. Squeeze the second half of the lime over the entire thing. Cover and cook on High for 3 hours. After three hours, take the chicken out, cut it up or shred it. Place it back into the crock pot, stir it up to mix, and cook on High for 10 more minutes. Serve with your choice of taco shells and toppings. I offered mine with tortilla shells, shredded cheese, shredded lettuce, sour cream, and salsa. While I enjoyed a conventional taco, #3 decided she'd prefer to mix hers to make a taco salad. It's not often that all of the kids agree on dinner, but they all agreed that they liked this recipe. There was little dinner table discussion because everyone was too busy eating. Clean up wasn't bad either. I put Penelope and Bennett together today too. They didn't seem interested in doing anything, so I left them alone for about 45 minutes. This will be our first attempt at breeding the rabbits in the winter. Since Penelope is an experienced mom, and she has a fully enclosed shelter (stuffed full of hay), I think she stands a good chance of successfully raising a litter, despite the inclement weather. If Bennett did what he was supposed to, we should have bunnies around Valentine's Day.
Today I found one little basil sprout sticking up from the rocks in the far corner of the aquaponic bed. Yay! Success! It came from a "mix" seed packet, so no idea what variety of basil it is, but it's cool that it sprouted. A couple of days ago I also added in a Dwarf Grey Sugar Pea, but I'm not sure if peas will sprout being so wet, or if it'll just rot. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.
I've been getting more seeds this month and have been tempted to add more to the aquaponic bed, but I want to give each addition some time to see if it will sprout. I'm already thinking about getting a second bed set up on the natural fish tank next to the turtle tank. I don't want to get too much into it though with a move coming up. I'm worried that I'm going to have to grow completely in containers this year so we can move if need-be. So far we've had little success meeting with a realtor or talking to a financial person. As of right now, I have no idea on a timeline for moving yet. With Tony's new schedule being all kinds of crazy over the holidays, we're just starting to see a more "normal" work schedule this week. He's actually going to get one day per week and every other weekend off. That's good! He's currently working 50+ hours per week. Tony took the pump apart and cleaned it out. It had some yuck in it that was causing the problem with it slowing down. Since he cleaned it out and turned the power up a little on it, the aquaponics tank is up and running smoothly. It's currently taking just under four minutes to complete a cycle (2 minutes, 57 seconds to fill, and 55 seconds to drain). The two lettuce plants lost a few leaves in the transition but are perking up nicely now. Today I added three basil seeds to the back right corner. I'm not sure if they will be able to find a balance between having enough water to sprout and not being too far in the water to get swept away with the pull of the siphon. It's all a learning adventure, so we will wait and see what happens. I ordered paw-shaped silicone molds at the beginning of December because I wanted to try out a recipe for dog/cat treats that is said to work better than commercially available flea and tick prevention, with two ingredients only. We shall see! The molds finally arrived at the end of December and now I'm just waiting to have some extra money to go buy the two ingredients. When I get to that project I will post more in the blog.
As we ring in the new year, we look back fondly on 2015. Our first real garden, Tonys quick advancement up the ladder at work, and all the milestones that come along with raising a family. We look forward to 2016 and the big changes it will bring for us. A move, hopefully to a bigger home with more land. Tony working now as an assistant manager, which will require occasional weekend trips away from home. Finishing Aspie's training to become a full service dog. And endless possibilities and opportunities to learn, grow, explore, and experience new things. Happy new year. The Aquaponic tank still has some hiccups and requires a reboot about every 24 hours, but I suspect it's a pump malfunction. I will continue to work on it to improve water flow. I plan on adding some seeds soon. I took the two sad red lettuce plants out of the floating aquaponic tank and put them in the turtle aquaponic bed. Crock pot meal today was almost identical to yesterday except I used chicken breast instead of beef, no ginger, and added a "poultry blend" of fresh herbs (sage, thyme, and rosemary). I thought it was very good, but the kids were not impressed at all. I ordered some new seeds a few days ago. I found a site that offers "sample" packets for 40-cents each. There are some varieties I have been wanting to try. I am expecting the following soon:
Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis) Asparagus (Asperges D' Argenteuil) Beet, Crosby Egyptian Beet, White Brussels Sprouts, Long Island Improved Cauliflower, Violet Kohlrabi, Purple Vienna Kohlrabi, White Vienna Melon, Sucrin de Tours Pumpkin, Jarrahdale Pumpkin, Rouge Vif d'Etempes Summer Squash, Cucuzzi Italian Climbing Zucchini, Ronde de Nice Winter Squash, Blue Hubbard Winter Squash, Baby Blue Hubbard My apologies for the delay on this, but at long last, here is my update on the aquaponics set up. I mentioned before that my model is based on the information I found on a YouTube video (check it out here). I decided to use a 4-inch stand pipe, but once we added all of the couplings and stuff, it ended up being about 5-inches tall (not including the screw part that fits through the bottom of the tub to attach the drain spout). The bell siphon is made of 2" PVC and is 6-inches tall with the cap on. The holes in the bottom are about 1/2 inch up from the bottom. We did end up making them larger after I took this photo. The media barrier is 4" PVC and we drilled holes randomly throughout the entire thing, even above where the water level would be, just in case. Below is a photo of the set up with just water running through it (no gravel). We used four 20" 2x4 boards under the aquaponic tank to help hold the weight of all the gravel. I did make some modifications. Originally the drain spout ended up under water when the tank was full (as the aquaponic bed was emptied). This caused issues with the bell siphon not breaking the seal and constantly just sucking up water from the "empty" point (1/2-inch). So I shortened the drain spout (it now sits about 2-inches above the water surface at the fullest point). After a few more issues with the water hose falling out of the bed, the water pump not wanting to cooperate, and the siphon occasionally sticking, I think we've got everything up and working properly. I added the pea gravel (rinsed first) yesterday, burying the end of the hose to keep it in place. It seems to be running well now. It has been taking just under ten minutes to complete a full fill/empty cycle. Now I just need to get a lamp above, and get some seeds planted. More updates to come. My thanks to Tony for doing most of the assembly and cutting for me.
