I finally had some time to make another video update of my greenhouse. As you can see, I’m still suffering from a white fly problem and the strawberries just aren’t strong enoughto survive.They’re starting to succumb tothe flies and are getting mildew on them.I’m probably going to rip them all out, and this winter drop the temp below freezingto kill off the bugs.Bring back DDT!;-)
There aresome stats near the end, so you may want to watch it in full-screen hi-def so you cansee the info!
When should I start composting? What do I add to the pile? How long does it take? Can I add.....? I get composting questions all the time from friends and family; my answer is always the same - Start with leaves! In this video I talk about our method of starting our compost pile each fall. We usually get enough to let it cook down twice per year which equals a lot of fresh homemade compost for our gardens.
I have talked about this before in my fall composting with a string trimmer post and also in last years easy composting method video. Good compost starts with leaves! they are all around us in the fall time and unless you live in the deep south, the jungle, or a desert you have plenty of leaves to use. Even if you dont want to rake up your own leaves there are probably plenty of your neighbors who are bagging up theirs and leaving them at the curb for the city to pick-up (if your city does that kind of thing). The bottom line is this, get as many leaves as you can because they are going to be the base of the compost you will use throughout the entire year.
Once I have all of our leaves raked up I start carting them to the compost pile in the back corner of our lot. It is nothing special, just a few cheap metal posts, some garden wire fencing, and a pile of leaves and food scraps in the middle. As I am carting the leaves to the pile I also take care of cleaning up the garden beds of all dead and dying vegetable plants from the summer and layer those on the pile in-between loads of the leaves. This creates a layers of alternating carbon material (leaves) and nitrogen material (green plants and food scraps). Once I have all of the leaves in I top it off with our food scraps from the last couple of months that have been saved as the compost from the summer finished up.
This is all that needs to be done for the fall. Just let the pile site and you can add your food scraps to it all winter long. If you prefer you can also cover the pile as many like to do but I have found that to be largely unnecessary.
In the spring time you need to start turning the pile with a pitch fork every couple of weeks and get it cooking down. As the temps rise it will start to reduce in size and after about 60 days you will be ready to add this fresh homemade compost to amend your gardens.
There should be no need to ever, and I mean ever, buy fertilizer for an everyday garden. Compost can provide all of the macro and micro nutrients that any plants need. Give it a try, youll be happily surprised!
Today marks the end of the season for the “sustainable” greenhouse. Last night was the first night the heaters needed to run to keep the plants from freezing. (The heaters are programmed to turn on at 36F). My outdoor growing season ended just shy of 2 months ago so I’m still quite pleased with the extended growing season!
My definition of “sustainable” for this project is not having to add extra heat or lighting for the plants to grow, The other electricity for the pumps and automation is an integrated part of the greenhouse Aquaponics system and I classify that as part of the normal functions. ;-)
I still have peppers, tomatoes, and lettuce growing which should survive for the winter. Of course the cost to keep these plants alive will now skyrocket in electricity costs, but it’s still a nice treat to get a few fresh veggies during the winter.
For several months, I’ve been developing a plastic extrusion system that has been able to take virgin HDPE resin pellets, or shredded milk jugs, and properly melt and extrude them into a shape that could be used as a low cost growing media for my Aquaponics system.
There was a lot of trial and error to get to this point. The biggest problem is that the plastic retains little moisture. If the seeds aren’t directly placed in the flood/drain cycle, they won’t get any moisture to germinate. I typically grow in stone and some of the stone above the water line is able to wick and retain enough moisture to provide water to new seeds.
Another issue with HDPE is that it’s extremely smooth (again, works well to repel water). Even adding texture to the media during the cooling process, the media still is smooth, which makes it difficult for bacteria to stick to it. I was also a bit surprised to see that the roots didn’t really care to grow in it and they would grow around the edge of the net pot instead.
On the plus side, the plastic is light, fairly inexpensive, clean, and easy to work with.
I hope some of the info in the video is useful to some of my fellow aquaponic/hydroponic growers in their quest to find a better, more cost effective growing media.
EDIT: There is now a second blog entry with some more details about this.... Click on the "Newer Posts" link near the bottom.
Below is the transcript for the video…no need to read it if you’re going to watch the video… I just included it so some of the search engines could pick up on the keywords. ;-)
Hello Everyone. Today I’m going to show a plastic extruder system that I built. The end result was to produce a synthetic, cost effect growing medium for my Aquaponics system.
The extruder consists of a hopper for high density polyethylene pellets. An auger then forces the pellets through a dual zone heating chamber. The heated material is forced through a small die at the end of the chamber.
