I recently expanded the garden to make room for some more crops. I extended the existing in-ground raised bed, and dug two more. I planted lettuce and carrots in the 1st extension, chard and onions in the 2nd extension, and kale in the 3rd extension. Im seeing a lot of grass pop up in the 2nd extension, rather than chard and onions, but well see how it goes. The lettuce is growing well, and nothing yet in the kale bed. I pulled back the cucumbers, no more of those for this season. Im still harvesting chard, tomatoes, peppers, and sage.
Three new beds dug and planted.
Before the expansion
The basil seems to have some sort of nutrient deficiency. I thought it might be calcium or potassium, so I made a solution of crushed egg shells and water, shook it up well, added some wood ash for potassium, and poured that around the basil roots. It hasnt helped yet after two days. I think the other basil plant looks like it needs nitrogen, so Im going to get some of that in there (biochar charged with pee, or just pee).
Sad Basil
Happy Tomatoes
Fermenting Wood Chips for Stropharia
Hopefully Ill be seeing these in my garden soon!
Ive been interested in mycology for years, experimenting with oyster mushrooms, lions mane, and listening to lectues by Paul Stamets in my free time. I even got to see Paul talk at Burning Man in 2013. I saw him talk again in Philadelphia in 2014, and one of the things he talked about was his "mycototes." Its a system where he ferments wood chips, submerged in water, for about a month. Then he drains the water, and the result is a fungus substrate that can be rapidly colonized by mycellium, especially Stropharia, (garden giant, or winecap mushroom). I know some guys starting a gourmet mushroom cultivation business in Philadelphia, who traded me some stropharia spawn on sawdust for some bricks of coco coir that I had. I soaked some woodchips in a trashcan for about a month. The trashcan had a leak, so I had to refill it frequently, and occasionally the water level dropped and left the wood chips unsubmerged. However, the experiment seems to have worked. The fermenting woodchips were colonized with anaerobic bacteria, which died off when exposed to air after draining the wood chips. I filled a burlap sack with the wood chips, mixed in the stropharia spawn, dug a hole behind the shed, and dropped the sack into the hole, and covered it lightly with a tarp. Ive been watering occasionally, and the burlap sack is now filled with mycellium. Ill save some of this for future spawn, and Im going to mix the rest in around the woodchips in my garden. Hopefully well have lots of garden giant mushrooms popping up and going into our dinner!
Beautiful! Look at all that white stringy fungi mycellium.
Drying Herbs
My Girlfriend got me a dehydrator for my birthday, so Ive been drying herbs from my garden and my parents herb spiral. Right now Ive got some thick leaf oregano drying. Fresh herbs in homegrown tomato-basil sauce for the win!
Plans for solar dehydrator
I saw a neighbor of mine was getting rid of some old windows, so I grabbed one and am planning on using it to make a solar dehydrator like these here:
Sprouts
My girlfriend also got me a sprouting kit for my birthday. Sprouts are tasty on sandwiches, and can be grown year-round indoors without light. Super cool!
The system at my buddy Saqibs apartment is doing well. Saqib was away for a week for work, so a roommate was feeding the fish. We think that he overfed our tilapia, Zeus, because the water is filled with brown algae. Ive read online that this algae is not really caused by sunlight, but rather by overfeeding the fish. High nitrates also lead to this type of algae. Well be feeding Zeus less from now on, and I plan to clean out the filter to make sure everything is nice and healthy.
Saqib added some small lights to the system, and the plants look to be doing well. Well get those lights up on chains soon. In another 2 weeks, well be switching to some ornamental fish for the tank, and at that point well clean the tank and hang the lights. Hopefully, that will help keep the algae in control, and help with the veggie growth.
The Aqua Farm hasnt been doing very well. The air pump seems to have died. For a while it was not making very good bubbles, and the water was not reaching the upper tray. The water wouldnt circulate, and the system was not functioning properly. I tried cutting the airline tube at different lengths to make better bubbles, and it seemed to work, but eventually the pump stopped making any bubbles at all. Im going to ask Back to the Roots if theyll send me a new air pump. I may also try using an aquarium air pump next to the fish tank to supply the bubbles for the air lift. Either way, Im not happy with the system right now. Im hoping that I can tinker with it and make it work better. On the bright side, I regrew some green onions in one of the grow pots, and ate them in a tasty turkey soup (Thanksgiving leftovers!).
Edit 10 Jan 2014 - Back to the Roots is going to send me a replacement air pump. They recommended placing it outside the system, sitting vertically next to the tank. Theyre also sending me new seed packets, and suggested that for the basil and lettuce I may need more light. Great customer service!
