Cold Climate Home Garden Season Extender

If you have a large clay pot that is in the sun, you will notice how hot it gets in full sun exposure.  This observation is used here to build a mechanism to extend growing seasons.

The system is made up of a large clay reservoir filled with water (you could add mosquito retardant, or something to prevent algae growth) with a pipe connection at the bottom, a 12v solar water pump, and garden tubing (example 1/2" garden drip irrigation feed pipe).

The operation is simple.  During daylight hours the solar pump will power up and pump the cold water from the garden pipes into the clay reservoir.  When the sun goes down and the water is heated as much as it will, the solar pump will stop working and the water will flow back by gravity to the water lines in the garden bed. Note, one of the garden lines has a vertical element (sealed at the top and filled with water) that allows air to compress at the top to ease water travel back and forth.

A difficulty of this design will be connecting the water pipe to the clay reservoir.  You can simplify this by using a bladder inside the clay pot that has the hose connection and merely routing the piping through the pot.  Alternately, you can drill a hole in the pot, and install a bulkhead fitting like from here (http://www.jehmco.com/html/bulkhead_fittings.html).

Monitoring Aquaponic Grow Bed Water Levels

With ebb and flow water systems, it is useful to monitor your water level under the surface of your grow media.  This is a simple but effective method do that.

As you are filling media into your bed, put a length of 1.5" PVC pipe in the bed vertically in the media.  Allow the top to protrude above the media surface by a good 2 inches (5cm) at least.  If you are using fine media, it would be good to attach some fiberglass screening with plastic lock ties at the bottom of the pipe.

Now make the indicator using a straw and a piece of styrofoam that is smaller than the diameter of the PVC pipe.  Say about 1.5cm in width.

 Picture showing styrofoam with straw embedded.  Note the graduations marked on the straw.  This is long because I use deep grow beds in my setup.

Picture showing the level meter in operation.  Water filling the grow bed is causing the indicator to rise.

Salads with Ebb and Flow? YES!!

In aquaponics systems, salad greens are normally grown in a flow or flood system with the roots continuously in running water.  I have a deep bed ebb and flow system and recently populated one bed with mesclun salad mix seed.  I used the vermiculite bed for the salad greens.  Please see http://wolfenhawke.blogspot.com/2012/10/aquaponics-grow-beds-and-media-stackup.html for various media stackups.  Seeds were just spread on top of the fresh vermiculite.

The following picture is a successful yield offered by this method.

Bell Siphoning for Aquaponics Grow Beds

Aquaponics systems use one of two water recirculation systems primarily.  One method is the "flood system", "flow system", or "constant flow" system.  This system runs the water continuously through the root systems of vegetables.  The other method is the "flood and drain" or "ebb and flow" system.  This system adds water to grow beds causing the water level to rise to just below the media surface, and then drains the water and repeats the process continuously.

Flow systems are good for salad green farming.  Flood and Drain systems are good for all types of vegetables but are a little more complex.

As you have seen from my setup schematic, http://wolfenhawke.blogspot.com/2012/10/single-pump-aquaponics-system-design.html, I use Flood and Drain in my system.  This is accomplished by using a bell siphon in the grow bed.  This apparatus does not use energy but counts on vacuum created in a sealed water system.  There is plenty of information on building your bell siphon.  One paper is available here, http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/BIO-10.pdf.

Since my grow beds had a drain plug on the side, I used this. I do not recommend going from the side as the setup is more complex to tune, but I am showing this for interest/information.  Certainly, you can setup your similar beds with the draining straight down.

As you can see, my internal standpipe makes a 90 degree bend which is non-standard.















After that the bell pipe is installed on the standpipe.  Note, one disadvantage with the 90 degree standpipe connection, is that the bell pipe cannot seal as far to the bottom.  The top of the cut at the bottom of the bell pipe determines the minimum level of water in the grow bed.  My bed will have about two inches of water always at the bottom.

After this stage, you can fill the planter with your media.  As you can see, one benefit I do have with the 90 degree install, is that I can tune the height of the water draining by turning the bell pipe and standpipe as a unit.  I had to do this on all my planters to get the desired height -- this is likely because I do not use "snorkels" on my bell pipe and the trapped air is compressing and affecting the rising water level.

