The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Sunday, May 1^st, 2011:  The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 

Lots to update this week.  I'd been away for two weeks except for a very quick visit last weekend that didn’t really allow me much time to look at everything closely.

The Good:

On the Good side of things, almost all the plants are doing great.  The video all the way at the bottom of this update shows all the plants.  The watermelon bed, which hosts two watermelon plants, has growth all over the place.  The bed itself is not even visible anymore.  The plants have made their way onto the fish tank cover and the floor and there are more watermelons coming out.  On the other hand, the watermelons themselves appear to grow quickly at first but then the growth rate tapers off.  None of the watermelons are ready and the largest ones do not appear to be growing much anymore if at all.  Maybe this is normal, I really don’t know.  I'll have to read up on watermelon plants.

On the Bad side, the watermelon plants are suffering from some sort of infestation.  I noticed this started last week, but I wasn’t here long enough to even think about what to do about it.  There is some sort of white/tan-colored, very small bug sticking to the leaves.  They do not move unless you disturb them.  They do not appear to eat the leaves.  By that, I mean they do not leave behind leaves with holes in them.  They do leave behind a black, very ugly looking film.  Maybe they suck nutrients out of the leaves without leaving holes, but what do I know?  The strange thing is, the leaves don't look unhealthy, other than having that sludgy film on them.

Here are the bugs and the film left on the leaves:

Upper Right Corner:  White/Tan colored bugs visible.  Almost Everywhere Else:  Black film left behind by bugs. 

Click on the image for a better view.

In any case, for lack of any better ideas, I sprayed the plants down with a molasses solution (just a 1-liter spray bottle of water with about ¼ cup molasses and a squirt of dish soap mixed in).  Some bugs are repelled by sweat smells so maybe this will work.  While spraying the leaves, I noticed the black film they left behind washed off pretty easily, so if the molasses doesn’t work, maybe a good spraying with the hose will get them and their trash on their way!

Almost all the plants planted last week seem to be doing well, with the exception of a single yellow-tomato plant in the gravel bed, which appears to be rotting at the base.  This is what ultimately afflicted all the tomato plants that had grown in that bed previously, so that’s disappointing.  I’ll keep an eye on the other tomato plants in that bed and watch out for the same symptoms. 

The tomato plants in the raft bed are doin’ great.  I wish I had taken pictures of the roots.  That will have to wait ‘till next time.  I filled the rest of that raft bed (raft bed 1) with other tomato plant types: cherry, roma, and more yellow tomatoes.  If they all flourish, that’s going to be one hell of a bed! 

Yellow Tomato Plants.  I planted other tomato plants in the rest of this raft (not shown). 

Background:  Half-barrel cemetary from original design.  I still might get some use out of those, so there they sit until needed. 

In raft bed two, I planted new lettuces (shown in video).  I bought the starters at the store.  In raft bed three, the mustard plants are goin’ crazy, as can be seen here:

Worms:  When I first learned about aquaponics, one of the key components presented was worms that would grow (and must grow) in the gravel grow beds.  Worms play a key role in decomposing fish and plant waste that accumulates in the gravel grow beds.  Worms both take advantage of this material and release the minerals therein for plant use, and also keep the gravel beds free from clogging.

What I never saw discussed anywhere was which kind of worms to use or where to get them.  Little did I know that mattered!  The first time I tried adding worms, I just dug around in the ground until I found some and placed them in my gravel grow beds.  A few weeks later, hoping to find worms slithering all over my beds, I was highly disappointed to find not one!  The ones I’d added died or escaped.

As it turns out, not all worms are equal – far from it!  The type of worm that is best suited for decomposing waste and is used the world over for composting, is Eisenia fetida.  That’s the scientific name for California red crawlers.  Or in Europe, Eisenia hortensis.  They thrive in rich organic matter, can tolerate high temperatures, and can withstand the flood portion of the flood and drain cycle without a hitch.  These are the worms used in composting systems, vermiculture, vermicomposting, and it’s what those guys I first read about doing gravel-bed aquaponics use.  However, it seems that in some places these worms will just crawl out of the ground and into your grow beds all by themselves.  Maybe that’s how it works in Australia, which is where most of the aquaponics stuff I first read about takes place, but not here!  In most places you will probably need to find someone that harvests these worms and buy them.  That’s what I did. 

And here they are:

They burry themselves in the soil, so you have to disturb the surface in order to get any kind of a
picture of them, of which this one is, I just realized, quite lousy.

