Hoophouse in October

Fall 
For us, Fall began on Friday. Though outside night time temps have dropped below freezing a couple times already, the rain began just 2 days ago. And this is how fall has affected the greenhouse. It's WET! Huge droplets of water tremble above our heads, splatting on us when they're too heavy to hang on. When it rains, it rains inside too; the drops shake off the inside of the plastic.

So we don't like this of course. We're trying to figure out a solution. A second layer of plastic, stretched just an inch above the existing layer, is our first plan. (Should have done it when it was dry!) The fans are already fanning - doesn't seem to change anything. Tomorrow I'll try wiping the insides with a big shammy on a stick, and wring it out outside. Jeff's installing the heater with fan, as I write. Somehow the boiler will be heating the greenhouse - hmmm, not sure how, a Jeff thing. We've been feeding wood to the boiler for awhile now, to keep the water around 70 degrees for the fish. We covered the fish tanks, hoping to eliminate some evaporation. 

The good thing about the rain - all our rain tanks are full again! When we had a water loss this summer we had to use city water and wait 3 days for it to de-gas because we had no rain water left. 

Thanks
Thanks to Angela for feeding the fish and the boiler when we're gone - seems we've been gone a lot this fall, with one thing and another - got to stop that! Angela had to use the tractor and go get wood, and shove it all in there, and break it up to fit, and get her hair all smokey - twice a day! All of you who plan to start your backyard systems - buy a solar heating unit - that's my female opinion! Or maybe one of those cute little pellet stoves they're selling for this purpose. 
But thanks to Angela and Alister the fish are fat and happy. Two weeks ago, Alister was giving a tour to an interested party. 
"And here are the fish, in these tanks here, oops tour is over." 
A pipe had blown, and the fish were gasping at the bottom of the tank. They were saved by the two of them running buckets of water back and forth from the sump.  The pipe blew at the sump, where it gets quite a jolt of pressure each time the pump comes on. Fixed now.
These are some tough fish, let me tell you!
And here is their first photo: 

Pretty terrible photo! Need an underwater camera! But you can see the variety of sizes. Weird how they grow at such different rates. We'll probably have to size and separate them at some point. 

We're feeling a little ignorant about fish-raising (aquatics). Jeff is working on going to a one day intensive seminar at the end of the month on raising fish, and also on greenhouse environmental management. 

Plants
About 2 or 3 weeks ago, everything started to really take off at a new speed. The tomatoes I almost threw out because I thought they must have blight,now have lots of new growth on them. Some of the tomatoes are maxing out the height of the greenhouse and more. The basil and lettuce, which were kind of stalled for awhile (temperatures too high??) have grown inches in days. 
I'm not sure why this is. The chemistry is about the same, except the nitrates are lower due to our most recent water loss. And I've only given the system one shot of maxicrop - right after the water loss. 

I'll leave all the heat lovers in while they're still loving it, but I also planted lots of cool weather plants today - broccoli, kale, cauliflower, lettuces, spinach, arugula.  So we'll see who does better as the weather gets colder.

Found a ton of aphids on the parsley, so I took it all out and fed it to the fish. Also the thyme had something on it - spider mites I think. Those I pulled out, shook all around in the fish tank to get the bugs off, and replanted. Trimmed all the herbs, stuck some of the trimmings in the gravel to grow more. This works really well in this system - I've put cuttings of all the herbs, and tomatoes, into the gravel and they grow like crazy. 

This would be prettier if I hadn't just picked all the ripe tomatoes. Making salsa tonight! New plantings at left.

Our own rainforest

Flashy Troutback and Red Sails lettuce

The basil bed

We've been seeing a business adviser as well - he's helping us figure out all the necessary steps to making money from aquaponics. He's nice - "very cutting edge, and he's proud to be part of it," he says. 

So consider this - you too can grow food all year round in your own backyard! With just one tank and 3 growbeds, you can feed a family of 5 all the veggies and protein they can eat. Watch "Food Inc" and think about it! Jeff and I would love to feed the world (sans pesticides and roundup and GMO's) by promoting urban farming to anyone who will listen. But if you can't garden, then "know your farmer." (Us) :)

Pests, Tomatoes, and Two Recipes!

