Aquaponics - Seed raising in sphagnum moss

Anyone looking for a nice clean medium to sprout seeds for aquaponics should have a look at sphagnum moss. The seedlings come out with out any damage to roots, and perfectly clean.

You can even place a wad directly into your system and put the seeds into it. Then either leave the moss in place for ever (it doesn't rot, but springs back into life, even though you buy it dry and dead).

You could also just pick it out once the plant had become established.

Here are radishes, and some kind of leek or something growing on my kitchen window sill.




120 Things in 20 years grew something!

The shell grit seed raising seems to have worked.

There was some slight discolouration on some leaves that I think might be due to nutrient lockout because the pH is probably off the chart in that local area, but generally speaking, I think it works. The discolouration is not shown well on this pic. The true colour is closer to the lettuce leaf on the left.



When pH is at certain levels, various elements become less available. If your system sits at about pH 7.0 then everything is available.

I just lifted my first seedling out of the shell grit, and it had a 24cm root that came out in tact. I made no attempt to be gentle and just lifted it out. I tried another one and achieved the same result.

Anyway, no washing - not even a rinse, and three tiny bits of shell grit was all there was stuck to the roots.

I think I should have left it a little longer because there were hardly any side roots developed, but I planted it next to some existing established kale, so I'll have something to compare it with. The existing kale was planted around ten days earlier.

I add some seasol® from time to time, so I might add it directly into the shell grit once I see sprouts to make sure there are extra trace elements available next time. The slight discolouration might also be due to lower oxygen levels as the water probably moves quite slowly through the fine particles. I might sive the shell grit so I can get a slightly bigger particle size. I plan on reusing it for ever, so it's no big deal to sieve it.



120 Things in 20 years thinks raising seedlings in shell grit feels like a success

Aquaponics - Shell grit seed raising bee and gecko visitors

I found a little helper in my shell grit seed raising trial.

This gecko is tiny!












I also found a bee.

That's two now this year I think.

It left soon after I saw it visit my freshly transplanted wild rocket.

But my bee came back a little while later.

At least I think it was the same bee.

It certainly looked and behaved like the previous bee.

She looks busy.







120 Things in 20 years is now a bee keeper. I keep a bee.

Aquaponics - Shell grit seed raising shoots

My attempt at raising seedlings in shell grit seems to have worked.

No real surprise there, because if it's going to fail it wont be for a while yet. The point of failure, if there is one, will be the plants rotting because the water might flow through too slowly, and become stagnant.

The shoots appeared this morning.

The lettuce and rocket have sprouted, but the kale is yet to.

I think it was only 4 days ago that they were sown.

On a slightly interesting note, the seeds that were directly sown to the growbed came up yesterday afternoon.

They were sown around 10 days ago. I figured they weren't going to show and moved on to trying the shell grit idea.






I still think it will be better to grow seedlings and transplant them just so you can space the plants properly. When you direct sow, you have to plant lots of extra and think them out because some don't grow, and some move around a bit and as a result you can get clumps of seedlings all in one spot.

Anyway...

So far so good with the seed raising in shell grit experiment.

120 Things in 20 years still has no taglines forming in its addled brain.

Aquaponics - Shell grit seed raising

It seems like I've been trying for ages to find a decent method to raise seedlings from seeds.

My preferred method would be to just throw them all over the place and see what happens, but I suspect the clay ball media allows seeds to fall way down into it. It's possible that with the normal vibrations of city life, that the seeds fall all the way down into the water and then sink to the bottom and rot.

One problem with raising seeds in potting mix is that you do a lot of damage to the roots when you wash them before transplanting them into the aquaponics system.

I add shell grit to the system as a pH adjuster. The nitrifying bacteria tend to move the system toward the acid side, and the shell grit brings the pH back into line (approx pH 7.0).

So I figured it might be a good idea to raise my seedlings in shellgrit.

I started with a food container, and drilled a few holes around the base.

Then added the mesh from a stainless steel sieve, and filled it with shell grit.

Shell grit can be bought where ever you might buy chicken feed, as they sell it to people who have chickens. Chickens eat it and it helps make their eggshells strong.

I chose a space close to the water inlet in the growbed to bury it so the water flowing through would have high levels of dissolved oxygen. I figured this might be important as the flow through the tightly packed shell grit would be slow.

I buried it at a depth so the water level just reached the shell grit. The water "wicks" up through the shell grit so it stays moist.

I also added a lid in the form of another food container.











I'm not sure if the lid is needed, but a lot of store bought seed raising trays have lids so I thought I'd add one. It probably isn't required because I'd guess the lids are used to keep the moisture in, but with water always wicking up from the bottom...