I set up what is in effect an “inoculating nest” on top of each bed today.  The nest is just a small plastic plant container (with those big drain holes on the bottom resting on the gravel bed) filled with worms and the material (worm compost) they come in, and covered with another plant container upside down (with the holes up, providing air).  I am hoping they will make their way into the cool, dark, moist, oxygen rich, and waste-rich beds underneath.  If they don’t, I will be incredibly disappointed to say the least.  I thought I learned something here, so don’t let me down, my red, wiggly, friends.

This is a great site with just about all the information you could possibly ever want on red composting worms:  Red Worm Composting. The worms make great home composting systems too of course.  I set up two this weekend – one for the house and one for the farm. 

The UGLY:

My swirl filter has gone anaerobic, no doubt about it.  This gunk floating on top, pictured in the last update, reeks.

It does not appear to be affecting anything (yet).  From the swirl filter, water drains to the sump, where it is heavily aerated.  I think the nasty gases produced by anaerobic minerilization get fairly well vented out in the sump.  They certainly do not appear to be harming anything at this point.  Anyway, I have a plan to tackle this but haven’t had the time to implement it yet.  Basically, a better designed solids-capturing system that can be cleaned regularly I think will do the trick.  The current swirl filter is just not easy to clean, so things that collect overstay their welcome and go anaerobic.  I do think this waste can go into a nice vermicomposting system later on – something else to research. 

This week's video update:

Lettuce Raft Production in 25 Days; New Vertical Stacking Component

The plants are looking fantastic, and are growing at a good clip too.  The lettuce seen below went in on March 25th - that's 25 days ago.  Not all of them are ready to harvest, but 9 of 15 are.  The others I think will take another 2-5 days, depending on which particular head we're talking about. 

At UVI, in their fully-optimized system developed over a span of 30 years, they get full lettuce heads in about 21 days, so this isn't a bad second-trial.  That's more a testament to how easy aquaponics is than to anything special about my system. 

Below are two vertical grow towers I just installed on top of one of my gravel grow beds .  They're designed for strawberries and are made by a company called VertiGrow out of Florida:

The pots stack one above the other and are filled with support media.  I will pump my fish water up into the highest one. The water will percolate down to the next pot through holes at the bottom of the first, and eventually through the other pots and into the gravel grow bed.  I am hoping to use these for strawberries, although it is hard to find starters here.  If not, I'll have to come up with something else to grow in them, which really shouldn't be hard.  They are a great use of vertical space.  They provide 4 planting spots per container - one per corner, so each one of these towers can hold 20 plants.  That's more than each of my floating rafts. 

My fish have multiplied and grown quite a bit since I started.  That was 6 months ago with 5 adult fish.  I have no idea how many fish I have now.  There are easilly more than 60 and quite likely over 100 at different stages of growth.  This is actually a horrible way to keep fish, as I learned at UVI.  The correct way entails separating the females from the males, keeping separate brood stock, and managing stocks of fish at similar growth points.  I won't get into details here, because doing so is really an entire aquaculture course in itself.  Suffice to say that is is very important to grow out a portion of your total capacity in controlled, timed, amounts, and to maintain your line's genetic purity by keeping separate brood stock.  I may change my system drastically down the road and actually produce fish the correct way.  For now, I'll just continue with what I've got, knowing it is not the most efficient way to do so.  It does suffice for a home-based system of this small size.  The fish are doing great at their main job, which is to produce plant food.

One of the problems with all the fish growth is that my swirl filter appears to be having "issues":

That's floating fish gunk, fortunately not making it down the exit funnel and into the rest of the system.  I am not sure why it is floating.  It shouldn't be.  It should be settling at the bottom of the swirl filter where it can be scooped out later.  In any case, it isn't, and it's time I change this filter system out for something easier to clean, so I'll be focusing on that in the near future. 

And here's a quick video update of all this.  If it doesn't appear below, click on this link:

Weekly Video Update

Lettuce is looking good - no bolting!  Zuccini plant is ginormous, but no full grown zucs yet.

Back on the ranch... er... farm, literally. 3 weekly video updates.

Well, it's been a quiet several weeks. I attended the UVI International Aquaponics & Aquaculture course in mid March and have been back 3 weeks.

Here are my notes from March 25, which was my first day back at the farm since my last entry:

AP system notes

ph readings show 6.8 consistently
Plants are mixed. Some are pale, some are green.  A lettuce I did not have much hope for went to seed but also was richly green.  Fed it to the fish.

Chemicals:

Based on the UVI Aquaponics system, I added chelated iron to 2 mg/liter.  This took 250ml of my liquid chelated iron solution.