My topics of the day don't really go together very well. Sorry.
We'll start with the bad news and end with the good. :)

Beware! The pretty white "butterflies" flitting about everywhere right about now, are the harbingers of brassicae disaster! They are cabbage butterflies, and they are searching out their fav places to lay their eggs - plants from the brassica family! Soon they will turn into little green caterpillars and eat your supper!

The other day I found their evil work in one of our growbeds. That pretty picture of mixed greens I posted previously, had a collard green in the mix. The leaves were riddled with holes. The watercress and arugula were affected as well. I pulled all the plants from the gravel, and was horrified by the millions of tiny green caterpillars I saw on the gravel surface! I wanted to reach for the BTK (Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki) so badly! But knew I could not! Though BTK is approved for caterpillar killing in organic gardening, I can't spray it into my growbed because of the fish.

Time to get creative. Jeff adjusted the drain so the bed filled totally with water. We left it that way for a day. Voila! All caterpillars drowned. Scared me though. Insect infestations in a greenhouse can take over everything. As soon as we have to close up the greenhouse for winter, I will watch closely and order beneficial insects, such as ladybugs and lacewings as necessary. I can also use, in moderation, a foliar spray made of molasses, water and dish soap. Insecticidal soaps and neem oil can be used if I am very careful not to get the spray into the bed itself and thus to the fish. Smaller plants can be pulled from the growbed and dunked upside down in the fish tank, where the fish will be happy to eat the bugs. I haven't needed to try this yet. Apparently the Aquaponic Source is selling a fish-safe insecticide - I think I will buy some just to have on hand.

There is also one tomato plant that looks like it might have late blight. Maybe it was too close to the water input and its leaves were splashed. I've never had a tomato with late blight before, so I will take some photos of late blight to the greenhouse tomorrow and see if I can identify it. Or if anyone lives nearby and recognizes late blight when they see it, I'd love your help!

Okay, now the good news. We're FINALLY getting enough ripe tomatoes at a time we can't eat them all. Some are from the dirt garden - I planted them in dirt when they grew too big waiting for the system to be ready. Yeah! After sharing them, I will make heirloom tomato sauce!! Here are some tomato pictures. Aren't tomatoes beautiful?

Orange Oxheart, Brandywine, Japanese Trifele (my fave) Sungold, and I forget the name of the round red one.

Lunch!

I bought some Romas at a stand, fearing I would never have enough tomatoes to can. They were $17.99 a box! I've paid anywhere from $8 - 12. before. Apparently there's a drought or a blight or something somewhere and tomatoes and potatoes are expensive this year. I tried roasting them instead of boiling them to get the skins off - suppose to be delicious. I like that you can just pick the skins off their backs.

 Hmmm, this turned out to be a picture of my countertop that happens to have canned tomatoes on it.

Fellow tomato lovers rejoice! I have found yet another way to love tomatoes! This is awesome:

BROWN BUTTER TOMATOES
Slice your amazing heirloom tomato onto a plate
Brown some butter (put butter in a pot, swirl now and then, let it get light brown, then pour into another container before it goes too dark)
Pour the delicious nuttiness of the browned butter over your tomatoes while it is still hot, thus sizzling into the juices of the tomatoes and creating something different than you've ever tasted before! Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Or just salt. Eat immediately. Wow! I tried this today for the first time and was wowed!

And I did promise you a watercress pesto recipe to put on top of your tilapia. The peppery lemoneyness would be lovely on any white fish, as well as on pasta or sandwiches etc. I think arugula would be a nice substitution for the watercress if that's what you  had.

WATERCRESS PESTO
4 cups watercress, leaves and smaller stems
2 garlic cloves
zest and juice of half a lemon
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 - 1/2 cup walnuts or pine nuts
1/4 - 1/2 cup grated parmesan, grated off a real block of parmesan
1/4 - 1/2 cup olive oil
In a food processor, pulse all except olive oil til chopped, Add oil in a stream til smooth and desired consistency.

The fish, by the way, are getting fat and sassy. Almost time to let them go into the big-boy world of the tank.
On that day, I will take a photo of them and post it for you to see.

Harvesting

This is how you spin honey:

Pick a lovely sunny day and do it on your deck. Why not?
I'll tell you why not, you will be swarmed by the very bees who gave you the honey, and they're all screaming, "What the *&$# is this? Give us back our honey! Okay we'll take it back ourselves then. Perhaps we'll take a pound of flesh too!"

