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Category: 21c Homestead

Backyard Aquaponics Update, 2021

Backyard Aquaponics Update, 2021

Published by MichelV69 on May 25, 2021

Post Views: 3,207 Well, Let’s Start at the End of 2020, First So the season ended well last year. Of course, it was the Fall of Anno Covitatus, which meant that a lot was going on. Amongst other things, I had some mental health challenges that simply made social media in general and blogging in particular a lot more effort than it was worth. That’s mostly sorted out now and I’m doing a lot better. The “Dutch Bucket In Bucket” concept for the tomatoes worked brilliantly, as you can see from the photo to the right. 12 plants in 9 buckets produced a wealth of all three kinds of tomatoes we planted. We had cherry tomatoes for grazing snacks, slicing tomatoes for summer sandwiches, and of course sauce-making…

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Backyard Aquaponics 2020 – Quick Update 03

Backyard Aquaponics 2020 – Quick Update 03

Published by MichelV69 on June 24, 2020

Post Views: 1,215 In spite of the heat-wave we’re currently suffering through here in Morell, Prince Edward Island, I was out yesterday doing some planting on the aquaponics system. I needed to get the Dutch-Bucket-in-Bucket system finished up to clear the way in the Media Grow-bed for other new plants. The concern, based on prior experience, is that tomatoes do a lot of root-production before they start showing substantial growth above ground. So while it looked like not much had changed since I put the plants into the media bed, I suspected that wasn’t the case. Sure enough, when I tried lifting the first tomato plant, the roots had expanded sufficiently that I couldn’t actually just pick it up. I had to under-cut the plant and then lift…

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Backyard Aquaponics 2020 – Quick Update 02

Published by MichelV69 on June 22, 2020

Post Views: 870 The strawberry tower is finally set up, and sleepy plants are in, as of Saturday. Most of them are already looking much less dormant as of this morning. The tower, as you can see, is full of “hydroton” clay pellets; there are 4 “bays” per tier, with five tiers. That gives me space for 20 plants, which is what I’ve done. I had a handful of plants left over, so they’ve been planted in the green horizontal flood-and-drain pipe running horizontally at the top of the image below. The awkward plumbing is actually the out-spout end of a typical bell-siphon. There is a 710ml pop-bottle being used for the “bell” over a 25mm SCH-40 PVC stand-pipe, which then drops down to the “T”. There is…

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Backyard Aquaponics 2020 – Quick Update 01

Published by MichelV69 on June 12, 2020

Post Views: 1,410 More stuff has been planted / transplanted. I’ve moved the first batch of tomatoes out of the grow-pipes into the flood-and-drain media bed. The roots were already 20mm+ sticking out the bottom of the net-pots, so I’m glad I did that now. New pack of tomatoes, plus some basil, added as well.This is temporary, as I need to finish the hybrid Dutch-bucket-in-bucket system, and that will be where I move the tomatoes to. That’s likely next weekend, as I’m waiting on a couple of bags of clay pellets to be delivered. Still, progress is progress. More updates to follow. I post semi-regular video updates to YouTube, if you’d like to listen to me ramble and Muppet-flail. Either way, feel free to leave comments and questions…

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Backyard Aquaponics 2019 Edition

Published by MichelV69 on June 21, 2019

Post Views: 1,011 Introduction Howdy, folks. For those of you who followed along with my 2018 Notes series, or are following me via YouTube on the 2019 play list, I wanted to take a bit of time and get a blog post put together. This is going to be a combination of a “Build Walk”, a “State of the System” report, a “Hopes and Dreams” discussion, as well as whatever else comes to mind as I’m writing. Words of warning now; I expect this will be a long one. The build plan for 2019 As you likely recall from the 2018 Backyard Aquaponics, I had remarkably high Nitrate levels in the system all summer. Essentially, with 60 plants growing vigorously all season, I had heaps of “plant food”…

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Return to Sourdough Bread Making

Published by MichelV69 on November 9, 2018

Post Views: 1,678 So, I rewatched the “Netflix Original” documentary set “Cooked” again.  Based on the book by Michael Pollan, it also features and is narrated by him.  One chapter in particular, “Air” is what got me on the road for making my own bread. So, I tried several times to make bread using an “air start” sourdough core.  In every case, what I got was a flavourful but remarkably dense bread.  It was edible, but it just wasn’t matching what I thought bread should be.  Commercial yeasts did what I expected, but it was missing the depth of flavour and aroma that my sourdough experiments yielded. So, about a week ago, I went back and rewatched “Air”.  I figured out what it was I was missing.  Bread,…

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Notes on the 2018 Backyard Aquaponics Build (Part III)

Published by MichelV69 on July 2, 2018

Post Views: 1,910 Hello, and welcome to the third article in my series about my Backyard Aquaponics Build.  The idea is to raise 25 or so rainbow trout to right around 1Kg / 2lbs each to put into our freezer for suppers over the winter.  If all goes well, the system will recover its set-up costs over three summers, and will yield all the ingredients for sizeable batch of a good tomato-based pasta sauce each year as a bonus. In the last article, I talked about the “Grow-pipes” I am using instead of standard deep-media beds.  In this article, I’m going to touch on what I’m doing with air and power for the system.  I hope you find something useful! Disolved oxygen, known as “DO”, is crucial to…

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Notes on the 2018 Backyard Aquaponics Build (Part II)

Published by MichelV69 on June 28, 2018

Post Views: 1,068 Howdy, folks.  I’m back to talk some more about my backyard aquaponics build.  This is the second post in the series.  In the first article, I described the tanks and general water flow of the system, as well as a quick touch on the “grow-pipes” that I’m using.  In this article, I’m going to talk in greater detail about the grow-pipes, as well as what I anticipate might be issues with them. As I noted in the last article, the grow-pipes are 100mm / 4in diameter.  These are PVC “thin wall”, and not SCH-40;  that would have been far too expensive and not really added any value.    Every 150mm / 8in along the pipe, I’ve used a hole-saw in a drill press to put…

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