Single Pump Aquaponics System Design

I use an architecture in my aquaponics setup that requires a single pump per fish tank used.  This minimizes electricity and vastly reduces the complexity of the control system.  The water is pumped to my sludge separator design (see blog for details) which is at the highest location in the system.  Gravity is then used to move the water from the separator to the grow beds and back to the fish tank.  Using more than one fish tank in the same system requires balancing the effluent water from the grow beds and this will be addressed in another article.

The schematic of the setup is shown below:

The fish tank is shown below:

 













The sludge separator is shown here.  The pipe on the right is the influence. The pipe protruding from the front is the overflow back to the fish tank (a safety measure).











Here the piping is shown from the grow beds (3/4") to the collector (2") which returns the cleaned effluent back to the fish tank.

Since I use flood and drain as my water distribution, I could technically just keep the water pump running. I use drains on the side of the grow beds.  This side draining is much less efficient than bottom draining and what happens is that the water slows down in draining as it gets to the bottom of the bed.  This causes an equilibrium to be reached if the water pump is left on all the time.  At equilibrium the water is about 1/3 depth in the grow beds at all times.  I alleviate this problem, and save electricity to boot, by putting my water pump on a timer that runs 30minutes on, 30minutes off continuously.  This means I only pump half the time. It also allows the grow bed to get flooded and drain once per on/off cycle.

I have not had trouble with the side draining, but it does take a little tuning of the bell siphon.  We will cover this siphon design on another article.

Aquaponics Grow Beds and Media Stackup

Aquaponics is the raising of fish (for food) and recirculating the water through grow beds to grow vegetables (for food).  The ammonia that increases in the water in the fish tank is converted to nitrite and nitrate through the same process that occurs in a successfully operating fish tank.  In a display fish tank, this conversion occurs in the media in your filter and other areas (under the sand).  It is important to note that your fish tank filter's primary purpose is providing the media for the nitrogen cycle bacteria to thrive.  In aquaponics, this media is the material used to grow the vegetables.   The benefit of this is that the vegetation gets the nitrates they require directly as part of reducing the poisons in the fish water.  Thus you get a closed nitrogen cycle system.

On the post, Freeland-fp100-as-aquaponics-growbeds  I noted the Freeland bins that I use for my deep root grow beds.  On this post I will describe the stackup I use for the media.  The pictures below show a bed with hydroton as the top layer and one with vermiculite as the top layer.




The beds after being cut are 20" deep.  The bottom 6" are washed 3/4" gravel.  There is a long air stone buried in the bed at this point.  This is optional to have, but I wanted to inject air here to prevent any anaerobic bacterial action here.  A summary of the stackups I use is drawn below.

In some beds, I use Hydroton for the whole top layer (about 6" total depth).  In some I use about 4" of Hydroton and 4" of vermiculite.

The reason for the vermiculite is for seeding directly and for a variety of grow media depending on plant preferences.  Fine seeds work very well directly in the vermiculite.  I have had success with mixed salad green seeds, as well as tomato and cee gwa in the vermiculite.  I have had success with cee gwa directly in hydroton also.  In general for the hydroton beds, I start seeds in coconut husk pots filled with vermiculite.

The vermiculite really encourages robust root growth.  When harvesting often the top 3" of vermiculite is saturated with root (especially when growing tomatoe) and this must be disposed of and replaced with fresh material.  Below is a photo of vermiculite saturated with tomato root.  Also is a photo of cee gwa roots that were grown in hydroton.

Salad growing in a vermiculite bed:

Gazebo to Greenhouse: Roofing

The roof of the greenhouse is made of Solexx XP paneling.  Note, the roof elevator frame is removed.  This is a piece of metal framing on some gazebos that allows dual layer canvas roofing that provides air venting.  With this removed the roof frame is a single level, though I had 4 protrusions from the elevator frame.  I tried turning one of the original roof frames upside down so the protrusions wouldn't get in the way of the paneling, but the frame is not suited for that.  I got one to work, and just left it.

The paneling is cut to appropriate lengths and then placed on top of the metal frame roof.  Some geometric planning, and careful measurement is required here for a minimally seamed solution.  I allowed for spaces between my seams and covered them with pool covering insulation.  The XP panels I used are dual pane with an air insulator pocket in between. These are stiff enough that they can be attached to the metal greenhouse frame with zip ties.

The insulation I used for the seams proved to not be very UV resistant, so I am updating the seams with the UV greenhouse plastic used for the upper walls.