Plan B is to scoop everything up, shake the bees off, and hand it all inside, quickly shutting the door after every item.

Cut the cap off, scrape the comb with a forky thing from Lowe's that's real purpose it to clean paintbrushes. Place in the spinner. Crank by hand, spinning the honey out into the giant tin can, and also, unknowingly,  spraying a fine spray of sticky honey all over everything in the room.

Pour into a bucket. Strain three times with graduated strainers to get the wax out.

Voila

Clean up the mess!! Melt wax and honey mixture from cappings in a double boiler, never reaching any higher temperature than 140 F. 137 is perfect. Pour this mixture in a straight-sided jar and lay a piece of cheesecloth on top. The wax will float to the top and you can neatly lift it off with the cheesecloth. Put this wax outside for the bees to clean up. Use the wax for candles, soaps, salves, lotions etc. Eat the honey!!

How to grow stuff:

How to pickle stuff:

How to ferment stuff:

Place desired veggies in a jar. These jars have green beans, carrots, yellow beet, cauliflower, garlic and onion, pepper flakes and italian seasoning, brine. Cover and let sit for 4 days, burping daily. Soon it will look cloudy. Then one day when you burp it, it will bubble all over the place. Taste it and see if you like it. Put in fridge, where it will continue to pickle. This is called Veggeroncini. Next I will try saurkraut. Next time I will also post a recipe for watercress pesto, which is delicious on TILAPIA! And we are growing a LOT of both!

First Tomato

TOMATOES and TILAPIA
Today, we sliced into our first tomato! Pretty late for a first greenhouse tomato, due to our June 26 planting date.  Said tomato - a big Brandywine heirloom. My selected tasters said it was great, but my critical judgement says "it is pretty good, despite having grown up on nitrates, worm tea and seaweed fertilizer."  Then  Alister put some Marmite and avocado on toast and topped it with the tomato slice! Crazy delicious! (It's the New Zealand way to eat a tomaawwto.:)

The Tilapia are only just a little over an inch long, and reduced in numbers (as per last post), so they have provided the tomatoes with minimal fertilizer thus far, and the ecosystem in the growbeds won't be fully developed til next spring. So to me, this tomato is a thing of beauty! Since the fish are not very photogenic yet, you only get a photo of the tomato:

BEES
We've begun to eat our honey! Great chunky spoonfuls of it, globbing it all over fresh peaches, wax and all, drizzling it on artisan bread toasts with goat cheese, toasted hazelnuts and chopped rosemary. Also, I admit, there's a frame of honey sitting on the counter and we just dig at it with spoons whenever we want!

There was a price to pay for stealing honey from those bees. Jeff was meddling in the bee hive without a suit again and a bee stung him IN the nose! Here is Jeff, looking ridiculous and alarming. If you have ever seen Jeff before, I think you will agree. 

GRANT

We seem to fit more than enough of the criteria for a grant from the USDA (urban farm, water conservation, alternate energy, new farming technique, etc) so we are looking into that. If that materializes, look for some big growth around here! :) 

young greens ready to harvest

cucumber sandwiches for lunch

Meanwhile, I need to go tie up some tomatoes and plant some brassiccae seeds for winter!

Fish and Misfortunes

300 FISH ARRIVE WEDNESDAY, JULY 18, at 9 am. We wondered how it would happen - this is how it happened. The post lady called and said she had a box of tropical fish and would we like to pick them up? If not, she would deliver them later in the day. So we immediately drove to the Post Office and brought our babies home. They were in a 14 x 12 x 10 ish box with colorful fishes painted all over it. Inside was a styrofoam ice chest. Inside that, was a thick plastic bag. Inside that, another thick plastic bag with about an inch of water in it, and 300 tiny fish, about 3/4 inch long.

And this is the story of the first days of the lives of our baby fish. 

The farmer sets the bag of fish in a big tank of water and checks pH and temperature of the fish water for compatability with the tank water. Thirty minutes later, the babies are swimming in their new home - a nylon mesh laundry hamper set in the big tank - happy as, well, baby fish! :)

The next day family from out of town arrive and niece Tessa gives the fish their first feeding. Such lucky little fishes there never were. UNTIL...

