Don't Overthink or Over Engineer Your Systems

It is so easy to get carried away with the physics involved in building your aquaponic grow systems that the  simple becomes unduly complex.  Complex is not good. Complex is rarely if ever easy to maintain. Try to avoid complex as much as possible.

If you think effort goes into designing a large system, just try to re-design a large system after all components are in place but not functioning as they should.  Implementing the re-design means that you have re-do all the previous hard work.  Not efficient use of time or energy.  If you and your garden want  to survive, you need to use your time and energy as efficiently as possible.

The following is a great case in point of over designing a system.  When the a frames for NFT (nutrient film technique) tubes were first designed and built for the Together We Stand project, the designer was greatly concerned that because the water was going to flow through 4 tubes before draining that all the nutrients would be absorbed by the plants on the top row and the plants in rows 2 through 4 would be nutrient starved.  So a complex manifold system was created and installed to give equal feed of the nutrient rich water into the top of the a-frame.  Truly a beautiful design as you can see from here.

Since each A-Frame has two sides, there was a manifold for each side of the frame.  Of course, this system over engineered a problem that didn't exist.  See, the nutrient levels at the top tube of an A-Frame are not significantly lower than the bottom tubes unless your system is extremely nutrient deficient. So, this overly complex design solved a problem that didn't exist.  However what it did do was utilize flow tubing that was so small you didn't get good water flow and it clogged constantly. In addition, since each tube was fed individually, it drained individually.  If you think that manifold was something, then check out this drain system

Looks like some kind of octopus, right?  In addition, note the use of clear tubing.  Well it was clear at the start I am sure.  But because the clear tubing allows sunlight to penetrate, algae growth was a constant problem and because of the design, 8 drain tubes needed to be cleaned on a regular basis.  All to solve a nutrient feed problem that doesn't exist!

The answer was to re-plumb the A-frame so that water enters in one location on each side of the frame and then feeds and drains each tube in sequence.  

So that anyone working on the system in the future will understand how it operates, each tube was marked at the feed and drain points and also with arrows indicating water flow.

 Note the use of dark tubing for the inlet feed tubing.  For the jumper lines between the tubes, in a stroke of genius my husband realized that garden hose would work perfectly and is certainly less expensive than other hosing. 

Since there is now only 1 drain for each side of the frame, only 2 drains are necessary.  That means we can slay the octopus and the task associated with keeping the lines clean.

It was a bit of a pain, but now these A-Frames will perform their NFT tasks much more effectively and will require much less effort to maintain. 

As a side note, you will notice in some of the photos that the tubes are marked with letters and numbers.  This is something that was implemented back when this shade house was first built.  It was done to help keep crop and maintenance records.  Even if your garden is small, if you have more than one grow bed, NFT tube system or multiple raft beds I highly recommend that you develop some sort of identification system to make your record keeping much easier.

So how did you spend your week-end?

There Will be Pests

An early morning check of one of my systems really pissed me off.  Oh the fish were doing well, the bed was flooding and draining properly, most plants looked great except.......................the tomato.  Leaves were eaten and it was covered in little flecks of bug poo.

The tomato hornworm had struck overnight (or since my last check yesterday afternoon).  This isn't my picture, but this is what they look like.

This photo is from University of Colorado

I have to show you the picture someone else took because I was so angry I immediately hunted them all down and squished them until they were DEAD.  In a survival garden, it is the gardener that will survive, not the unwanted visitors.  Pests such as the hornworm must die, immediately.  My frenzy did not subside until the last hornworm was nothing but a green mess.

Like all gardens, aquaponics gardens have pests.  Because of the fish component, you cannot just spray poison on your plants.  Even without the presence of fish, I don't like to spray poison because I really don't want to end up eating it.  There are several ways to approach pest control in your aquaponic garden.  The cheapest is the method I employed on the hornworms.  That means searching the plant, pulling the pest off and squishing it or cutting it with shears or any other means of physical demise of the pest.  If your garden is small and your amount of time for pest control large, this is the most common method.