Who knows.

I have no idea if this will work, but as always, I'll let you know one way or the other.


120 Things in 20 years - My ribs hurt.

Aquaponics - Cucumber sprouts

Every single one of the capsicum sprouts got munched by slugs.

Now I have cucumber sprouts that have worked realy well in the bean sprout sprouter.

These seem to have done particularly well in the sprouter, but that could just be because they are a large seed, and make a large sprout.








I'm calling using a bean sprout sprouter to raise seedlings for aquaponics, a total success.

This cucumber sprout is around 240mm in total length from tip of root to leaves.

That's a big sprout.

All grown from seed in the bean sprout sprouter, and all strong, healthy, and best of all totally organic.

Actually the real "best of all", is that it doesnt contain any dirt that needs washing off before planting in the system.

Also, it's length means the roots should reach nearly to the bottom of my grow beds.

Much more than they need to find all the water and nutrient they could desire.



And all that means they should have no problems growing.





120 Things in 20 years - struggling without a spell checker to post anything at all, but still managing to put some semi-science out there in the form of my Aquaponics cucumber sprouts.

Aquaponics - Sprouter seed raising

A few of my capsicum (Sweet Romano peppers) seeds have come to life.

I put them into by bean sprout sprouter that I bought a while back.

It seems to have worked.

I also planted some seeds directly in the grow bed to compare, but there is no sign of them doing anything yet. I wouldn't imagine they would sprout any sooner in a grow bed than a bean sprout sprouter, but even if they did I wouldn't see them yet as they are below the surface. I'm trying to avoid the temptation of digging around a bit in the media, because I'd like to keep this as scientific as I can.


It's a little early to call it a success, but I think it will probably work. I think I'll call it a success once it's been successfully transplanted, and even then, it will need to better that simply direct seeding into the grow bed.

What sprouting will enable me to do, is be a bit more accurate in my placement of plants. When you direct seed a bed, you can never tell how many seeds will germinate, and if they will be all nicely spaced out.




120 Things in 20 years sometimes sees posts about raising seed for aquaponics in a sprouter, being marked with the word "success" even when it was just explained that it wasn't really a success.

Aquaponics - Sprouts

I found a device for making sprouts. Spouts for food. Bean sprouts etc. And I discovered I had to buy it.

It was $20 and consists of 5 layers of dish, each around two inches high, and they are stackable. The bottom container has no siphon, and is there just to catch water.

You sprinkle grain around in one of the trays and then pour water into the top.

The water flows through each chamber in turn, and they all get a rinse and a watering.

The water collects in the bottom and is emptied.

Pictured here is some lentils and beans that I found in the cupboard.

The water flows through a tiny bell siphon.

The siphon looks like this with the bell off.

So you put some seeds in, and a few days later, you get a nich little field of spouts. In this case alf alfa.











But I thought it might make a good way to raise seeds for aquaponics, so that they had a root long enough to get down to the water before being added to the system.

Planting seeds directly is a bit hit and miss in aquaponics. When ever I've done it, the results are a little patchy, I think because some seeds don't fall into the media enough, some too much, and some just right.

So I put some of my favourite variety of capsicum into the tray to see what would happen.

The variety is "Sweet Romano Pepper" and it's the only one worth growing in my opinion.

They are a zillion times sweeter than the more square variety that is the only one that seems to be available here.

I like this product so much I''d sell it to you if I could.

All that's left now is to wait for a bit and see if this seed raising method will work.



That 120 Things in 20 years - Aquaponics - Sprouts post took a while to get to the point.

Aquaponics - Raising seeds

My experimental seed raising system started nearly two months ago, and consisted of a small seed raising mini-growhouse with an inch of fish tank water in the bottom.

The little growhouse was filled with plastic cups with holes drilled in the bottom. These were filled with scoria as my grow medium.

For the first two months or so everything semed to grow well. I would just drop the seeds on the top of the media, (except for beans, where I added a layer of scoria over the top) and was seeing around 50% success in germination.

The condensation forming inside the mini-growhouse would rain down on the seeds and keep them moist.


Most of what I was growing was basil, and coz lettuce. As the plants got big enough that I thought their tap root reached the bottom of the cup, I'd move them into my NFT tubes.

The interesting thing was that the water stayed fresh.

Very fresh. No smell and it looked clear enough to drink.

Normally water left sitting for months would sour, but even though the water had fish nutrient  (the water was from the fish tank) it stayed sweet.

Pictured here is what it looks like after three months.

Its still surprisingly clear and still has no smell.