Happy Christmas Eve to all. Tony got the promotion and will start as General Manager on Sunday. With the position comes a lot more work hours (not a bad thing).
Next week I will be making four dinners in the crock pot, so stay tuned for the results. Two will be chicken and two will be beef. The fridge is stocked with veggies waiting for me to chop them all up and bag them for the freezer. This will be a first for me. I've been thinking of doing prep and freeze crock pot dinners, but never got to it. The idea of course is that everything is already together in the bag, so all you have to do is select your meal/bag, toss it in the crock pot and turn it on. I'm still working on finishing the aquaponic set up. Hopefully I can get it done in the next couple of days. I just need to adjust the water level (again) and then finish rinsing gravel to put in. And get a light set up too. I picked up two new bunnies today. They're mixed breeds, about 8 weeks old, both does (girls). I've named the black one Pepper, but I'm still thinking of a name for the spotted girl. These bunnies came from the same lady we bought our two brown bunnies from last year. They may even be related. Just a quick blurb about the aquaponic set up - I am making slow progress. I've made a few modifications as I go, and will be posting about it hopefully soon.
I'm working a little behind schedule on the aquaponics system project. I spent way more time than I should have yesterday wandering the isles of Menards hunting for project materials. I also spent twice what I anticipated on things... yikes. I ended up bringing home three sizes of PVC pipe. Apparently you have to buy it in lengths and cut it down to size. I had hoped it would be more like lumber where you can just have them cut it to size. I now have 2 feet of 4" pipe (only need 6 inches), and 2 feet of 2 inch pipe (need 5 inches) and 5 feet of 3/4" pipe. Fortunately the piping isn't terribly expensive, and if this project works well, I can use the rest of the pipe to make a couple more to go on our fish tanks as well. I had picked out a $20 water pump that I had found on the Menards website, but it turns out the "10 in stock" was off by about ten... So the next cheapest was $35. The big extra expenses that I hadn't planned for were having to buy a pipe cutter, new saw blades for my Dremel, and we picked up some plumbing cement. I'm using the specs from this video for this project: EDITED: For whatever reason, it is not currently showing the video that I attempted to embed, so you can find the video HERE. The "grow bed" that I picked up is 20" x 26" x 6" deep, and I will be using pea gravel as a growing medium. I'd prefer the much promoted "hydroton" but nobody in this area seems to sell it, and I was trying to make this as low-cost as possible while remaining functional - which means not paying for shipping.
Tony works this weekend, so I won't be able to sit down and get this project set up until Monday. I'm hoping to get lots of photos of the process, and hopefully I can get it all set up, running, and planted in one day. A note - most aquaponics systems need to be running for at least 3-4 weeks before planting any seeds because you need to get a proper nitrogen cycle going in your fish tank. However, I'm using a well established tank that already has all of the good bacteria in there and ready to work for me. Of course the big question here being if using the turtle tank will work like all the videos and such showing fish tanks. We shall see. On the plus side, while I was wandering through the mostly-abandoned garden center at Menards, I came upon an organic soil called Pro-Mix Ultimate Organic Mix, $6.44 for 1 cubic foot. I do believe this is what I will be using this year for my winter sowing containers. The back suggests to add Vermiculite for slower-growing seeds, and since the containers will be sitting out all winter and spring, I plan to add that as well ($15 for a big bag). That will be my next big project, but probably not until January or February. This aquaponics tank, and Christmas will be taking up all of my time and attention this month. I'm hoping to pick up some supplies tomorrow to make another attempt at aquaponics - with a bit of a twist. Instead of using a fish tank, I want to use the turtle tank. I attempted aquaponics directly in the turtle tank earlier this year, but Minnow (our red eared slider) decided it should be her new basking platform and knocked all of the seeds and rocks to the bottom of the tank. This time I plan to buy a large bin that will fit on top of the aquarium, with the pump that will sit in the tank and push water up into the container above. The container will have holes in the bottom to let the water back down into the tank once it has run through the substrate (I will be using lava rocks). The idea being that the dirty water will be pumped up to the plants so the roots will take in the nutrients and the water that falls back into the tank will be cleaner. Of course she's still going to have her filter system running in the tank as well.