However, if you have a large gardens this might not be practical.  At our Together We Stand gardens, we use the pick and squish method when we have a large number of volunteers and a small number of pests.  This pick and squish method works great for squash bugs as well as those dreaded hornworms.  However, our most common method is the application of a biological pesticide such as Bacillus thuringiensis.  This is a bacteria that naturally occurs in some soils.  This bacteria is highly toxic to many caterpillars and other garden pests, but it is safe for higher life forms (that means you, your fish, your dog, your chickens, your cats, etc).  It can be found most commonly under the name DiPel. This is what we use when the pests outnumber the volunteers.  It is kinda stinky, so you have been warned. If your garden is organic but not aquaponic, you can use DiPel and keep your organic status.  You do have to be careful with the application if your garden has an area for butterfly gardening.  While butterflies are not normally part of a survival garden, their nectar plants are commonly planted in the garden area to attract pollinators. You can bet the drain and flow system that housed those hornworms is getting a dose of DiPel!

You can also use companion plants as pest deterrents.  My father always planted marigolds around his garden.  I hated the smell of the marigolds and he always assured me that most pests agreed with me and would stay out of the garden because they hated marigolds as well.  This year I tested the marigolds I despise so much in the NFT tubes above one of my flood and drain grow beds.  Very little pest problems at all  Marigolds are famous for warding off nematodes (which are not a problem in aquaponic gardens since you are not using soil) but they worked very well for whitefly too! While the plants near the marigolds still attracted a few aphids, it was nothing like the aphids that tried to flock to other areas of the gardens.  So like them or not, marigolds are here to stay in my garden.

Just like any garden, the aquaponic garden must be walked at least once a day during growing season to check for pests and arrange for their demise when found.

Got any ideas on organic pest control?  Share them with me!

Following the Laws of Nature

Some of the posts I have read on the aquaponics boards I follow have led me to believe that people think that aquaponics is some sort of plant growing magic.  That if you grow a plant with aquaponics you can somehow ignore all the parameters that nature has placed on a plant. 

It is not true.

If you want to survive, you have to know what will grow successfully when.  If you are in Montana and there is three feet of snow on the ground, you can't grow a tomato with aquaponics unless you control the environment.  The self sustaining nature of aquaponics will not allow that tomato to survive the cold unless you do something to control the temperature.  You need to know the agricultural zone in which you live.  To find your zone number, go to USDA Plant Hardiness Map and enter your ZIP code.  Memorize this number.  When you are researching plants and seeds, the provider will always tell you in what zones the plants will grow.  Staying within your zone will contribute to your success.  Staying within your season is also important. Just like the guys in Montana can't grow tomatoes in winter because of the cold, I can't grow cucurbits (like cucumbers, melons, squash) in summer because the air temperature is just too hot.

That means you need to learn about both growing the fish and growing the plants.  For example, we recently had heavy rains (quite normal for our south Florida summer) and as a result some of my plants (both soil and aquaponic) were infested with powdery mildew.  Just because the plants were in aquaponic systems did not make them immune from the mildew.  In this case, all I did was remove the infected parts (they did NOT go in the compost) and the plants recovered quickly because I acted quickly.  If necessary, I could have sprayed with a solution of baking soda and water (keeping an eye on the pH fo my water).  The point is no matter if the plant is in soil or not, you need to know how to take care of the plants, because if you have a garden you will have pests and diseases.  Your goal is to minimize these while maximizing yield.  That is where aquaponics comes into play. You are going for high yield because you are using your animal protein growing system to provide the food for the plants, thus providing constant nutrition to the plants. 

Another question I read was from someone who wanted to know why the seeds his neighbor have him weren't performing like the neighbor's plants.  Well, if your friends give you the seeds of their hybrid plants, you can't expect them to perform the same.  No matter if the plant is growing in aquaponics or soil, you can't save the seeds of hybrids and expect them to reproduce true.  Always use heirloom or non-hybrid seeds.  Learn to dry and save your own seeds. When someone offers you seed, ask them about their source.