Hello once again, I'm back after a long hiatus. I moved to the Seattle area and now have a busy schedule in life I font have a large system running any more but now I have focused on micro systems with 2.5 and 5 gallon tanks and tupper wear grow beds, these are great for growing herbs and small tomatoes (tiny tims) in the kitchen.



Want a quick afternoon project that’s both fun and productive? Little indoor gardens typically use stuff you probably already have lying around, like a old plastic food container and a small fish tank. throw in some silicon hose, a small pump and some gravel or other grow media and you've got your self a system and it’s a fantastic, green way to make sure you always have fresh herbs or salad greens around for cooking. and a slightly nerdy conversation starter.

There are many systems on the market that are turn key. This is a creation from an Australian company Aquaponicals in Brisbane. They make small and decorative aquaponic systems for home, classroom and office space.

Kijani Grows is another startup in aquaponics a system by Eric Mandu. He tries to create a smart garden by integrating his indoor garden with computers. His aquaponic garden with sensors makes it a  smart aquaponic system. This system contains linux computer controlled sensors to give sufficient water and lighting , which can be controlled by computers. Now this smart garden is available for purchase in Kijani Grows website.

All in all from big to small aquaponics is a way to bring fresh herbs ans vegetables to your cooking and is also a fun conversation piece when entertaining and the fish are calming to watch so there is a therapeutic benefit as well..

for an interesting in kitchen home aquaponics system check out this link : tank-to-table-start-up-bets-on-fish-poop-to-grow-dinner

Time Lapse

Well its been a month and things have been hectic around the house with all my kids getting out of school and getting into a new summer routine, plus I acquired a room in our local library and gave a aquaponics presentation to get more people aware and involved, however the the presentation was not a success because only one person out side my family showed up. so it was an intimate conversation instead of larger crowd.

the seedlings I started last month are doing phenomenal the onions and chives don't grow well in rapid rooter plugs but the peppers are really big at the about 6 week mark.

I also set up an old i-phone to do some time lapse filming I set it up on a tripod with an old selfie stick cell phone camera mount it was set to take a picture every 15 mins and while the okra was progressing well the real star of the show was the Tiny Tim tomatoes.

My bells are finally turning red that means they are almost ready for harvest, I love sweet bell peppers .

The fish are as voracious as ever feeding 3 times a day on most days they frenzy when I feed them

thats all for now see you soon

3 weeks and the peppers are weighing in

Just a 3 week photo update the onions and the peppers took off as expected but the chives were a total non starter. and my garden is growing well put up some netting for the cantaloupe and the zucchini is growing very well, the peppers are fruiting nicely  I dispatched my flowering broccoli and transplanted some Tiny Tim Tomato's that have been taking a backseat to the herb garden, more to come in the following weeks.

 Just a update here is one of the Yellow Marconi peppers. Its been just three weeks since I planted the seeds to germinate and it now has it's third set of leaves starting, it wont be long before this pepper is maturing to a vigorous pepper making machine.

From Seed to Harvest 

Step one: taking the mystery out of seed starting

Starting your garden plants from seeds can be difficult if you don't use the right method, in this series I will follow the life of a seedling from seed to mature plant. I will use three different types of plants to show how it works best and outline what pitfalls to avoid. the seeds I've chosen were a selection my wife and I found at a local grocery store, these were advertised as all organic USDA approved seed making the choice easier was the fact that these seeds were only 99 cents, so three bucks and change and we were off to the races.

here are the seeds we picked.

Germination

Now some folks might argue this but starting seeds can be a chore, especially if you use the plastic bag method where you take a paper towel and place the seeds inside a fold and add water then place the seeds in a warm place and check daily for signs of sprouts. while this method works I find that taking the seeds out of the paper towel after they have sprouted and placing them in grow plugs, or rockwool cubes which are made of molten rock spun into cotton candy-like fibers and then compressed into cubes,then waiting for the seedling to develop tends to create a weaker seedling in my experience. Letting the seeds germinate and sprout in a grow plug or rockwool cube from the start seems to make a more healthy seedling.

You can start seeds in almost any type of container, as long as it's at least 2-3 " deep and has some drainage holes. If you are the DIY type, you might want to grow seedlings in yogurt cups, milk cartons or paper cups. I prefer the convenience of trays that are made especially for seed starting. It's easy to drop plugs into the trays, the watering system ensures consistent moisture and I can move them easily.I prefer to use grow plugs which are made up from organic substrates, micro nutrients and biological properties and have unique drainage properties to increase the success of seedlings. You can avoid plant disease by using a clean grow tray washed with warm soapy water (I run mine in the top rack of the dishwasher). and by providing good air circulation by using a fan.

