Water management and Strategies for water conservation

[niqueie]

That is great info. A whole lot of work. Can you post pictures of your garden and aqua ponies too.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

That is great info. A whole lot of work. Can you post pictures of your garden and aqua ponies too.

Thanks! Sure I can post pics, all of the following were posted to other threads.

Well, nearly half of the garden (12' X 20') is now covered with a greenhouse and the larger portion we used to plant fruit trees. We have Minneola tangelo, lime, moringa and two kinds each of nectarine and plum in there. We still keep the area with the fruit trees heavily mulched and it provides the chickens endless hours of foraging under shelter of the trees.

The greenhouse is split up with half occupied by the heart of the aquaponics system and half the original dirt garden. Early on we decided we wanted to try tilapia, which are difficult to keep alive in the coldest days of our winters. My idea was to dig a deep hole for the sump to access some of the moderate temperatures down deeper in the earth. Along with the sump I made a large above ground tank, my hope was that such large quantities of water inside the greenhouse would help moderate the temperatures overnight.


I started by digging a 4' X 4' X 8' hole. It was tricky because I had to make sure that the surface of the water in the sump tank would be higher than water run off from the yard and garden could accumulate so I had to build up the grade again around where the sump was located. After all the construction was completed we removed the soil over the garden area so that it was again below grade.



I lined that hole with cement blocks.




I lined the hole with fish-safe EPDM pond liner and then built a frame for a grow bed above. The sump holds about 700+ gallons.

The grow bed is filled mostly with lava rock with river rock on the top couple inches.



Around that we built a high tunnel hoop house.



Then we added the main above ground tank adjacent to the sump/grow bed. It holds about 550 gallons.



Here is the interior last winter. The pvc tubes are cycling water from the fish tanks and the plants below are in the original dirt garden.




The exterior in winter.





Overall, the plan to keep the fish alive has worked very well. In the worst of the cold two winters ago the water temps never got below 48 and with the mild winter we just had it never got lower than 58. We've not yet lost a fish to cold. In the spring we remove the poly cover and put on 40% aluminet shade cloth, which works well to keep the climate inside cooler. The deep sump also helps keep the water cooler in the summer. Even when it's 110+ outside for weeks on end the water temperature never exceeded 84. We have other grow beds outside now but I don't have any pictures.

 

[niqueie]

That is great info. A whole lot of work. Can you post pictures of your garden and aqua ponies too.

Aquaponics. Dang auto correct

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Quote: It's o.k., we know aqua ponies!

 

[niqueie]

Wow. I love your set up. So you use the underground water to just moderate water temperature? What grows better the aquaponics veggies or ground veggies? Also do you have a lot of evaporation. We have been finding that we are losing a lot of water to evaporation.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Wow. I love your set up. So you use the underground water to just moderate water temperature? What grows better the aquaponics veggies or ground veggies? Also do you have a lot of evaporation. We have been finding that we are losing a lot of water to evaporation.

Thanks! Well, we ended up using it as fish tank too. Most of the fish are down there. Ultimately, I plan to breed in aquariums and raise fry to sellable size in the above ground tank. Yes, there is a fair amount lost from transpiration by the plants, but overall, it uses less water than does the dirt garden. I think the amount lost to transpiration also depends on the plant. I have a chayote vine that seems to be a water hog. The rule of thumb is that an AP system that will feed a family of 3-4 will use about the amount of water that one person uses in the shower.

What grows better in ground vs. aquaponics really seems to vary with the vegetable. Things that have done slightly better in AP: lettuce, celery, parsley, basil, swiss chard, sorrel, cucumbers. Things that seem to do better in the soil: any root vegetable because of the density of the rock (although onions seem to be an exception), arugula and peppers. Things that have done equally well in AP and soil: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage (any brassica), tomatoes, snow peas, egg plant. I think I'm forgetting a bunch of things, but those are most of the stapes of what we grow and which I've compared in the two growing conditions.

Relating back to earlier comments, I really like the pvc cutters.

They are worth every penny (even though they're cheap). While they say you can cut up to 2" pvc with them, I'm not able to cut anything greater than 1 1/4" and even that is a challenge. Also, like the others I don't glue any pvc that is not under pressure. It makes it much easier to move things around as needed.

 

[niqueie]

I agree on the no glue for PVC. We have cut all our PVC pipe with a electric miter saw. It's worked great. The only problem was the slits where you don't go all the way through have been very hard to control the blade and PVC. It got dangerous. We stopped using it for slits.

 

[niqueie]

Thanks!  Well, we ended up using it as fish tank too.  Most of the fish are down there.  Ultimately, I plan to breed in aquariums and raise fry to sellable size in the above ground tank.  Yes, there is a fair amount lost from transpiration by the plants, but overall, it uses less water than does the dirt garden.  I think the amount lost to transpiration also depends on the plant.  I have a chayote vine that seems to be a water hog.  The rule of thumb is that an AP system that will feed a family of 3-4 will use about the amount of water that one person uses in the shower.

What grows better in ground vs. aquaponics really seems to vary with the vegetable.  Things that have done slightly better in AP: lettuce, celery, parsley, basil, swiss chard, sorrel, cucumbers.   Things that seem to do better in the soil: any root vegetable because of the density of the rock (although onions seem to be an exception), arugula and peppers.  Things that have done equally well in AP and soil:  broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage (any brassica), tomatoes, snow peas, egg plant.  I think I'm forgetting a bunch of things, but those are most of the stapes of what we grow and which I've compared in the two growing conditions.

