Aquaponics - Strawberry cross breeding

Cross breeding things is one of those things I know nothing about.

There are a great many others, but cross breeding is the one I make vague reference to in this post.

I have some strawberry plants that set pink flowers.

This surprised me a little because I didn't know they existed. But that's no big deal, as that's my standard level of understand I have of almost every species in the universe.

This picture doesn't really do them justice, but the better photo I took of this plant makes my eyes hurt.

The point I'm making here is that they are pink.

I also have a variety that has white flowers.

Really white flowers.

So white you cant photograph them on the auto setting of my camera, because my camera keeps looking deeper to see what it is I want it to capture.

White.

But exactly half way between those two plants in the grow bed, I find I now have pink flowers.

Light pink flowers.

This plant is one of the runners from one of my original plants with white flowers.

Now it's just as likely that this is just a lack of iron or something, as it is that some kind of cross breeding is going on, but that's not the point.

For one thing, I think to cross breed something you need it to flower, and then cross pollinate with a different variety. This means the flower wouldn't be pink yet. But it is a descendant of my first strawberry plant. This could mean it cross pollinated last season.

Or something.

So, and this bit is the point, I have no idea about this cross pollination business. And that means I need to find out.

So I'll find out.

If it's interesting, I'll let you know.

Aquaponics - My second system

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The new aquaponics system has started to take shape. We cut the first tank in half and it will become the grow beds.

Two 1750 mm x 1100 mm x 300 mm grow beds to start with and we may add another later. Two grow beds this size will feed my partner and me with all the veggies we will need but she's keen to try a cut flower garden as well, as am I. We have decided on pumps, sumps and plumbing  that should allow for some expansion.

I think we will need to brace the middle sections of the grow beds with some wire stretching from the center of one side to the center of the other to stop it bulging. Each bed will hold half a ton of scoria so there will be some pressure on the longest sides. Once cut, the tank halves lost a bit of their structural integrity, this was to be expected and should be easy enough to fix.

We are still struggling with the decision regarding painting with gripset51 or using a pond liner. I think at the moment we are leaning toward using pond liner simply because it will be faster and there wont be any drying time. And I hate the smell of paint. I also just get the feeling that even though its plastic the pond liner will suit aquaponics a bit better than paint.

Just in case anyone cares, from what I can work out a ton of scoria is roughly 1000 litres in volume (as bought in 25 kb bags from the hardware), and a ton of  7 - 14mm blue metal gravel is roughly 670 litres

A thousand litres of scoria bought in bulk will cost around AU$145 and a thousand litres of blue metal road gravel will cost around AU$90