After placing the seeds in the grow plug and watering them I add about 1 red solo cup of fish tank water from my main aquaponics system to boost seedling development, after the sprouts are up you can also feed them with a weak solution of fertilizer but in the interest of keeping it all totally organic I just use the water from the fish tank and that seems to work well. keeping the seeds under a plastic dome or even just stretching plastic wrap over your seedling tray keeps the plugs moist which is key for germination.


Some seeds are resistant to moisture so they can take longer to germinate but I find that with bigger seed like pumpkin or even watermelon or cantaloupe I use seed scarification, which is a method of sanding, or clipping off part of the seed's shell so water can get to the inside part to speed up germination. An interesting guide for this method can be found here .

here are the seeded grow plugs tucked in for some germination.

Heat and Light! Light! Light!

I also use a heat mat under my grow tray which warms the root area 10-20 degrees Fahrenheit over the ambient room temperature and also simulates warm spring days that heat the soil. This is a must have because if the seeds are moist but not warm they can mold or grow fungus and that will kill most seeds. You can buy a seedling heat mat from amazon for around 20 bucks and they are a solid investment, but I am a cheapo and so I use a old heat pad for your back, but it has 3 settings and the middle and the top two are too hot so I added a simple digital thermometer so I can monitor the heat the mat is producing I usually run it at about 105 degrees this might be a bit on the high side but I have had good success with this system so I'm sticking to it.

The next important thing is LIGHT! yes I said that loudly light is most important in seedling development, if you use a light that's too weak the seedlings will be tall and spindly and more prone to falling over when developing multiple leaves. use a strong light or a south facing window that gets plenty of sunlight also you can run a timer on the light an set it for about 14 to 16 hours of light, I also hook up the heat pad and a fan for circulation, so that I can closely mimic springs pattern of heating up and cooling off with sunrise and sunset. Keep in mind that seedlings need darkness, too, so they can rest.

It's not a good idea to move your seedlings directly from the protected environment of your home into the garden, indoor or outside. So I've been coddling these seedlings for weeks, so they need a gradual transition to their new environment. This is a process called hardening off. About a week before I plan to set the seedlings into my garden, I place them in a protected spot outdoors (partly shaded, out of the wind) for a few hours, bringing them in at night. Gradually, over the course of a week or 10 days, I expose them to more and more sunshine and wind. Then I transplant them into the garden either outside in a container or into the aquaponics systems that I have running.

Label your tray

I have found that labeling is a great way to avoid confusion, most seeds don't look very different form each other when they are first starting out so I label my trays when I start the seeds that way I can keep track of them easier. My wife likes to cut milk cartons down into plastic stakes then we mark them with a sharpie, you can get ready made stakes on amazon but I am working on a budget so the less I have to shell out for my projects the better it is for me, and the less flak I get when I have to buy a expensive part

So watch for more on this blog as the seedlings sprout and grow.

People who live in Latin America, India, Africa or Asia, rarely eat a meal that doesn’t include Peppers. In fact, some folks travel with their own supply of homemade, signature hot sauce! Peppers’ fruity flavors, rainbow colors and spicy heat turn up the volume and ardent love of many foods. Every cuisine has its preferred variety and special impassioned way with them. Growing some of these unusual and often hard-to-find Peppers can open up a whole new world of unbridled culinary adventure. Peppers are easy to grow and harvest, and so easy to use fresh, frozen, dried or canned, for dishes that warm body and soul all year long.


Turn Up the Heat
Peppers have been cultivated as a food crop for more than 6,000 years, yet were virtually unknown outside of Central and South America. It was Christopher Columbus who brought Peppers to Spain in the late 1400s: within 100 years, they were incorporated into cuisines all over the world. The old adage “you can’t tell a book by its cover’ definitely applies to Chile Peppers. Some of the hottest Peppers on earth are cute little red guys no bigger than your thumb. But, man alive, can they inflict bodily damage and emotional scars. Thankfully,  Wilbur Scoville invented a way to rate the piquancy of a Chile Pepper so you can assess the risk, or for avowed Chileheads~the thrill, before you venture a bite.

Born in Bridgeport Connecticut on January 22nd, 1865, Wilbur Lincoln Scoville was a chemist, award-winning researcher, professor of pharmacology and the second vice-chairman of the American Pharmaceutical Association. His book, The Art of Compounding, makes one of the earliest mentions of milk as an antidote for pepper heat. He is perhaps best remembered for his organoleptic test, which uses human testers to measure pungency in peppers.

The Scoville Scale measures the amount of capsaicin in a Pepper, which is the chemical compound that makes our skin tingle delightfully, break out in a worrisome rash, or burn with a sense of panic.