The IBC Aquaponic system in Delaware is still cycling. Its had some pH swings, too high, then too low. When it was high, I added some HCl to lower it a bit. When it was low, I drained about 1/4 tank and added hose water which is high pH. Green algae still a problem. I cleaned algae from grow bed by waiting until the Bell siphon kicked on, shutting off the pump, and waiting until the water all drained from the grow bed. Then I just wiped out the algae. No sign of the two Koi fish added before cycling. :( Im sure theyre dead. Well, now that Ive killed some fish, I guess Im a real aquapon. :-/
When I last checked on the system on September 1st, the nutrients looked like this:
Seedlings are growing, and Im planning on adding them when they get a little bigger.
My dad has started constructing a PVC frame for a small greenhouse. Were going to try to use insulation, water heaters, and maybe a small space heater to keep the system running through the winter. Well see how it works out!
The bell siphon had stopped working for a few days. It seemed like the grow bed wasnt filling up quick enough to kick on the siphon. We took apart the pump and cleaned the filter, and it pumped water much faster, fixing the siphon issue.
Below are a couple sketches of my plans for the system. I was originally thinking of adding a solids filter that would sit above both grow beds, but now Im thinking that if I add a sump tank to grow duckweed, I can add a radial flow solids filter, and a solids lifting overflow to the sytem, which might help keep the system clean, especially the pump.
Old Plan
New Plan
Were deciding between a 90 degree roof, or a rounded roof. I think the 90 degree roof will help keep snow off the top of the greenhouse, which is my major concern.
We just have to get the greenhouse up before it gets cold. My dads having almost as much fun with this project as I am!
I checked out the system this week, and it seems to be doing well. The brown algae in the water is slowly disappearing. The veggies are growing well, though the strawberry seeds that I scattered in one pot don’t seem to be growing too quickly. My friend hadn’t checked the chemicals recently, so I did while I was there. The pH was very low (<6), but everything else looked ok. The ammonia was 0.5ppm. Nitrite was zero, and Nitrate was 160+ ppm.
I added 6 capfuls of API’s pH up. I decided that I didn’t want to rely on my friend checking the pH and adjusting, so I added enough pH up to bump up the pH to around 7. Normally I wouldn’t want to raise it more than 0.2 per day, but I didn’t want to risk losing the bacteria and have to re-cycle the system. My friend added a little water the next day, and checked the pH. It was about 7 – 7.2, which is ideal. Hopefully this weekend I can visit for a few hours to clean the canister filter, and plan out new fish that we want to put in the fish tank. We’d also like to mount some small lights that we have onto chains above the grow bed. Another issue is that the water draining is somewhat loud, so I want to figure out a way to muffle the draining water. Here’s some pictures and a video from my visit to the system.
Recently, Bright Agrotech hosted a webinar for people interested in getting into commercial aquaponics. Bright Agrotech is a business in Laramie, Wyoming co-owned by Dr. Nate Storey, who is one of the best sources for information about aquaponics. He posts tons of educational videos that have helped me tremendously.
Heres the Commercial Aquaponics Webinar: http://bit.ly/1dsSXr3
I first learned about Permaculture in late Fall of 2013. I had been interested in aquaponics before then, but didnt know what permaculture was. I had seen the term permaculture mentioned on posts in reddit.com/r/aquaponics but didnt know what it was all about. I read a little, and watched some youtube videos, and more and more, it just felt right.
In my garden
During college, I didnt have much of an opinion on politics or activism, and I had no interest in gardening or ecology. Dont get me wrong, Ive always loved nature, and camping, and wildlife. But in my youthful ignorance, I felt that the worlds problems could wait until after I finished engineering school (and in all fairness, they did wait). I didnt have the sense of urgency to action that I feel these days.
Toward the end of school, my friends started composting, and eating healthier, and I noticed, but didnt change my own habits for a good while. But eventually, I started feeling bad when I didnt recycle in front of them, or if I used excess paper towels. And eventually I learned more about the world, and I wanted to use my skills and education to make it better, because frankly, the future seems pretty bleak at times. I started recycling, and turning off the lights more often. I had grown edible mushrooms in my college years using waste coffee grounds from a coffeehouse near my apartment, and was already very fascinated with fungi. Then I learned about aquaponics, and that fascinated my engineer mind.
My first aquaponics project
Earthship in North Philly
Id read about earthships online, and even got the opportunity to help build one on an abandonded lot in North Philly. It was that day working on the earthship that I met a guy who told me was into Permaculture. I went home and looked up this Permaculture thing, and it was all downhill from there (in the best-possible way, like riding your bike downhill).