I plant coz lettuce every few days to keep a constant supply, but the last few batches haven't done so well, so I thought I'd inspect the growhouse a bit more closely.

It still looks pretty good, but there are some signs of the water going a little slimy. Keep in mind this is the original water.

It's possible that the slime is rotting the seeds before they can germinate, or perhaps it's just that the nutrient is depleted, but I thought I should was it down and start again.

From now on I think I'll clean it every month or so.

It's no great task to was it, but I wanted to see how long it would last. It seems that the cycle of evaporation, condensation, and dripping rain from the ceiling all within the little growhouse has in some way kept everything fresh.

The brown you can see is dirt on the bottom rather than slime growing or fish solids. Some of the original pots for the basil were not cleaned as well as they could have been.


All in all, it's been an interesting experiment, and I can see no reason why it shouldn't continue to be my way of growing lettuce seedlings on an ongoing fashion.

[Not all seeds took well to it. The baby spinach tended to rot before germination, as did larger seeds like rock melon, although both those seed types came from old packets, so it's possible the method had nothing to do with it]


120 Things in 20 years - where shortcuts and time saving, lazy methods of aquaponics, and raising seeds is a way of life.

Aquaponics - Mini seed raising grow house success

It's well over a month since I wrote a post on seed raising, where I tried my current method for the first time.

I think it's a success.

I planted fifteen cups with perhaps two or three basil seeds in each. From that I got around thirty sprouts with every cup having at least one successful sprout. I'm not sure what the normal germination rates are for basil, but that's good enough for me.

The main advantage is that they are planted directly in the posts they will spend their entire lives in, so they wont get disturbed with transplanting.

I've since removed two sprouts and planted the pots with lettuce, with each one planted about 10 days apart. (a new lettuce cup is in there now to the left of centre) This means that, since the basil sprouted, I've planted, sprouted, and moved out two cups with cos lettuce in the time the basil has taken for the basil to have grown enough to be ready to move.

Here's one coz lettuce I just moved.

There are three seedlings in it, and I'm pretty sure I put three seeds in, so my method seems to be working fine.

I'll probably take the smallest one out, but my experience with three or more spinach seedlings in the one cup says it should be fine. I repeat harvest spinach and lettuce, so the plants never get to full size, but if one get's too big, I'll just harvest the excess and just leave one per pot. Whole small coz leaves make great Caesar salad.

This is another cos lettuce cup I moved ten days ago or so.

The cos lettuce seedlings I grew without covering the seed at all. I just dropped them on the surface, and put the lid on the mini seed raising growhouse. The condensation rain was enough to keep them wet enough to grow roots long enough to touch the water. That's enough enoughs.





It's also interesting that it's the original water in the mini seed raising grow house, that is now around five weeks old with no signs of it going off or tuning green.

So here is my official seed raising guide...




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120 Things in 20 years Seed raising guide 2011        Page 1 of 1  



Put a seed on top of a pot filled with scoria.
Put the pot into a mini seed raising growhouse with an inch deep of fish tank water in it.




                      this space intentionally left blank




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You can print that out and make a calendar with it if you like.


120 things in 20 years. Not just empty space and success with mini seed raising grow houses for aquaponics, but so much more.

Aquaponics - Seed raising

I love seeing the first sign of a seed sprouting.

But I don't like how much space an empty pot of gravel takes up, so I came up with a better way.

I've talked before about how I've tried to make my space modular so I can shift plants to places where there is more space when they need it, but keep them packed closely together when they are small, and don't need the space.

My original plan was to use small black plastic pots from my garden store, but now I use plastic cups.

This was partly due to not being able to find a hole cutter that fit the black pots perfectly. The cups are tapered, so will cope with my lack of accuracy with the hole cutter.

They seem to work well, and cost 4 cents instead of 25 per pot.

My original plan was to bury an ice cream container into the main grow bed, and then I could sit the newly seeded pots into it where they would be watered by the flood and drain of the grow bed's cycle.

The problem is, where I would have fit 9 of the black pots, I can only fit 4 of the plastic cups. This means it would take up too much grow bed space to run the intended 18 pots.

The object was to have up to 18 pots with various stages of seed raising from just planted, to a few weeks old. These would be moved to wider spaced holes within the NFT tubes as required, but would take up little space in the meantime.

I own a small seed raising mini-growhouse, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I was hoping that the enclosed design would keep the seeds damp, and keep any pests away.

Sure enough, its a few days later and I see sprouts.

These are all basil, being raised for a new proposed basil section behind my strawberry towers.

