Gardening for Old Folks (Adaptative)

[lazy gardener]

Yikes, I got big into fish keeping but never had the patience for involved stuff like planted tanks. You're amazing.

Perhaps so... or maybe even unbalanced... like... one sandwich short of a picnic!!! Any hobby I take up, I go into it with gusto. I sold off all my fish, and dried up my tanks so I could build an incubator, tractor, and start a chicken flock! I knew I wouldn't have the mental energy, or time for both hobbies!

 

[CapricornFarm]

My hydro system starts with the planter in the picture. 5 gallon buckets with river rock in the bottom to about a 1/2" above the drain. Drain is 1/2" pvc with a rubber gasket. The bucket is lined with a paint strainer/filter and filled with perlite. Plants are planted in the perlite and lid closed to stop algae formation. All of the 1/2" drain lines gravity feed into a 2" pipe that returns to the reservoir.

I use one of those black tubs from lowes/homedepot with the yellow lid. I think about 25 gallon or so. In my last setup, I buried the reservoir, but since on rock this time, its packed with sandbags to help maintain water temps. I feed the reservoir from a 55 gallon drum on the deck piped in with 1" pvc and a float valve in the reservoir.

I use an 800+gpm submersible pump in order to move the water to the top of the planter (head height is the primary issue). I use 1/2" tubing from the pump for my main water feed lines, which run above and behind each row of buckets. Off the 1/2" lines are 1/4" flexible tubing connected to staked free flow emitters in each bucket.

Under the planter, I have a second reservoir fed by a 5 gallon bucket for my greens. I use a similar size pump and 1/2" lines to feed each plant. I've used pvc fence post covers with 2" holes for my plant cups. this area will probably get redesigned in spring as it didn't survive shipping well. A lot of people put their pumps on times, but they don't draw that much electricity so I just run them all the time.

I have two 4'X12' and one 4'X20' beds.

Here's a link to the mittleider gardening method. I had horrible soil in VA and couldn't get anything to grow and what I found was this was a good method for building soil. After 3 years of using this method and adding organic matter to my beds I had developed a really rich loamy soil. So after that, I maintained it with OMRI products with equal or better results from the previous years.

I have not had this soil tested yet, but will in spring and adjust based upon the findings. To me, the soil science remains a bit of voodoo so I'll provide the test results to the Fertrell folks and amend as they recommend, after double checking with my extension agent. I couldn't handle the freight for good fertilizer last year, but when I order my feed products, I'll include the fertilizers on the same pallet. It costs me $200 to get the pallet shipped to my co-op or if I can have it sent to a dealer, it's like $50.

Sorry for so many words....

Would love pictures too some time. Will you come out from under that chair for a hug?

 

[CapricornFarm]

Funny, I retired in Riverview... Almost starved to death.

I gave up on veggies in FL. Flowers bushes and trees grew great. Bugs eat everything else.

 

[rjohns39]

Would love pictures too some time. Will you come out from under that chair for a hug?

Post #94 has the planter on the right. Here a couple more views.

 

[CapricornFarm]

Post #94 has the planter on the right. Here a couple more views.
View attachment 1208603 View attachment 1208605

Wow, impressive!

 

[lazy gardener]

BTW, aquaponics are also advertised as being very handicap accessible or user friendly for the person with physical limitations.

 

[microchick]

Man o man I've been on BYC too long. I see all of those cattle panels and all I can think of is how many chicken runs I can make out of all of them!

 

[CapricornFarm]

I am chomping at the bit to get going on my greenhouse but it is too cold for concrete. I did order another seed catalogue though!

 

[rjohns39]

BTW, aquaponics are also advertised as being very handicap accessible or user friendly for the person with physical limitations.

They are because if you're gravity feeding, you need grow beds at a comfortable height. My first system was the bottom 2/3rds of an IBC as the fish tank and the top 1/3 as the grow bed. Small pump and flood and drain in the grow bed. After getting some basic nitrite/nitrate conversion using straight ammonia, getting the water temp, ph etc right, I added minnows and goldfish to finish seasoning the system. I planted kale, chard, spinach, lettuce and cucumbers in the bed. Everything flourished. I added catfish, who ate the minnows and gold fish. There were spikes and valleys, but it ran well. Huge plant growth. I added herbs, some carrots and radishes and everything thrived.

1st big mistake. Need to do succession planting. Before you harvest something that cleans the water, plant something to take its place. Survived it but had to jump through some hoops. Had to do a water change.
2nd big mistake (should have been obvious), Have a cage with replacement fish, before harvesting fish. Took 12 pounds of catfish out of the system and the plants started to die and ph levels went crazy, OMG. Got it back on track.
Next several harvests went well as I learned from mistakes.
3rd big mistake. Assume the model is 1:1 scaleable and didn't consider weather. After the huge summer success, built a greenhouse, put in two 275 gallon tanks and four 50 gallon tanks with 1000 gallon reservoir and a rain catch system (btw, different ph of the water). Do the math and have grow beds to support everything. Plants go crazy then start dying, add more fish, plants pickup fish start dying, add more plants... BTW this always happened when I was traveling on a business trip and DW was in conference with me and SIL (the fish guy) trying to figure it out. We finally got it balance and had great production both fish and plants. Then some idiot had a few too many and lost control of his car on the ice and knocked down three power poles. No electricity for two weeks. Fish in ice cubes. At that point I surrendered.

 

[CapricornFarm]

They are because if you're gravity feeding, you need grow beds at a comfortable height. My first system was the bottom 2/3rds of an IBC as the fish tank and the top 1/3 as the grow bed. Small pump and flood and drain in the grow bed. After getting some basic nitrite/nitrate conversion using straight ammonia, getting the water temp, ph etc right, I added minnows and goldfish to finish seasoning the system. I planted kale, chard, spinach, lettuce and cucumbers in the bed. Everything flourished. I added catfish, who ate the minnows and gold fish. There were spikes and valleys, but it ran well. Huge plant growth. I added herbs, some carrots and radishes and everything thrived.

1st big mistake. Need to do succession planting. Before you harvest something that cleans the water, plant something to take its place. Survived it but had to jump through some hoops. Had to do a water change.
2nd big mistake (should have been obvious), Have a cage with replacement fish, before harvesting fish. Took 12 pounds of catfish out of the system and the plants started to die and ph levels went crazy, OMG. Got it back on track.
Next several harvests went well as I learned from mistakes.
3rd big mistake. Assume the model is 1:1 scaleable and didn't consider weather. After the huge summer success, built a greenhouse, put in two 275 gallon tanks and four 50 gallon tanks with 1000 gallon reservoir and a rain catch system (btw, different ph of the water). Do the math and have grow beds to support everything. Plants go crazy then start dying, add more fish, plants pickup fish start dying, add more plants... BTW this always happened when I was traveling on a business trip and DW was in conference with me and SIL (the fish guy) trying to figure it out. We finally got it balance and had great production both fish and plants. Then some idiot had a few too many and lost control of his car on the ice and knocked down three power poles. No electricity for two weeks. Fish in ice cubes. At that point I surrendered.

Sounds complicated!