At Burning Man in 2013
I had been building art (a friends projects at first, then my own) at the Burning Man Art festival since 2010, and adopted the idea of radical self-reliance (encouraging the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources) and leaving-no-trace. So, I had already entertained the idea of a possible homestead in my future. Over the 2013/2014 Winter, I listened to countless podcasts, watched video after video on youtube, and read books and articles all about permaculture. I had a 3 hour commute every day to listen to podcasts and an hour lunch to read books and articles. Thats around 4 hours a day studying Permaculture for about 3 months. I was amassing a good knowledge base, but had little experience outside of my aquaponics projects and my mushroom cultivation years prior.
My apartments windowfarm herb garden made from recycled materials
Rosemary in the Windowfarm
Oyster mushrooms in my kitchen
Lions Mane mushrooms in a homemade fruiting chamber
In Spring 2014, I started a garden in my landlords yard, and convinced him to pay for 2/3rds the initial cost for half the produce in return. The garden is now supplementing our diets, and giving me fresh ingredients to learn about canning and preserving. I signed up for a 7-month, one-day-per-month Intensive Organic Gardening class with Ben Weiss, a local Permaculture instructor. Ive learned a ton, and this has really made me look forward to being able to take a Permaculture Design Certification Course (PDC) in the future. Ive used much of what Ive learned in the class in my own garden. I tried composting in a bucket. Then I heard about my friend composting with worms, and had to try that out. Now Ive got tons of worm castings for the straw bale gardens I just set up. The straw came from a local farm. I got a load of mulch from a local tree service.
Learning to use a broadfork for a no-till garden in Ben Weisss 2014 Intensive Organic Gardening Class
Serviceberries (Juneberries) foraged from outside my works office building. They made a delicious dessert for my family reunion thanks to my girlfriend!
Ive taken wild plant foraging classes with local teachers, and have realized a more symbiotic relationship with nature. Ive found that my landlords property is filled with edible and medicinal plants like Woodsorrel, Bitter Dock, Lambs Quarter, Feverfew, Violets, Ladys Thumb, Dandelions, Clover, Purslane, and Plantain. Ive even gotten my landlord to start eating the weeds! It turns out, the property used to be a chicken farm, and when my landlord moved in, it was covered in grape vines, and berry bushes, and different fruiting trees. It sounded like a permies wet dream! He cut everything down except one apple tree, and paved over a large portion of the yard. Since Ive moved in and started gardening, weve had many conversations about organic gardening and permaculture, and I think he regrets having "cleaned up" the yard all those years ago. Now, were working to re-create a productive landscape on his property.
Scott Kellogg and Stacey Pettigrews amazing urban farm in Albany, NY
I took a Regenerative Urban Sustainability class at Scott Kellogg and Stacey Pettigrews urban farm in Albany, NY, which was amazing to see all the interconnected, regenerative farm systems. They were growing mushrooms, keeping chickens, ducks, and rabbits, gardening organically, maintaining large aquaponic systems, composting, and utilizing many other permaculture systems. From that workshop, I brought home some Stropharia (Garden Giant) mushroom spawn to introduce to my woodchips in the garden. Im nearly finished the second herb spiral Ive built, and I have two more planned for community gardens that I volunteer at.
My first herb spiral, at my parents house in Delaware
My second herb spiral, it just needs plants!
The point of this post isnt to brag about how much fun Im having learning and practicing permaculture. The point is that, you dont need to be in an ideal situation to make your situation work for you while reducing your footprint, and increasing your handprint. Large changes require small steps. I try one or two new things out at a time. This allows me to focus on getting it right, without taking up excess energy and time and becoming a chore. Ive done my best to cut out distractions like mindless TV and video games. I try to keep track of my projects and keep notes as a citizen scientist. I dont have any formal schooling in permaculture or ecology, but experience is the best teacher, and I believe that with dedication, anyone can teach themself to become an expert at almost anything.
My most recent garden update
Ive got a number of things working against me right now. I dont own land, I rent. I have a 3 hour commute every day. I dont know that much about gardening. I dont have all the skills that I want. But, Im using permaculture design and ideas in my every day life, regardless of my situation. I have friends who do container gardens on their balconies, and they compost, and thats all that they can do at the moment, but thats better than nothing. My first aquaponic system wouldnt even fit in my apartment, so I asked a friend if I could put it in his bedroom. My next aquaponic system was in my second floor apartment with a WindowFarm and a 5 gallon water cooler tank as the fish resevoir. When I moved to Trenton, NJ, I volunteered at a community garden and met some new artist friends with a studio and space for my next aquaponic system (currently under construction). Through working with these new friends, Ive potentially got a space and all the supplies needed for a large-scale, multiple IBC tank system that weve just begun to work on. Ive also helped out with their community improvement efforts through guerilla gardening on Saturday mornings.