The temperature in each zone of the heating chamber is controlled by a Teensy AVR microcontroller which is monitored and adjusted through its USB port connected to a laptop.
The auger is driven by a windshield wiper motor and it is geared-down using an old bicycle sprocket and chain.
The hopper is filled with HDPE pellets where they are slowly forced into the heating chamber. It can also be filled with shredded milk bottles or shredded milk bottle caps to add color.
The heating chamber is covered in some fiberglass insulation to conserve heat. There are two thermal probes mounted near the middle and end which provides accurate readings to the controller as the material is heated. The heating elements draw around 16 amps at 12 volts.
The molten plastic that is extruded from the die is squeezed through a set of rollers which embed a texture into the material. A small tube blows air onto the pressed material to cool it, and to keep the rollers cool.
This is one of the rollers after I turned it on my lathe with a close-up view of the texturing.
And this is a close-up video of the material being extruded and pressed through the rollers.
Here is a close-up view of the finished material once it has been cut to length. There is a waffle pattern embedded into the plastic which provides plenty of surface area for bacterial growth. The media lies flat which helps to retain moisture during a drain cycle. The pieces have plenty of spaces between each other for water and root growth.
Most HDPE plastic is classified as food-grade. However, one problem is that nothing likes to stick to it. Even though a texture has been embossed into the plastic, a small amount of movement can disrupt anything that was clinging on it.
This is a time-lapsed video taken with my PlantCam over a 30 day period. There are 3 bean plants growing. I also planted lettuce seed which didn’t germinate, probably because the top inch of the media doesn’t retain moisture like stone or expanded clay.
After 30 days, I removed the beans from the aquaponic system. I had the net basket wrapped in foil to prevent the roots from wandering into the surrounding stone. The roots seem to have an aversion to growing in the plastic and mainly grew between the basket and foil.
Thanks for watching. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the comments section below. Also please subscribe to my YouTube channel to see future videos!
Leaves, leaves, leaves! There is one sure thing about the fall and that is there is no shortage of leaves! Every year I watch people rake up all of their leaves and either burn them or put them at the curb to be hauled off by the city. This is a resource that we should all be using in our yards, gardens, and flowerbeds. It seems very silly to spend all that time and effort collecting leaves from your yard just to get rid of them! And then on top of that, when spring time comes around, we will them go out and buy fertilizer and compost to put in our gardens! Leaves and grass clippings are one of the most abundant resources for a good compost pile that most everybody has (unless you live in the southwest, I suppose).
This post is not as much about how to compost but more about how to deal with leaves and how important they are to your compost pile or bin. Using leaves as the primary resource for you compost is important but it is not as easy as just throwing them into the pile and calling it a day. It is necessary to shred the leaves up as best as possible to prevent the leaves from matting down into a layer that will be hard to move and will not compost.
What else is needed for the compost to start working? Well, the best thing to do is to add some nitrogen material such as kitchen scraps to get the process going. It is also necessary to turn the pile as often as you can to keep air moving around throughout. Even in the coldest months the pile will begin to compost although slowly. As the weather warms turn the pile more and more and by early summer you will have composted all of those leaves into rich dark soil. This soil is full of just about everything that your garden could possible desire.
Another tip if you have a small yard, just offer to rake your neighbors yards for them, they would love it and you will have rich garden soil in the spring!
Check out this video to see how we are managing our young orchard to prepare for the coming fall and winter. Each year we try to grab a couple of fruit tress when they go on sale and over the past two years have collected a small orchards worth of fruit trees. Some we have planted from seeds from grocery store apples and some we purchase in the fall every year. We are excited about having an abundance of apples, but also some cherries, pears, and plums. The apple trees grow great up here in Michigan and we will be using them for vinegar, cider, and for eating. Apples are the kids favorite fruit at our house.
Last year we had a very hard winter and found that our little bunny friends got hungry and decided to eat just about anything they could chew. They ate our bushes, tree trunks, and anything else they could chew on. As soon as I started to notice this I began placing some paper towel rolls around the trucks to protect and deter the bunnies and this seemed to work well. I am doing the same this year but ahead of time!
We have also noticed found that our city and neighboring city has a pile of wood chip mulch at the city park that they leave for anyone to take. This has been a huge help for us this year and we have used it to landscape, prepare our fruit bushes and vines, mulch around our trees and bushes, and just use as compost in the garden when needed. I would recommend checking with your local city hall to see if they do the same because this is an awesome resource to have for free!
Through the last year or two, we have also started using cardboard as a landscape cloth for all of our landscaping, gardening, and trees and it works great! We have barely had to do any weeding at all in the areas where I have used it!