A thunderstorm settles over them for most of the night. The power goes out. Then it comes on again. But the timers are now out of sync, and too much water dumps into the tank where our fishies are hanging from the top bar in their laundry-basket home, safe from the big world of the tank. The water rises higher than the laundry basket and some very brave and foolish fish venture forth into the big tank, some of them never to be seen again, lost in the maze of pipes with holes big enough for tiny fish to enter. Others are recaptured by the  farmer when he comes to see them in the morning. .

So an unknown number of baby fishes are now swimming in the laundry basket. AND THEN, the farmer and his wife and guests go to Creationfest till very late into the night. When they return, the farmer goes to tuck in his new baby fishes and discovers their laundry basket home hanging in the air, their little bodies flapping in a shallow skim of water on the bottom. Acting quickly, the farmer cuts them loose, lowering their home down into the few inches of water at the bottom of the tank. He cuts the power to all the pumps. He puts two air stones in with the fish, then searches for the answer to his question, "WHERE HAS ALL THE WATER GONE?" He has only a flashlight on his forehead to search the greenhouse for the problem. There appears to be nothing wrong. 


So he goes home to wait until daylight, but he tells his sleeping wife, "our water is all gone," and she sleeps no longer! All that precious, nitrate filled water! Next morning, the farmer finds a mysterious creature in his sump pump, which is the pump that returns water to the fish tanks after being pumped through the grow beds. The creature prevented the pump from working effectively, and eventually the sumps received more water than they could return, and overflowed.  Here is a photo of the creature:

And what did the farmer and his wife learn from all of this? There will now be an alarm system to shut all systems off when water reaches predetermined levels. The sump tanks need covers to keep creatures out. The timers need to be adjusted to prevent further problems. The pump for the heat exchanger was damaged, so the water is only 65 degrees - still a problem. The farmer can't go on vacation this summer. But the farmer is also very fortunate. The fish were found in time to save their lives, and the fish are so tiny, they don't need much water. Also, it rained again, just in time to refill our tanks with rainwater!

The farmer has to climb into the tank to secure the drain from small fishes.

 Our guests, however, were not so lucky. They were robbed twice while they were visiting us - once the thief reached into their car with my nephew sitting in it, and took my sister's purse!! Freakily bold! We are going to catch that thief through ATM cameras!!


The plants are all fine, by the way!

Cycling Has Begun!

Monday, June 25, 2012:
1200: Boiler is up and running!
1700: Jeff says he is "giddy" because all systems have been automatically running all day without a hitch. In the afternoon, the Hunts have some visitors from far away. They are intrigued by the aquaponics. They pray for "The Watered Garden". That was nice. :)
1100: Jeff runs back to the greenhouse to make certain no pipes have burst or something similar. All is well.

This is our over-kill water heater. We plan to use solar as much as possible. Beans, tomatoes and squash growing in the background. Found a birds nest full of birds in the woodpile!

Tuesday, June 26, 2012:
0600: Jeff again checks the greenhouse. All is well. 
0930: Water temp is 80, just as ordered, for the growing pleasure of the bacteria! 12 tsp of ammonia added to system via fish tanks.
10:00: I plant every plant that hasn't died yet, thinking "it will be a miracle if these plants make it, " for these reasons:
1. My hydroponically grown plants are emaciated and undernourished from being crowded in a teensy grow-sponge for approximately 1 - 2 months too long.
2. The healthy looking plants, I removed from the dirt, washed the roots in 3 successive buckets of water, and put them in the gravel naked. They love this (not).
3. The top of the gravel is dry, so the plants look just like they have been planted in a parking lot! A little disconcerting. (But the top of the gravel is suppose to be dry.)
I plant all these plants even though they don't look great, because we need the biofilter. I expect them to look worse before they look better, due to the stress of the cycling. I did add "Maxicrop" which is the recommended seaweed/fish fertilizer. I have lettuce and basil seeds started as well. If all else fails, we will be a lettuce and basil farm this year.

Poor little plants - can't even see most of them. 