Guerilla Gardening in Trenton, NJ
My largest, system to date is a single IBC-tank system in Delaware at my parents house. Space is a huge limitation for me, but Ive used my network of friends and family to find space to practice my passion.
My IBC Aquaponics in Delaware
One of the most important lessons Ive learned in life is to never limit yourself. There are enough circumstances in life to hold you back, dont let your own fears and insecurities prevent you from following your dreams. The more you explore and learn about how to live a more harmoneous and regenerative life, the more you can create the world you want. Prioritize the things that make you happy and fulfilled. Focus on whats important to you, and cut out the excess. If I can do it, so can you. One step at a time.
Advice from one of my heros
This post was inspired by the 7 July 2014 episode of The Permaculture Podcast with Scott Mann.
Since Ive started learning about aquaponics, one of the coolest technologies that Ive seen is the ZipGrow towers, made by Bright Agrotech. Theyre a way to grow vertically, with hydroponics or aquaponics. The idea looks very simple. Its one of those, "Why didnt I think of that," kind of ideas.
The ZipGrow tower looks like a square fence post with a 2-inch slit cut down one face long-ways. A long strip of polymer foam with very large pores is folded in half, and inserted into the post. The plants roots grow in between the folded foam, and water drips from the top of the post down the foam, watering all the plants roots. They have some amazing results with these things on their farms in Wisconsin. Good for these guys!
It’s been quite a while since my last update, and I’ve had a lot of developments, so here we go!
The AquaFarm from Back to the Roots had been making a decent amount of noise as the air pump rattles against the plastic container. I tried to adjust the foam insulation pad, but it was difficult to keep the thing quiet. I was away from my apartment during my trip to Burning Man, so I moved the betta into a different tank and had a friend take care of him for me. The wheatgrass grew well, but the basil and other herb didn’t grow very well. Right now the system is empty, and I’m planning on starting it up again in the next few weeks.
The 105 gallon system at my friend’s apartment is still slowly moving forward. My friend is taking a trip to Nepal, so his room got a new owner. My buddy Saqib is going to look after the aquaponics system from now on, and I’m glad that he’s excited about it. The seed plugs (coco coir, I think) started developing a white mold, so I broke off the plugs and planted the seedlings directly into my grow media. I also installed a drain plug into my bell siphon to keep rocks from messing up the drainage cycle. Pogo had bought 6 full grown tilapia for the fish tank before I left for Burning Man, but only one is still living. I would have preferred to start with fingerlings, but one large tilapia will do fine for now. His name is Hercules. I think Saqib and I are on the same page, and want to eat Hercules and fill the tank with smaller, decorative fish. I also want to cover the sides of the system’s frame with cloth to keep sunlight out of the filter and fish tank. Some algae grew inside the filter, that I need to clean out, so hopefully the lack of sunlight will fix that in the future. The pH seems to be slowly, but consistently dropping, so I’ve had to add pH up a few times. I’m not sure what’s causing the pH drop, yet. We’re working out the little kinks in the system, so I’m excited to see how it works out. I’ll update when we have some new developments!
I recently received the AquaFarm that I had ordered from Back To the Roots. It took quite a long time for this to be shipped out, but it finally arrived. I set it up almost immediately, and then remembered that I wanted to do a "how to" video for setting it up. I was too eager, and forgot!
Anyway, heres a quick review. Ive had it set up for 4 days. The first beta fish that I put in the tank died after 2 days, so I got a second beta for the tank. I cant say whether the first beta fish died because of the AquaFarm design, or if it was just an unhealthy fish. Well see how this fishy does.
AquaFarm Review
AquaFarm Packaging
Sorry about the dark photo, but heres the AquaFarm!
You can see where the airline tubing for the air lift goes down into the fish tank.
It came with Lettuce, Basil, and Wheat Grass
It also came with de-chlorinating chemicals, beneficial bacteria, a fish-cleaning solution, and a tank cleaning supplement called Tidy Tank.
Overall, I think this is a pretty cool system, and I cant wait to see what it grows!
AquaFarms are available from Back To The Roots for $60.
Ive cut the rosemary a few times for tasty recipes. Its still growing strong.
The strawberries are coming along, and we even have a few small berries.
Berries!
However, Im afraid that I may be overwatering the strawberry plant. The leaves are turning yellow and brown, which may be a sign of overwatering. Im planning on getting a timer to stagger the water flow.
I planted some spare garlic that I didnt use for dinner! Its sprouted and is doing well.
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