Super Greens are Super Food

Super greens and power greens.  They are all the rage with foodies and nutritionists alike right now.  Everyone is crazy for kale.  I like kale as much as the next person (I even have loads of it started right now) and I have high hopes that kale can be my next chard.

By "next chard" I mean a plant that sprouts easily, thrives in the aquaponic environment, and produces an abundance of edibles.  Since the fall, we have been enjoying an abundance of chards.  We have the traditional Fordhook chard as well as the Bright Lights colored Swiss chard.  As usual, the seed from Southern Exposure had a germination rate of almost 100%.

I admit to sprouting the chard seeds in soil and a wicking bed I rigged up, but once they hit the auqaponic systems they took off.

Chard in NFT Tubes on A-Frame

Bright Lights Chard in DWC raft

Chard in expanded clay media bed, flood and drain

While they seem to have done best in the NFT tubes, they performed well using all techniques.

I have been harvesting with a "cut and come again" strategy.  This means I don't harvest the entire plant at once.  I harvest the lower leaves and the plant continues to grow from the top.  This explains the odd growth pattern you may see in the pictures. The stem may start growing a little crazy, but the plant continues to produce new leaves and that means more for us to eat.

It means so much to eat that I have been stretching my culinary capabilities to find new uses for chard.  Chard pizza anyone?  It was actually quite tasty.  I wilted the red chard before baking it on the pizza.  Chard frittata?  It made a yummy brunch.  Of course sauted chard, boiled chard, chard wilted with bacon, chard and cornbread. Chard has made its way into just about everything but the Cheerios.  But if they keep going this strong, the Cheerios might be next.

Seriously, if you are going to the trouble to grow your own food, why not make it something that will pack a nutritional punch.  Chard has at least 13 flavonoids. One of the primary flavonoids found in chard is syringic acid. Syringic acid has recently received special attention due to its blood sugar regulating properties. It has been shown to inhibit activity of an enzyme called alpha-glucosidase. When this enzyme gets inhibited, fewer carbohydrates are broken down into simple sugars and blood sugar stays steadier.  This is important to anyone that is concerned about diabetes, weight control, or eating low on the glycemic index.

Chard also is rich in betalains, just like its cousin the beet.  This phytonutrient has antiinflamatory, antioxident and detoxification properties.  Chard as a beauty product?  Sure, if we are what we eat, why not eat something rich in vitamins A and K so that healthy skin starts from the inside. Chard packs a punch of vitamin C as well.  If you are fearful of the oxalic acid found in chard, be aware that it is concentrated in the stems.  So, all you have to do is add the stems first (so they will cook longer than the leaves) as heat destroys the oxalic acid or if you are eating the chard raw, just discard the stems. 

Got any good chard recipes?  What is the super survivor in your garden right now?

Octopus Slayer - Part 2

If you remember from a prior post last year, we made some changes to the large A-Frame NFT system that was being used over at the Together We Stand Aquaponic Gardens.  It had been designed with a manifold at the top to feed water individually at each tube and to drain each tube individually. It had so many hoses going so many directions we called it the "octopus".  Classic exacmple of over-engineering to solve a problem that didn't exist.

When I wrote about how we changed the water flow I mentioned that instead of black tubing, my hubby cut a garden hose to make the jumper from one tube to the next. It was easy, quick, and most importantly cheap!

After I posted this, several folks commented on this blog and other places about the wisdom of using a garden hose. There was quite a bit of concern about the safety of the water flowing through the garden hose and the possibility of leaching toxic chemicals.

Quite honestly, for as "smart" and evolved as we are supposed to be, it never occurred to us that the hose might taint the water.  Hubby and I  both grew up in a very hot and dry area of South Texas and drank lots of water from the hose as youngsters and teens. While it did have a funny taste, I just always guessed it was from the metal bib of the hose.  That and the fact that all the water in that town tasted like crud, no matter the source.  But when you are hot and thirsty you will drink what is available.  Of course, this was back in the 60's and 70's so we didn't know about things like bottled water back then

But this is a new century and we are evolved and enlightened!  So a few days ago, hubby decided that the garden hose should be replaced.  You spoke and he listened!