12:30: Ammonia is 2 ppm, and the goal is 3.5. Six more tsp added.
2300: Ammonia is 2 ppm, and Jeff adds a bottle of bacteria. Maybe he shouldn't have.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012
0930: Ammonia .5 ppm. Hmmm. So check the nitrites. Nitrite .5. So are the bacteria Jeff added dealing with the ammonia and making it low already? Couldn't be. Check nitrates. O. Add 10 tsp ammonia.
12:30: Ammonia 2 ppm. Add 6 tsp ammonia.
1830: Ammonia 4 ppm. Okay, stopping with the ammonia already! Shouldn't have added the bacteria last night - too confusing. Now we test daily for ammonia and nitrites. When we have significant nitrites we'll start testing for nitrates.

So now we have been running about 3 days without any major problems. One fitting popped off, and we lost some water. There's a couple of small leaks that have to be dealt with. There's water build-up UNDER the sump bin causing it to bubble up - doesn't make us happy, the pump doesn't know where to sit. Weird. Nothing Jeff can't figure out. Actually he now tells me he just pumped the water out from under the sump.
And all the plants look perfectly happy so far. :)

So this is the beginning of "cycling". When this process is over, it's time for FISH! Some of us have been waiting to see those little fishies swimming around. Soon. :)







       

The Watered Garden

We have a NAME!

Here's where it comes from. "...if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire with good things, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like A WATERED GARDEN, like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in. Isaiah 58: 10-12.

Mother Earth Fair
We were just at the Mother Earth News Fair in Puyallup, and heard Will Allen of Growing Power speak on how he was feeding the world around him through aquaponics and composting - starting gardens for the poor and hiring inner city kids and the like - very inspirational! Will Allen's website was the first place we ever heard about aquaponics and were inspired to start our own, so it was so cool to see him! The whole fair was totally amazing! If you're agrarians like us, put it on your calendar for next year, you won't be disappointed! Every aspect of a sustainable lifestyle was covered, but we were most encouraged by the speakers on aquaponics, including Sylvia Bernstein, whose book is our Aquaponic Bible, and by meeting locals like Don Stark of Sound Aquaponics and Raymond Lam of Silk Road Environmental. We're buying a solar water heating system from him to heat our water. http://www.silkroadenvironmental.com/

What's New at The Watered Garden
The media portion of our system is up and running. Jeff has been working very hard. We have a 5 zone indexing valve that chooses one row of growbeds at a time for flooding. The media beds are divided into 4 zones, and the strawberry towers will be the fifth zone. (The future deep water culture beds will be their own system.) Each zone floods for 4 minutes. So zone one will begin, and flood for 4 minutes, filling one row of growbeds. Each grow bed has a siphon, which is basically a tube inside a tube inside the growbed. When the water gets to the top of the inner tube, it spills over the top, creating a siphon which empties the growbed, leaving one inch in the bottom of the bed to develop an ecosystem to provide nutrients for fruit bearing plants. The water flows from the bottom of the grow bed into a pipe below the bed. The pipe dumps into one of three sumps. Then there is 11 minutes before the pump starts again and the indexing valve chooses the next zone.. Each row of growbeds has water in them for approximately 15 minutes out of every hour. When the sumps reach a designated level, the float switch turns on a return pump and the water is pumped from the sump back to the fish tanks, completing the cycle. We are presently waiting for a float level switch for the return pump so we can begin cycling automatically instead of manually.

Indexing valve in foreground. Fish tanks are behind you.

Water coming back to fish tank

We have to cover our tanks to prevent algae growth from the sun. Any ideas for  an attractive covering? We're not too excited about our present solution of landscape fabric.

When that happens, we're thinking about having a sleep-over in the greenhouse to be sure nothing goes wrong in the first 24 hour period. Some fine tuning needs to be done to the water heating system before we add ammonia and bacteria. Our present water temperature is 70 degrees, which is fine for the tilapia and plants, but we are trying to grow bacteria during the first few weeks, and bacteria grow the fastest at 77 to 86 degrees F. When we've achieved that temperature, we will add ammonia and start keeping daily records. The cycling process will have its own blog.

Today I tested the pH in every fish tank and also the sump. Weirdly, they are different from each other, but I expect they will even out when we start cycling 24/7. However, three of the tanks have a pH of 7.6 which is too high, so we're a little concerned  that our gravel may have some limestone in it. We did test it prior, but of course you can't test every piece. So we'll have to wait and see on that one.

Meanwhile, out in the dirt garden. Here is beautiful Olympia showing off the first strawberries of the year. We've been covering the berries with row cover to keep the birds off.