Water drips from the roof, and has so far kept all the grow media (scoria in my case) damp. The water that drips from the mini-growhouse ceiling would be basically distilled water, and as such would have no nutrient, but I don't think seeds actually need nutrient for the first few days. I think they live off their stored energy in the seed.

There is around 2cm deep of water in the bottom, and that is probably also contributing to the moisture content as a result of wicking.

I filled the pots nearly to the top, added seeds, then added a layer of scoria. Then I gently watered them in with some water from the fish tank (gently, because it would be easy to wash the seeds away. (no doubt this deposited a small amount of nutrient onto the sroria as well)

My greatest concern was that the nutrient rich water from the fish tank would go rotten because the water was still, but it seems to smell fine after week one, and the seeds are starting to sprout.

I wonder if it's the constant "condensation rain" within the mini-growhouse keeping everything fresh.

Who knows, but it seems to be working.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the next two weeks or so when I it will be time to move them to their new homes. If they avoid growing mouldy, and the water stays fresh, I think I may have solved my seed raising requirements.

Aquaponics - Strawberry seeds

Strawberry plants from seeds!

I had no idea.

A few people I've spoken to about them, said that they haven't had much luck with germinating strawberry seeds, but there are some that have.

I plan on being in the "some that have group".

Strawberry seeds are roughly as small as you might imagine they would be. This isn't actually a strawberry seed pictured to the left with the toothpick, its a bit of dirt.

But it looks a lot like a strawberry seed.

By the time I realised I needed a photo of a strawberry seed, I didn't have any left, so I just substituted some seed shaped dirt.

Nobody will ever know.

I started out with some seed raising mix because of the reports I've read of other people struggling to get their seeds to germinate. I'm not sure that this is actually necessary, but it will mean I can rule out out poor soil if they fail.

I placed a seed in each pot, covered lightly with seed raising mix then pressed to contact.

Then I lightly watered them.













I'm not sure about the economics of using seeds as there were only eleven seeds in one of the packets.

I did actually email the company because I was a little disappointed, and they replied asking for my phone number, so perhaps that's not normal. I wont mention the brand just yet and see what happens. It could just be that the receptionist is going to ask me out on a date.

I'll wait and see.

The seeds cost around $7 a packet, and on the same day I bought nine little strawberry seedlings for $3.95, so unless my strawberries grow very rapidly up to the clouds revealing giants, special geese, and general adventure, I suspect I wont be buying any more.

From what I've been told by seed packets and humans, I should be waiting for some time between a day or two and eternity for these things to germinate.

So I guess there's nothing left to do but to watch this space.

I hate waiting.


.

Aquaponics - My first strawberry

One of the things most important to me in doing aquaponics, was to grow some strawberries. A lot of strawberries. I love them.

Some time ago I bought a selection of different varieties of strawberry to plant out to see which would work best in an aquaponics environment. Sadly only one seemed to thrive, and I have no idea which one it was.

Success! It's now fruiting, and in a couple of days I'll taste the fruits of my labour.

I'm now frantically searching to see if there is some way to clone this plant.

I know that at some stage in their growth cycle they send out runners, but there might be a way to divide up this plant to get a lot more going rather than doing all that waiting.











On a not so successful note, I planted out some seeds a few days ago, and there have been mixed results.

Pictured here are giant white radish.

For some crazy reason, many of them seem to have died.

They look like they over heated, but the weather was far too cool for that. They definitely didn't dry out. The only other thing I can think of was that perhaps the water and fish emulsion tea was too strong, and it burnt the leaves from direct contact.

I'll see if I can water them without getting them wet.

Aquaponics - seed raising

The second, bigger aquaponics system is taking so long I'm scared I'm going to miss all this summer's growing season.

This poor little test system is looking a little crowded as I try to get as much as I can from it to keep us supplied with salad greens and long stemmed broccoli.

I really cant wait to get hold of all that new veggie growing real estate in the new system.

In a desperate attempt to have something to plant in it if it ever gets finished, I've set about planting out some seeds in a seed raising tray. I've also planted some seeds in a few other containers.

To try to keep dirt out of my system, I decided I would try to raise the seeds in a course builder's sand available at my local hardware. I have no idea if this is going to work, but if it does the roots should come out with ease, and be relatively undamaged. Because there is no nutrient in the sand I'm watering the containers with water with some fish emulsion added.

One of the great things about aquaponics is, when you transplant something, it springs to life without missing a beat. Even when I plant seedlings that I have handled enough to wash all the store bought dirt from the roots before transplanting, everything seems to cope without all that wilting I used to get in my dirt garden.



It's raining like a crazy raining thing at the moment, but as soon as it stops, Ill make the finishing touches to my new grow bed, then get some gravel.