Other posts in this series:
Pictures More Pictures
Start
Insulating and Doorway
Upper Walls
Door
Roofing

Gazebo to Greenhouse: Update: door

On an earlier post you saw the framing of the door for the greenhouse.  Here is a picture of the finished door.

This is wrapped in pool insulating plastic which is actually not very UV tolerant, but it works fine for the door.  There is an interesting point I would like to make.  The greenhouse is really framed on the lower half with about 3/4" foam.  

The door is just plastic wrap.  I have racoons and opossums in my neighbourhood -- not many but they are here.  For some reason they don't bother trying to get through the foam -- maybe it's the foil cover on the outside? Don't know. They can obviously smell the slight fishy water that is in the greenhouse.  Well after about 8 months I did have infiltration of the greenhouse -- through the door -- they scraped back the plastic cover on the bottom and walked right in at night.  Only damage thankfully was rummaging through one of my planter bins for snails -- the creature did not attempt to get into my covered fish tank.

I put some of the insulating foam on the lower half of the door to dissuade the critters, and just for insurance also attached 1/4" wood on the outside bottom of the door -- that has kept the kritters away.

The door uses a gate latch system.











An update picture is shown here also of my 2012 tomatoe and Cee Gwa (both started from seed directly in this bin -- this is the seed starter bin).

Other posts in this series:
Pictures More Pictures
Start
Insulating and Doorway
Upper Walls
Door
Roofing

Gazebo to Greenhouse: Upper Walls

This is the third installment of the greenhouse creation from my gazebo frame.  At this point we have a doorway and insulated lower walls.  The upper walls will be made with greenhouse plastic (UV stabilized clear plastic).

The upper walls are constructed by screwing 1" x 0.5" strapping to the top horizontal metal bar of the gazebo.  The upper "walls" are actually curtains made from 4 year greenhouse film cut to be just longer than the upper half of the greenhouse.  The film is treated with a bead of silicone glue then stapled to the wood strapping with a strip of heavy cloth material. I used 1" tow straps bought at a surplus store for the "heavy material".  Put a UV resistant length of rope at the center of each curtain so you can tie the "wall" open during summer months.

In order to anchor the sides of the walls, I screwed lengths of "Snap Clamp" material along the side.  The clamps were screwed either into the wooded door frame or metal sides of the gazebo.  The clamps work by allowing you to sandwich the film between the clamps and short lengths of 3/4" PVC pipe.

I purchased to Greenhouse film (20ft wide x 25ft long) and (10) 48" lengths of snap clamps from www.greenhousemegastore.com.  I also  purchased 33 linear feet of Solexx XP for the roofing material as part of the same purchase.  Total including shipping was $403.37.



Other posts in this series:
Pictures More Pictures
Start
Insulating and Doorway
Upper Walls
Door
Roofing

Second Year Tomatoes and Green Peppers

I overwintered one tomato plant and all my bell pepper plants in the aquaponics greenhouse.  This is what they looked like in May of this year (more than 12 months old).  I wasn't certain in May if the tomatoes would set fruit.  They had plenty of flowers but no fruits.

I am not actually sure if the tomato didn't eat any visitors to my greenhouse (just kidding) :-).  That is one plant.

This last weekend I harvested about 40% of the bell peppers (all the red ones, and many larger green ones). While trimming back the tomato plant I also noticed that it had set some fruit.

The smaller peppers were perfect for BBQ skewers.

Conclusion, yes overwintered tomatoes and bell peppers will yield.  The bells are yielding very well. It will remain to see at years end if the tomato yields well.  The tomato plant is certainly very healthy and is a good anchor for my water filtering needs.

Converting Outdoor Transformer Lighting to Solar (p1)

I use 3x 18W lights to decorate my front yard.  This is a total of 4.5A at 12v.  During a recent visit to Anchor Electronics (www.anchor-electronics.com) I found blade style LED high power LED lamp assemblies.  These lamps are built on a PCB consisting of 6 LEDs, a discrete rectifier (to prevent polarity on connection), and a power management chip.  My immediate thought was to convert my 18W lamps to this LED lamp.  Each lamp uses 20mA.  So in total my yard lighting would be 60mA instead of 4.5A.  This is more supportable with a battery backed solar setup.