 This did require a trip to Home Depot, but it was only a few dollars and the result looks clean and works well.  I think fighting the crowd of Canadians in the parking lot and through the store on a Saturday (remember this is Hollywood Florida and it is January and in the mid-80's so all the snowbirds have landed) took longer and was more effort than making the actual change.  Here is the new set-up. 

Here is another view.

Nice huh?

But this gets me to thinking about all the things we did as kids that people never do now....or they don't allow their kids to do now.  Maybe it was because we were from a small-ish town, but we rode our bikes everywhere and got into everything. I don't know how we survived.

How about you?

Cycling A System - Should You Go Fish?

Aquaponic systems are closed loop systems that replicate the naturally occurring symbiotic relationship between plants and fish.  Fish provide nutrients for the plants and the plants clean the water for the fish.  Like all relationships, this one takes time to develop as well.

Whether you are designing your own system or looking to purchase a prefabricated system you should be aware that it will take some time for your system to function so that fish and plants are both healthy and growing.  The process of establishing this symbiotic relationship is referred to as "cycling".

You can cycle with fish or without fish.  The choice is yours.  Whether you cycle with fish or without fish, you will need to keep an eye on the water chemistry so go ahead and invest in a good water quality test kit.  These kits will allow you to test for pH, ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates.

I have cycled systems both ways and I prefer fishless cycling.  I will admit it:  I am a mushmellow.  It bothers me when fish die.  I feel like I am their steward and when they die I have failed them.  The truth is when you cycle with fish some fish are going to die.  During cycling there will be ammonia and nitrite spikes that will kill fish.  It is a natural part of establishing the system.  Even if they are just the cheap little feeder goldfish from the pet store, it hurts me when they die.  So I like to cycle without the fish.

In fishless cycling you add ammonia to the fish holding tank (that has no fish in it) in an amount sufficient to bring it up to 0.5 ppm.  You then test the water daily until levels fall back below 0.5.  You add ammonia again to bring it up to 0.5 and wait for it to drop.  After a week or two of this you will start to see some nitrites show up.  These are the nitrosomona bacteria that are establishing themselves in the system and will start to convert that ammonia to nitrites.   You should see a big spike in nitrites before the nitrates show up.  Once the nitrates show up that means you have nitro bacters growing in the system. These guys will take nitrite and convert it into nitrate.  Once this cycle is established you can safely add fish to the system. 

The amount of time it takes to cycle a system without fish can vary from 3 to 6 weeks.  Things that affect the cycle time period are water temperature and pH. Keep your water temperatures on the warm side and the pH in the neutral zone. Also, if you start cycling with water straight from the tap, it will have chlorine in it.  This chlorine is there to kill the unsafe bacteria in your drinking water.  It will also kill your nitrifying bacteria.  That means anytime you use straight tap water you are setting yourself back.  Luckily chlorine readily off-gasses and if you let your water stand for 24 hours the chlorine/chloramine will dissipate and you can safely use it in your aquaponic system.  This is especially true when you need to top off an existing system.

Cycling takes patience.  In the mean time, enjoy the plants that you put in your system.  You have to have plants for the cycle to be established, so plant some water loving plants.  Things like basil, mint, and tomato will do well in a system that is not cycled.  This is because they like water and the lack of nitrogen doesn't really bother them.  In fact, if nitrogen levels get too high, tomato plants will grow but not bloom!  Onions are also great plants for cycling. I've even cycled with petunias!

There is another method of fishless cycling that is mostly promoted by men. It is called "pee-ponics" and instead of adding pure ammonia from the store into the system, human urine (referred to as "hummonia") is added to the system.  Don't really understand why men want to pee into their aquaponic systems, but to each their own.

You can speed up cycling by inoculating your system with bacteria from a healthy system that is already established.  This can be done by taking water from the filter of a healthy system or simply taking water from a healthy system.  Be very careful when doing this.  If the system from which you take your water is not healthy, then you have just spread its disease to your system.  If you have one already cycled and well operating aquaponic system, then by all means harvest the bacteria from your existing system to jump-start your new system.

Lastly, you can go to a pet store that deals in aquariums and purchase bacteria in a bottle.  I am not a fan of this because it is pricey and honestly, how long can those bacteria live in a bottle?

How do you cycle?  I'd love to hear your experiences.