Relating back to earlier comments, I really like the pvc cutters.     They are worth every penny (even though they're cheap).  While they say you can cut up to 2" pvc with them, I'm not able to cut anything greater than 1 1/4" and even that is a challenge.  Also, like the others I don't glue any pvc that is not under pressure.  It makes it much easier to move things around as needed.   

That is excellent to know. Thanks so much for sharing all that with a newbee.

 

[perchie.girl]

I've enjoyed this thread and figured I should contribute. As an avid gardener in the desert southwest of the US, I have to consider water conservation in everything I do in the yard. Water is expensive here in Tucson and anything I can do to lower that bill is money in our pockets. When we first bought this house nearly seven years ago, surrounded by block walls, in the center of the city on just over 1/3 of an acre we had great plans for a garden and fruit trees. Our first rain event after moving in made us realize we'd have to figure out how to stop the run off. We got about 1/2" of rain that day and it ran off in rivers on either side of the house and down into the street. After the rain stopped I checked the soil and the moisture had barely penetrated below the surface. That was about 1/20th or our annual rainfall and most of it just flowed away into the storm drains. We had to figure out how to keep it on the property.

The soil here is terrible, with almost no organic content and a pH of about 8. Rain is rare (less than 10" over the past few years) and when it comes, it wants to flow horizontally down hill rather than soak in. Down about 6" below the surface is a layer nearly a foot thick of caliche (calcium carbonate), which is about the hardness of concrete. In short, it's not very good for gardening. We had to make our own garden soil.

I tackled the problem of keeping the rain water on the property at the same time that I made the garden. In the back of the property I dug out a hole for the garden that ended up being 12' wide by 50' long, with a depth of about 3' at the edges and 4' in the center. I took most of that soil that I dug out and used it to change the grade of the yard. Where initially the high point on the property was at the back wall and sloped down to the street in the front, I changed it so that the high point was on either side of the house near the front gates with everything sloping down to the garden at the back of the property. I essentially reversed the grade. I didn't do this all at once, but rather over a couple of years. It was a lot of dirt to move by hand.

In the garden hole I drove down 2'-3' pieces of branches with a sledge hammer to perforate the bottom further and add more organic material. I then filled most of the hole with any good organic material I could get my hands on, e.g. truckloads of horse manure, tree branches, palm fronds, prickly pear cactus, grape vines. I filled the top 12" with a mixture of compost and native soil so that I could grow immediately, even while the materials beneath were decomposing. Because the organic material breaks down quickly, the surface of the garden sinks so that it is below the grade. Most of the water that falls on the property now flows into the garden. There it soaks down and laterally into the soil layers below the caliche and keeps it moist all year long, where before it was dry. We mulch like crazy to further conserve water. I mostly use shredded cardboard, pine shavings and alfalfa.

It's been shocking how much organic material it took to get to a point where it sinks very little. Once or twice a year I double-dig the soil, adding more organic material to the bottom. After about six years, I've nearly filled it up. The quality of the soil is incredible, probably better than the great soil on our farm in MI when I was growing up. It's so rich and dark, a sharp contrast to our native soil. Oh, one more thing, we added worms. We have native worms here, they just usually aren't all that common, so I also added night crawlers and red wiggler composting worms. They all seem to occupy different niches and their numbers in the soil now are truly astonishing.

We also have an aquaponics system in it's third year of use and cisterns (which I haven't yet hooked up). So, that's my introduction. I like to save water so I can give it to plants.

It sounds like you did Hügelkultur or a variation of it.... My goodness you performed a Herculean effort.

When my Dad was helping manage a grove of apple trees on about forty acres. Hard pan down like you say.... The trees were beginning to drown from irrigation. Solution.... Quarter sitcks of dynamite spaced about twenty feet apart Bore a hole as deep as you can get it.... Cracked the hardpan so the water could drain..... Of course that was back in the 40s when handing over a case of dynamite to a seventeen year old was no big deal....

Was your dirt originally Decomposed Granite or a smaller grained dirt. I hesitate to say soil because here there too is very little organic mateerial in the desert. Down by the coast they build houses here and lay out about six inches of soil ontop of The predominatnly clay soils. Its a nasty grey clay and when wet will suck the shoes off you AND your horse. You dig a hole for a tree and you have essentially made a POT.

I hope you share some pix... I am reading chronologically.

deb

 

[perchie.girl]

I am planning on doing the aquaponics above ground. My house was built with a green house attached to it. I replaced the glass with a real roof though. 140 degrees in the summer time there was too much. So now I have a room thats about 20 x 14 with a concrete floor and floor drains. Also access to a bit of dirt in the corner about 2 x 4 space. I think the idea was to put a bathroom there once... dont know.

The room has water source drainage and a good place to start the Aquaponics. The concrete floor will make it much easier for me to get about with my walker or eventually a wheel chair. I am thinking of doing a sump arangement to lift the water up to a water only tote setup maybe six feet off the ground. Then using gravity for the rest.

I am thinking the gray water should not be mixed with the Aquaponics till I know its safe to use for edible plants. So Access for Bathroom and Kitchen are on the opposite side of the house. I will slate that for growing fruit trees. Dad said he had a peach tree that had Softball sized fruit... Juicy and very very sweet. Because it had tapped into their septic tank.... LOL But I want to grow some Hyacinth with the water before it gets to fruit trees.

Sketching is almost done....

deb