I started the experiment of determining if this would work by converting one burned out bulb to take this lamp.  The following pictures show the steps but read the end instead of following this.  First I taped up most of the glass of the bulb.  Using a plastic wrap I made a base to hammer the bulb to break the top of the glass (without the base, the actual base of the bulb would get damaged).  Next I uncrimped the tungsten and crimped on the pigtails of the LED lamp holder.  I solder gobbed the crimp connection (I believe in belts and suspenders for my electrical connections).  I had o solder gob instead of solder because the tungsten carrier is not easily soldered to.  Finally I filled in the space in the lamp with non-conducting plumbers putty. Installed the LED lamp and fired away.  OK, it took more debugging to get this to work as it turned out that pushing the LED lamp completely into the holder shorted the diodes and prevented operation -- so the LED lamp assembly needs to be pushed in but not all the way.

As it turns out this worked very well.  The 20mA unit was about 75% (qualitative) as bright as the 18W incandescent bulb.

If you want to do something like this, an easier way would be to source the parts from:
http://stores.ebay.com/Auto-Gangster-2009?_trksid=p4340.l2563  -- i ordered parts from here
http://stores.ebay.com/id=1007915828    -- have not ordered from here
http://www.superbrightleds.com/  -- have not ordered from here

After I get my COTS lamps, I will work on converting the transformer system into a solar powered setup instead of mains powered.  Stay tuned.

Night Fennel harvest

I learned from UC-Davis that Fennel root grows well in California.  I planted this from seed in the greenhouse over the winter.  This is the second harvest of my roots.  This done at night while I was cooking some curry.  The root can be cut into 1" slices and baked with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The stalks can be cut and used like a feathery celery.  I cut stalks up to 1cm lengths and put half of one roots worth in to a curry. The baked roots are delicious and all the parts have a slight anise flavor.

Gazebo to Greenhouse: Insulating and doorway

I am going to describe the steps and techniques I used for the conversion.  As usual, if you want more details or explanations on certain items just drop me an email.

The first step is ensuring the gazebo framework is solid.  My frame was already bolted down to a concrete slab using the screw holes as part of the frame.  So my first step was to go around and using "liquid nails" adhesive to solidify any portions of the frame metal that had rust holes.  The rust I had to deal with was very minimal and limited to one side so the frame was still very solid.

Second I chose one of the entryways to the gazebo to my doorway.  I shored this up with 2x4 pressure treated lumber on the side.  This was put in such that it was tight so that there was tension on the frame.  It was also screwed into the metal framework.  The picture also shows the 2x2 framing (light colored wood) in place that would become my door.  The purpose of using wood was to strengthen the frame to be used as door frame, and also to provide wood to screw the door hinges into.  From this picture you can see that the gazebo top "second story" canvas frame has been removed to allow a smooth roof install later.

Third, I used 1/2" foam insulation on the lower 4 foot of the frame.  This went all the way around except of course the chosen doorway.  This material has a foil layer on one side and this was placed facing outside.  The material was attached to the frame by twist ties, and I also used liquid nails adhesive from the foam to the metal framework. Note that to prevent the twist ties from being pulled through the foam, some form of stop has to be used to apply pressure on the twist tie on the outside.  I used pieces of scrap plastic and also 1/2" irrigation hose for this purpose.



Other posts in this series:
Pictures More Pictures
Start (this page)
Insulating and Doorway
Upper Walls
Door
Roofing

Making a greenhouse from a metal gazebo frame

The next few entries will detail the conversion of a metal frame gazebo into a greenhouse.  This is how I built my greenhouse for my aquaponics setup that I have been writing about.  It all started with a 10x10 DC America gazebo frame similar to the picture below.  After a few years of use, the canvass covering disintegrated.  Starting cost of the gazebo was about $300 new.

The actual view that to start is below:

Other posts in this series:
Pictures More Pictures
Start (this page)
Insulating and Doorway
Upper Walls
Door
Roofing

Late Season Results

My overgrown greenhouse.  The Cee Gwa  is liking the cooler weather and really setting fruit.  I will have a lot of vegetation to clear though once the harvest is done.

Cee Gwa grown in aquaponics greenhouse in hydroton substrate.  Yes, these are the same beds that I show in earlier posts with seedlings at the beginning of the year.

Even though I have ignored my outdoor garden for the most part this year, it still likes me :-)  This is a cherokee purple grown in a large container (old blue recycling bin, the type that's not used anymore).

Aquaponics Greenhouse Harvest Summary (in pics)

 

Oh yeah, bells think they are in the tropics.

2.25lbs!!

 

Soybeans -- yummy!

Summary: this project was definitely a success.  I will follow up with details on converting the gazebo to a greenhouse.