Added 1/2 teaspoon of Potassium.  Based it on instructions on package of 1-2 kilos per hectare and proportioned it down.

Applied a foliar spray of potassium.  Diluted 5 ml into 2 liters and applied to leaves. Dumped unsprayed amount into system at mineralization tank.  

Note:  on my phone instructions, Carlitos added a tuna-tin sized amount of builder's lye to the system last week, for bringing calcium up.  Though the fish feed already has some, UVI says add more.   

I'll check ph first thing tomorrow.  It may go up do to the K and Ca.

Planted chives, 16 lettuces (starters purhased at store - yes I cheated), cilantro, parsley, celery, one medium sized chile plant.  Threw out most or all of the brocoli started  2 weeks ago.  I don't think those plants would have made it in any system really.  Divided the chives and cilantro between gravel and raft systems.  All the letuce went into the raft sysem.  Everything else went into gravel.

Almost everything greened up right away after adding the iron, calcium and potassium. The only thing that didn't were two watermelon plants in the raft system. The ones panted in gravel did react positively.

The following are three video updates, about a week apart each. Each video goes from plant to plant in the same order. You should be able to notice plant growth and other differences from video to video.

March 26:



April 2



April 8

Tomato Leaf Curling Virus, or Something Else? Wicking bed and watermelon success; floating raft trials.

The tomato bed has 5 tomato plants and two cucumber plants (and various herbs).  Three of the tomato plants produce cherry tomatoes, one is "yellow" (produces a small, completely yellow, and deliciously juicy tomato) and one produces a variety that I can best describe as "normal".  Of the three cherry tomato plants, one developed severe upwardly curled leaves all over the plant, pretty much "overnight" (though I am not 100% sure on that score since I didn't see it the day before). They are not only severely upwardly curled, but are also "collapsed" at the part where the leaf meets the stem.  The plant basically looks god-awful, no if's and's or but's.  The fruit however, doesn't look bad, except a lot of it has ripened pre-maturely.  Instead of "cherry" tomatoes, some of these are "red pea" tomatoes.  If you google "tomato leaf curl"  pictures, you'll see some that show a slight curl and some that show the leaf completely closed in on itself.  Mine are the completely closed in kind. 

In researching what this could be, I came up with two possibilities:

1)  Nutrient Deficiency
2)  Disease

I've ruled out #1 because it seems to make sense that anything caused by a nutrient deficiency would also affect the other plants, especially other plants of the same type - i.e., tomatoes.  In Aquaponics and hydroponics systems, all plants receive the same nutrient mix, all the time, so it just does not make sense to me for just one plant (out of a group of the same type) to suffer nutrient deficiency.  If anyone knows something to the contrary in this regard, do please let me know!

As for possibility #2, what I have been able to find is there is such a thing as Leaf Curl Virus, which can be transmitted by beatles, aphids, and other leaf-eating bugs.  It will not spread from plant to plant by contact or via the roots - it requires a leaf-sucking insect "vector" to transmit the disease.  For lack of other possibilities, and following the philosophy of "the simplest explanation is usually right", this is what I think affected this plant.

If so, this would be the best possible reason, given the circumstances.  Nutrient deficiency would mean something is severely lacking or unbalanced in my system, whereas this particular virus, which thankfully cannot spread very easily, can be taken care of by removing the plant.  There are no signs of aphids or leaf-eating bugs though, so I cannot be 100% sure.  Stems of affected plants appear healthy.  There is no discoloration inside stems that are cut open for inspection, that would indicate a fungal or root-born disease.   

Now, if any other plants come down with this, I'll have to go back and question my reasoning here, but for now, that's all I can conclude.

The radishes in wicking bed #1 are doing great.  It looks like they'll be ready to eat in a week or two.  I planted red onion and carrots in the larger wicking bed, as well as thee asparagus crowns I had planted in a dirt garden. 

The floating raft pots are 100% planted now (all 54 of them).  Beds 2 and 3 are full of brocoli, mustard, sweet peppers, and watermelon.  I am very doubtful as to the brocoli and mustard as the plants looked weak, long and spindly, but we'll see.  I've been surprised by how well some plants do when they are moved into an aquaponics system.  Raft 1 has everything I had planted before (lettuce, cabbage, spinach) plus I added three new yellow tomato plants.  Those yellow tomatoes are just too tasty and I want more of them.

Here's some video of this week's progress.  I spent a little too much time on the seed trays, especially since they were mostly a failure, so be forewarned!  The seed tray part is from the 49-second mark  to 3.26 if you want to skip ahead.