The fish are coming . . .

Rainbow trout to be exact! We should be getting tiny (10g) Rainbow trout for our system tomorrow, so I thought it was time for a quick celebratory update:

 

Planting Herbs in the Aquaponics System

Almond - Robijn - Blossom

Just time for another quick update before I zoom off to Green Drinks tonight to present on the topic of Manchester’s Food Security and Aquaponics. I had a good half-hour of planting this morning so, I had a chance to run around with the camera capturing all the growth:

Almond – Robijn – Blossom

Aquaponic Polytunnel

Apple Tree

Rhubarb

Aquadulce Claudia Beans, Big Boy Tomatoes, Sweet Olive Tomatoes

Onions & Sutton Beans

Rocket & new Basil

Pak Choi Seedling

New Sutton Bean Seedling

Courgettes, Sweet Olive Tomatoes

Cos Little Gem Planted

New Herb Bed

Almond Bossom

First Asparagus

 

A photo update

I’m so flat out planting and working that it’s hard to get to the blog, but I’m taking plenty of pics along the way, so here’s a quick photo update for you:

Aquadulce Claudia

Beans – Sutton

Courgettes

Leeks

Big Boy Tomatoes

Almond Robijn

Strawberries under the growbeds

 

Aquaponics Polytunnel “finished”

I know that is an optimistic title for a post, but it feels like we are getting there. Hopefully the leaking sump joints are sealed, and we can get on with it!  Here are the latest pics:

You can see my beautiful brick path – good thermal mass to help with moderating the polytunnel temperatures, and much nicer to walk on than the mud! The large buried sump at the back has a timber deck covering it that the kids can stand on to reach the back beds – so I think those will now be their spot for planting.

And here’s the right hand side:

The timber “paving” is over the new link between the two shallow sumps – designed so that I can lift it up to check for leaks.

Now it’s all “cycling” again – building up the bacteria that’ll clean the water. Soon I’ll start planting – but in the meantime we have our first Aquaponics workshop on next week, so time to tidy up!

 

A chilly aquaponics system

Sorry I haven’t been posting much recently – been too busy with aquaponics / filling gaps in house walls & other draftproofing / aquaponics / Transition Town Altrincham, Hale & Bowdon / being on BBC Radio Manchester / changing lightbulbs / saving 1.5 kWh per day by buying a new freezer / aquaponics / and some Christmas and New Year stuff too!

Anyway, let’s resume normal service with a pic from the polytunnel – looks like we might need some heating in there next year:

This is the ice on the top of the fishtank. To give you an idea of scale, the thickest bits are 2-3 inches thick. The water temp is down to 2-3°c and the polytunnel itself got down to -4.5°c at its coldest.

 

Frosty Polytunnel and Allotment

No problem with mud in the garden this morning, it went down to -1.7°C last night in the garden, and even the inside of the polytunnel was down to -1°C.

The ground in the garden is pretty solid now, but has remained a little soft in the polytunnel. The cold snap has seen the water temperature drop from 9°C down to 7°C.

Here’s how the ‘allotment’ is going:

The onions, garlic and purple-sprouting  broccoli should be all frost hardy, so let’s see how they go!

The frost patterns on the inside of the polytunnel are pretty amazing, not sure I’ve ever seen anything like this:

 

 

Polythene on the polytunnel!

Finally, after much work inside and outside the polytunnel over the last few weeks, we have put the polythene onto the tunnel. We only just got there – had a full-on Sunday getting everything ready and then doing it. We haven’t finished yet – one end needs more battens, and we need to put the doors back on. We did manage to do it though, and just in time – the first frost of the season was last night, and while everything outside the polytunnel was frosty, everything inside was just a few degrees warmer, with no frost. Not bad bearing in mind we only got the cover on at dusk, so it didn’t have much time to heat up yesterday.

Here’s what it looked like just after we had finished – showing the fantastic lighting:

Today we’ve started to put the completed growbed stands  in. The growbeds now all have drain holes in their bases and the drains are almost all in place. We’ve even connected all the sumps together (nice big 110 mm pipe). Now I just need to get the tubing and fittings for the drains and inlets and we’ll be ready to start the system up.

Here are some more pics of the growbeds and stands:

 

Steady progress on the Polytunnel

We’re making slow and steady progress on the polytunnel now. We had put off doing all the timber work while we dug the beds inside the tunnel, and got all of the aquaponics system ready. However, with the delay we’ve had sorting out the stands for the aquaponic growbeds we decided to get the timberwork all done and the polythene up. At least that way we’ll have somewhere warm to garden as the weather gets chillier!

So we had a good go at the timber on the weekend – building doors (one large at the back, double doors at the front), door frames, and the timber rails that go around the bottom to attach the polythene to. We didn’t quite get it all done – the rails still have to be attached to the bottom of the polytunnel – but we do now have doors, and door frames attached to the tunnel. It’s starting to look almost finished! While it’s taken us a while we haven’t had any problems following the instructions – good job by First Tunnels.

 

Developing our Aquaponics system

As we’re getting close to having all the parts of our system in place I thought it’d be fun to have a look back at how our plans have turned into reality. It’s quite an interesting story in images:

 

Aquaponic Fish Tanks & Growbeds are here!

The aquaponics system is all coming together – the tanks and growbeds arrived yesterday. Here they are laid out in their final positions in the polytunnel, and luckily thay all fit! Now I just have to do a little bit of digging to sink the sump (the mid-size tank at the top), get the stands made that’ll support the growbeds, and do the plumbing!