Benefits of Vermiculite Growth Media for Separating Seedlings

Two of my aquaponics vegetable grow beds have a top layer of vermiculite.  I have detailed this in earlier postings. [Grow-beds-and-media-stackup.]

Some vegetables are very sensitive to root disturbance.  An example of this are pepper plants and specifically bell peppers.  Normally, to cover less than 100% germination, a gardener will plant 2 or more seeds (depending on expected germination rates) for every seedling desired.  When the seedlings are at their first true leaf you would cut off (kill) the less desired seedlings in a bunch to prevent disturbing the roots of the chosen seedling.

I found that vermiculite does not hold to the fine roots of seedlings. What I have been able to do then is to gently pull seedlings apart from the vermiculite and place them in another spot (making a hole for them with my finger).  The ones remaining do not get disturbed, and the transplanted one continues to grow also.  I did this first with tomatoe seedlings that had reached their first true leaf.  Tomatoes are hardy plants anyway.  But after that, I successfully did it with bell pepper seedlings.

This is a picture of seedlings in a bed of vermiculite. The red circled ones have been transplanted and doing fine after 3 days.  Note the coir pots for some of the seedlings.  These are meant to be transplanted into other beds. Since it is all soil-less I can even put them into the hydroton beds.

This is growth after 11 days total.  Note the transplants are doing fine. If you lift transplants when they are bigger, you need to be do it more slowly and gently as they have more rootlets developed.  I separated the two larger peppers on the left side just after taking this picture, and the one pulled successfully with vermiculite attached to its rootball.

Remote Wi-Fi Monitoring of Your Setup

I have a rodent eating through the plastic on my auto feeder.  This plastic was the extension I attached and not a manufacturers accessory.  The caused a hole that forced an overfeed and a minor foiled water situation.  In order to get an appropriate trap I used the opportunity to configure a FOSCAM Fi8910W wireless camera I had. After seeing a small rat last night, I set some appropriate traps around the feeder and also covered the feed extension with a $5 aluminum vent pipe.

The system works well.  I am running 802.11b/g about 20m from my access point inside the house. Once I get the rodent taken care of, I will configure the angle of the camera so that I can view the condition of the fish tank water.  This way I can see if it is getting fouled.

The setup currently allows me to control (360 degree motion and up/down) the camera, record, and view from my desktop as well as simultaneously from a smartphone.  Setup was a breeze.  I recommend viewing the following for instruction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xKu4uZtt3M

I use an Android, and the apps I use for viewing and controlling the camera are "IP Cam Remote" (free) and "IP Cam Viewer Basic" (free).

Using this instruction, you can view and control the camera from outside your local area network.  That is while travelling and through the internet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHTxuYa3Kzo

View of feeder through my phone and IP Cam Remote.

The FOSCAM camera is here:

See Part 2 of this blog entry here, remote-wi-fi-monitoring-part-2

Starting Seeds in Aquaponics Beds

Starting seeds for your aquaponics grow beds depends on the substrate you are using.  See this entry for options.  If you use vermiculite on the upper layer, you can just spread small seed on the surface and cover with a thin layer of more vermiculite.  Larger seeds can just be embedded in the vermiculite.  If you are using Hydroton, you can also embed larger seeds like beans just under the top layer.

For small seeds in Hydroton, or for more controlled planting in any media I prefer to use coconut husk pots with a vermiculite media.  I can germinate the seed either indoors or in the greenhouse, and then put the entire pot into the grow bed when ready.  This can be used in any media grow bed, including Hydroton.

The benefit of this technique is that you are not introducing organisms into your ecosystem that may be present in regular soil, you have control over the planting, and you can germinate the seed in optimum conditions for the appropriate seed.

Automated IOT Greenhouse Sensor Reading

I am using an AirQualityEgg unit in my greenhouse to monitor temperature and humidity.  It also provides readings of CO and NO2.  I will setup another NO2 sensor closer to the water -- then see if there is a correlation between water nitrates and NO2 readings on the sensor.

You can get sensors from here, http://www.wickeddevice.com/

You can see my readings here, https://cosm.com/feeds/96569

You can get more info here, http://airqualityegg.com

Disclaimer: the sensors are not temperature corrected so you will see relative humidity go over 100%. Also, the readings at cosm include the raw sensor readings as well as the calculated information (not my doing - this is provided as part of the airqualityeggs).

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.

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.

Don't Bother with Over-wintered Tomatoe Plants

On an earlier post I noted that my tomatoe plant from last year was growing well in the greenhouse.  The plant continued to grow very well and did a great job as an aquaponics water filter, but it was a complete failure as a tomatoe factory.  I removed the plant from the grow bed several weeks with nary a tomatoe harvested.  The following pictures show the size the plant got to (yes, that is a single plant) and the size of the stalks once removed from the planter.

Conclusion: don't bother with your tomatoe plants that survive past the first year.  Plant new ones.

On a related topic, overwintered bell peppers do very well continuing to produce.  You can see the bell pepper plants to the left on the photo of the tomatoe stalk photo.

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.

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).