Aquaponics - Sweet Remano Peppers

I raised the rest of my precious stash of Sweet Remano Pepper seeds in the sprouter over the last few weeks, and this time I've been laying beer traps all over their growbed space.

Beer is a wonderful, delicious thing, and an excellent use of grain. But it's even more attractive, and poisonous to slugs and snails as it is to humans.

A snail and slug beer trap is a relatively environmentally friendly way to kill slugs and snails, and involves putting a little beer in a bowl or cup, and leaving in the area you are trying to protect. I use Chinese tea cups. The slugs and snails love the stuff, and either drown in it, or it's poisonous to them in some way. Either way, you find them dead in the traps the next day.

I put four traps out for the last few days leading u to the time I figured I would be transplanting my sprouts, and trapped a few the first day, and none since then. The beer was changed every night at sundown (slugs become active at night) because the alcohol evaporates. I'm not sure if the alcohol has anything to do with it, but I'm guessing it does.

So I diligently maintained the traps before the transplanting, and last night I planted twelve of the sprouts into half of my scoria filled, flood and drain growbed, and another ten or so in a clump in the clay ball filled flood and drain growbed. The ten in the clump were planted like that so I can find space for them later, or fill the gaps from any that don't survive in the bed where they are nicely spaced.

I'll keep up the baiting until my beer runs out.



120 Things in 20 years - Aquaponics - Sweet Remano Peppers - One for the slugs, one for me. One for the slugs, one for me.

Aquaponics - PVC Tube tomatoes

My PVC tube tomato now seems to be growing at full speed.

There's stacks of new growth every day, and the first of the tomato flowers are just starting to form.

That should really read "the first of the tomato flowers since I cut all the existing flowers and leaves off, so that I could jam it into a PVC tube, are just starting to form".






The entire point of the exercise was to get the tomatoes outside where it could grow as big as it wanted without taking up all the space inside, but it looks like the entire system is about to be outside.

The grow house isn't UV stable, and as a result is turning to dust every time I so much as look at it.

Even a sly sideways glance from a distance sees yet more daylight induced destruction.

The hardware chain I bought it from will probably replace it, but this is my third one from them and I'm starting to wonder if they really care about the percentage of my life I spend dealing with a product that really shouldn't give any problems.

Any % of life spent at a returns counter, is too much %.