The test uses sugar to neutralize the heat; the more sugar that’s added, the higher the Scoville units and the hotter the pepper.

Some Like It Not So Hot
The hottest parts of a Chile Pepper are the seeds and the white membranes inside the fruit. To reduce the heat, just remove some or all of these parts. Roasting is another good way to calm the heat, as it converts some of the natural sugars into palatable sweet goodness. Place Peppers on a hot gas or charcoal grill, rotating them with tongs until all sides are charred, blistered and really black. Pile them into a paper bag on a sturdy tray so they steam each others’ skins off. Once they are cool enough to handle, put on some rubber gloves to protect your hands. Peel off the skins, remove the stems and slice into long pieces, scraping away the seeds. Use immediately or slip your prepared Peppers into zip-top plastic bags to savor as needed for sandwiches, sauces, stews and casseroles.

Have you ever put a bit too much Chile heat in a recipe? Don’t despair. You can disperse the capsaicin oil with another fat in the form of cheese, sour cream or butter, or use Scoville’s technique: add a little sugar to neutralize some of the heat. Start with a teaspoon and add more, tasting in between to make sure you’re not over-sweetening the dish. In fact, if you love the rich complex flavor of Chile Peppers but can’t take the heat, use some of your harvest to make your own sweet Asian Chile sauce~good on everything from spring rolls to turkey sandwiches, it’s an easy combination of chopped seeded Peppers, sugar, a little white vinegar and cornstarch, heated until thickened.

Peppers Are Easy To Grow From Seed
As you might imagine from their Mexican roots, Peppers perform best in hot, sunny, relatively dry conditions. Because Peppers take 75 to 80 days to mature, Chile Pepper seed is best started indoors under lights or in a greenhouse. Sow the seed in moist seed starting mix, about eight weeks before your spring Frost-Free Date. The warmth of a seed starting mat (up to 85 degrees F) will help speed germination. Once the seeds have sprouted (they can take up to two weeks, they’re a little pokey), give them 12 to 15 hours of bright light each day, very small drinks (do not overwater) and good ventilation. After they have two sets of true leaves, transplant the strongest seedlings into 4-inch pots and feed them weekly with a diluted liquid fertilizer.

Before transplanting your little Chile Pepper seedlings into the garden, harden them off by putting them outdoors in a sheltered location for a few hours each day and bringing them in at night. Do this for a week to 10 days, gradually lengthening the time outdoors. This will help them to avoid transplant shock and to thrive. No matter how warm you think it may be, hold off transplanting until after your spring Frost-Free Date and night time temperatures are reliably above 55 degrees F.

Peppers~especially Chile Peppers~need all-day sun and warmth. Plant the seedlings in fertile, well-draining soil, to which you have added compost, well-rotted manure and/or slow-release organic fertilizer. Pepper plants like to grow relatively close together. Space the seedlings so that by mid-summer, the leaves of neighboring plants will be touching each other, about 18 inches apart.Water moderately after planting and apply a 2” layer of mulch to help conserve moisture later on. Harvest carefully with a sharp knife: they don’t pluck off as easily as Tomatoes and you don’t want to rough up the plant.

Too Many Chile Peppers?
In native cultures, the traditional way to preserve Chile Peppers was air-drying. But Peppers of all kinds are also a snap to freeze. No need to blanche. Just cut the fruits open, remove their seeds and membranes (wear gloves to protect your hands from the capsaicin oil), slice or chop them and put them into zip-top bags. Use them as needed, right out of the bag. They thaw in minutes.

Cool new LED lights!

Hey I ordered come fancy led lighting from a manufacturer in china and these are them check out the groovy color man!!

 Cant wait to plant this grow bed and see how well they perform the spectrum on these is designed to produce the biggest fruit on my plants so we will see I am going to plant some cantaloupe here as well as some strawberry's  more to come thanks for stopping buy and as always feel free to comment below.

System is up and running all systems are going well...

Here is a brief photo update from my last post, all systems are going well and growing well too I got strawberry's and red lettuce butter crunch lettuce and peppers as well as some cucumbers and cantaloupe I haven put up the netting yet but I will soon as the  vineing plants get big enough
Now for pictures.

  I also installed a finex 800 watt titanium heater in the big tank to keep the tilapia happy this heater keeps the water at a balmy 80 degrees

New System almost up and running.

Well I have made some progress on the new system, I located and resourced some lumber from a local sign company that throws out the shipping crates they get from Phoenix so after what seemed like an eternity of nails, screws and staples removed I came up with some nice used lumber for my project. some 2x4s and some 1x4s helped make up the frame work of the stands I am using to support the grow beds.