The container I'm looking at is 20x26 inches (6 inches deep), and I think I'd like to start with lettuce. If all goes well, I can try other things (spinach, kale, or maybe something else?) once the lettuce bolts. Minnow loves lettuce, so if any of it manages to grow over the edge and down into the tank, it's fair game for a treat. Since Minnow's tank is 48-inches across, this plant system will still allow her to bask under her light on one side, while the plants filter and grow on the other. I'm not 100% on how I'm going to deal with lighting. Minnow needs her basking light focused on her basking platform. I don't think it will be close enough to help the plants, but I may have an extra clamp lamp that I can rig up for this project. The other aquaponic attempt is doing alright. The lettuce is leggy, but still growing. I'm not entirely sure why it's leggy as the light is on a timer (12 hours on, 12 hours off) and is positioned 6-9 inches above the plants. In other news, the house I had my eye on is off the market (I assume sold yesterday). I'm a little disappointed, but I know something will come along. The right one will come along when the time is appropriate. It's just hard to wait. Despite not knowing where we will be come spring/summer, I have discussed with Tony and he has encouraged me to go ahead and plan on winter sowing again this year. We can grow most of the smaller stuff in buckets or containers, and the only thing that really truly has to be in the ground (because I don't have big enough buckets) would be the tomatoes. This year they didn't get into the ground until June (and still produced abundantly), so they should be alright to winter sow. Hopefully we can get moved and situated with enough time to still have a successful garden! Sorry, I missed my daily blog yesterday. The link to my RedBubble Shop is HERE, and I'd love if you could check it out! I'm still in the (continuous) process of adding more designs, both photographic images, and written words. A couple days ago, Mr. Cellophane died. He was the betta that lived in the natural 30-gallon tank. Today I found a new betta, I've named him Pompeii. I'm not sure if he's sick or just very uniquely colored. His eyes are white. We'll see how he does. He will be joining his new companions Spiderman (the pleco) and Cory (the cory cat). They produce the natural fertilizer for the aquaponic Tiny Tim tomato plant that I'm growing. The Mountain Mint is sprouting (sorry, no photo). I'm hoping to get some more dirt to put out a few more last minute Winter Sown containers. I still have plans for more tomatoes, peppers, and other stuff. I better get on it before it gets too warm!
Well, the lettuce raft was short lived. Minnow capsized it last night - all seeds are a complete loss. Guess I'll just have to keep transplanting rooted plants into her filter (replacing them as she eats them) to try to keep up with the algae.
I started with a black plastic container and two empty water bottles. The container was from Costco, it had stew (in a bag) in it. I drilled several holes in the bottom to let the water in. The water bottles, I removed the labels, but kept the lids on. I used hemp rope to tie the water bottles to the shorter sides of the container, and then connected those ropes in the other direction, in hopes of making it harder for the ropes and water bottles to slip off. I added a layer of lava rocks and set it afloat in the turtle tank. I added more rocks gradually as they were under water, until most of the rocks are sticking above the water surface. Because they are porous, the more surface area they are in contact with other rocks, the better the water can be transferred up to the top to give the new seeds a good start until they grow roots down into the water. I'm not sure if it will work or not. I planted the left side with Flame lettuce, and the right side with Green Star lettuce. I planted more seeds than I actually want to have plants growing, but that's largely because I've had issues with germination in my aquaponic experiments before. Besides, these plants will have to grow fast, or have the benefit of numbers to keep up with Minnow's voracious appetite. Does this count as a diet for her? She also has feeder goldfish that she can eat if she can catch (and yes, she can catch them when she's hungry enough), as well as getting ReptoMin turtle pellets. She's actually overweight right now, so I'm cutting back on her pellets.
Several days ago I put one of the Green Star lettuce plants (bare root) into the turtle filter. It lasted a few days before she found it, tasted it, and fell in love with it. She's now eaten most of it, and stays near the filter (opposite the side with the light where she usually hangs out).
So, I had an idea. I know - can you hear the creativity wheels turning in my head? Why not plant a little aquaponic lettuce bed right in the turtle tank? Nothing fancy, just a floating bed that she can nibble on when the lettuce gets big enough to drape over the edge. It would have to be made of materials that would not only float, but not be something she could bite off, swollow, or hurt herself on. It also needs to be high enough out of the water that she can't use it as a basking platform. I got a plastic container that came from Costco - lightweight and flimsy, and drilled lots of holes in the bottom to let the water in. I put an empty water bottle (lid on so it would stay afloat) on each of the shorter sides, and rigged it up with some hemp rope. It's not completely done yet. I still need to fill it with lava rock and plant some seeds, but tomorrow when I get it all put together and in the tank, I'll share a photo. I hope it works out, because it would not only take the nutrients away from the algae (which is having a growth spurt due to more goldfish in the tank than usual, creating more nitrates), it would also supply Minnow (the turtle) with fresh food. |
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