A Tale of Two Eggplants

I love nightshades.  They are one of the most diverse families of plants and contain some of my most favorite things to eat.  The Solanaceaes include tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and potatoes.  It also includes petunias and tobacco..  You can keep the potatoes, petunias and  tobacco.  I don't smoke, I don't like to eat potatoes ( I prefer rice) and petunias stink. But tomatoes, peppers and eggplants....Oh My!  And cooking all three together?  Even more Oh My!

I am currently growing several types of tomatoes, peppers, and one type of eggplant.  I have had poor luck with germinating pepper and eggplant seeds this season for some reason.  I put my eggplants in two different test systems this time to see if there was a difference in plant growth or production.  Early results say that my eggplants are preferring a flood and drain environment to a deep water culture (DWC) system.

Here is the picture of the eggplant in my flood and drain test bed. 

The largest leaf on this plant measures 9" wide and is 11" long. As a matter of fact I had to tie it up today as the leaves are so heavy the plant had flopped over and was shading the rosemary.

Here is a picture from the deep water culture test bed.

The largest leaf on this plant measures 4" wide and 4" long. It has just flowered.  Same type of plant, planted at the same time.  By the way, look in the background of this picture and you can see how much my onions love DWC. If you don't have onions in your DWC get some now!

The flood and drain system is only slightly older than the DWC by about 2 weeks.  Both systems were cycled early last spring so they are approaching their first birthday.  Both have the same number of fish.

So far, it is looking like flood and drain is the way to go for growing eggplant.  Part of making sure your garden can survive is testing things out to see what works best.  Before growing anything on a larger scale, I run a test garden. I am also currently testing peppers in flood and drain versus nutrient film technique (NFT).
Stay tuned for those results.

How do you grow your eggplants?

Why Round is Better All Around

Just because I haven't been blogging doesn't mean I haven't been busy.  It means I have been too busy to blog!

Here in South Florida, what every one else calls winter is what we call our growing season.  It is the only time when temperatures, humidity levels, and rainfall all fall back into levels that support hearty and healthy plant growth.

In our own aquaponic systems we have mints, onions, peppers, tomatoes, brussels sprouts, eggplant, arugula and endive chugging along.  In soil we have tomatoes and peppers.  Each and everyone has appeared to have had a very merry Christmas and are starting off the new year great.

Things weren't the same over at the Together We Stand gardens.  The aerator to the fish tanks gave up the ghost. Fish croaked (and these fish are tilapia not croakers - a totally different fish but I digress).  Ammonia levels spiked. Fish croaked.  Ammonia levels went higher.  Well you get the picture.  We were stuck in a closed loop of high ammonia levels and dead fish.  Significant water changes were only making a marginal difference.  We lost over 60 fish in one day!  At this rate, this aquaponic garden was not going to survive.  It was time for detective work.

We started with what we knew to be true.  Aeration had been restored.  Dissolved oxygen should not be the culprit. Even after a couple of 60% water changes ammonia levels continued to be off the charts. The fish were not being fed so they weren't making the ammonia and after removing the dead fish the levels did not come down.  There had to be something we were missing....and there was.

The fish tanks in use are designed with grooves on the inside for placing dividers.  The bottom of the tank is a series of three inverted pyramids.  This is supposed to allow the grower to divide the tank into three areas to separate fish of different sizes.  If you don't understand the description, here is a picture (which should be good for at least 1,000 words).

In reality what this actually does is provide a very deep area in which something like a dead fish can settle. Yes folks, that is what turned out to be the source of our ammonia problem.  After draining the tanks down  to about 25% we were able to see the 13 dead fish that had settled in those inverted pyramids.  When the aerator failed, not all the fish that died had floated. Some had settled and that was the source of the ammonia.  Once those areas were cleaned and the tanks refilled, the ammonia levels  went down and stayed down. I don't want to live those 2 days again.  But, with the mystery solved on the third day we were back on track. 

Dr. James Rakocy, the father of aquaponics has always advocated for round fish tanks.  You can't hide in the corners if there aren't any corners.  Now even though these tanks have radius corners at the edges, they still have corners of a sort on the bottom.  So to the adage that tanks should be round, lets add that they should have flat bottoms.

After all, how can your garden survive if the fish themselves can't survive?