After building out the grow bed supports next came water and plumbing tests, I soon realized that 3/4 PVC wasn't going to be exactly what I wanted so a trip to Lowes and some plumbing magic later and I was back to it , I had bought a Fimco, Manufacturing index valve from my friend Vlad Jovanovic over at Atria Aquagardens and after setting it up I noticed that the valve wasn't indexing at all water would pour out of both zones at the same time, so I referenced Fimco's web site and eventually called Vlad on the phone , come to find out that my Pump was vastly undersized so I sourced a new pump with a capacity to pump 2700gph instead of 620gph, this solved the problem and I was back in business.

I also Bought some new grow media form a local shop in Prescott,AZ called AB Hydroponics they sell all the typical Hydro stuff but also have some Aquaponics going on there too. the media I bought is called Grow stones they are a pumice like stone made form recycled glass not too far away in Albuquerque, New Mexico. the price was right so I bought 4 and a half cubic feet or 126 liters just enough to fill one of my grow beds they are light weight and low dust so they are better than hydroton clay pebbles a 42 liter bag only weighs about 16 lbs.

More on this project as it develops.

Update on new system : Progress!

I have been working on my new system in my garage since I have over half the garage to use I thought I would build a modular system, starting with 2 media based grow beds the initial build out is going well here are some pics of my progress.

More on this build coming an a few days.

Why is Aquaponics Good for us?

Lets look at the ways our current system of food production is detrimental to a sustainable lifestyle. Farm and ranch lands cover nearly 40 percent of Earth’s land area, while aquaponic techniques can’t quite address this statistic they can certainly mitigate the impact. Because aquaponics like hydroponics is a soil-less growing technique, plants and fish can be grown anywhere, including on land that is considered infertile, like too sandy or to rocky, or too toxic like the aftermath of the Tsunami in Japan, and even in old warehouse buildings and unused parking lots in the inner cities of America and Europe

The current agricultural model consumes nearly three quarters of the earth’s available water, but because aquaponics is a recirculating system, the only water “lost” is either held in the plants, transpires through their leaves, or evaporates from the top of the fish tank. Aquaponics is generally thought to use less than a tenth of the water of traditional agriculture for the same crop output.

Agricultural activities such as clearing land, growing rice, raising cattle, overusing fertilizers, and spraying pathogens and herbicides make up 35 percent of the single largest contributor of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The Gmo conundrum is also a big risk to our health as these crops have been engineered for resistance to these pathogens and herbicides, which are known to cause cancer and other horrible consequences, none of these practices have any place in aquaponic growing whatsoever.

 In the search for better management techniques in modern agriculture, many parts of Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe have substantial yield gaps, where farmland is not living up to its potential for producing crops. Closing these gaps through improved use of existing crop varieties, better farm management and improved plant genetics could increase current food production nearly 60 percent.

Because of the consistent and often ideal mix of water, oxygen and fertilizer that an aquaponics system provides, plants grow significantly faster in an aquaponics system than they will in soil. In addition, plants can be placed closer together in aquaponics systems because they are not competing for those resources in their root zone. 

About 40% of all crops produced on earth are used to feed its edible animals, Fish are the single most efficient converter of feed to flesh of any edible animal. One and a half pounds of feed will bring to harvest, one pound of edible, omnivorous fish fillets. It takes eight pounds of feed to produce the same single pound of beef fillets.

Between oil-based fertilizers, oil-fueled farming machinery, and long distances between farm and table, modern food is saturated with oil. Aquaponic systems on the other hand, have no oil-based inputs and are run entirely on a small amount of electricity. This electricity can be created through currently available sustainable energy methods such as Solar and Wind power generation. 

In keeping with the standards of sustainability aquaponics can and does reduce waste. One-third of the food farms produce ends up discarded, spoiled or eaten by pests. Eliminating waste in the path from farm to mouth could boost food available for consumption another 50 percent.”

Because aquaponics systems are raised off the ground they tend to have fewer pest issues than traditional agriculture. And because aquaponic farms can be set up anywhere, producing food directly within densely populated communities can be implemented right now, with no new technologies needed. The path from farm to table can be made as short as down the block or even from back yard to table. 

Aquaponics is pioneering ways to localize food production and to cut out the waste inherent in the long paths we now have from farm to market to home – paths that could be reduced to nearly zero with widespread aquaponics implementation. While aquaponics is not the answer to all of our future food supply and environmental issues. Grains and root crops, for example, will probably always be most efficiently grown in the soil. But for above ground, vegetative crops and fish protein, there quite simply isn’t a better growing technique on, and for, the earth.