Garden Notes - Aquaponics Upgrades

Date:  Feb 1, 2016

We set up an aquaponics systems at home to grow vegetables.  After few weeks, the plants is not greenish.  In fact a bit of yellowish green, towards pale whitey green.  That is because my balcony does not have enough sunlights.  I would think there is only 20-30% of the sunlights are able to penetrate into that area.

Not to worry when you have Taobao.  So, she immediately placed an order thru our Taobao buying agent, i.e. Amy (cinagoods@hotmail.com)

http://world.tmall.com/item/520664511954.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.4.Irv8Su&id=520664511954&cm_id=140105335569ed55e27b&abbucket=1&skuId=3130490870223

(please note, we don’t sell things on Taobao.  I only tell you what we do, we bought from Taobao thru our buying agent.  So, please do not sent mail to me to ask me to buy!  Thanks!)

For information about our Aquaponics setup, please visit my previous blog post.

http://miniliew.blogspot.sg/2015/12/garden-notes-aquaponics.html

To me, I called it “Adding Light Sabers into Aquaponics!”

We will now provide enough sunlights for the veggie to grow.  Let’s see how it goes.

Adding 3 light savers here.

Hope these lights bring happiness to the greens and produce good harvest.

Bigger tank is added.  More fish will be added.

And hopefully by next month we have better and bigger greens.

Here are some of the marketing info on the LED lights we have purchased.

High quality.  Works on AC100-260V.  Build for the world.  It is a China produce, so, use your own judgement hor…

90% of the lights emitted from this light will be absorbed by the plants for photosynthesis.

Can work 30000 hours to 50000 hours. About 3 to 5 years.

We bought to 0.9 meter one (15W)

I think we bought the veggie lights.  With the red-blue ratio of 3:1 or 4:1 or 5:1.

Different spectrum of lights are suitable for different types of plants.

Without sunlights, this could happen to your plants.

Comparison with or without lights.

Look at the difference.

Getting very techie.

Some facts about the lights spectrum.

More knowledge.

One thing good about Taobao, is they will put a lot of rather very convincing marketing info for your reference.  hahaha

Will update again in a month time to see what does it looks like.

Harvesting

Date:  Jan 18, 2016

The kids love to play in the veggie garden downstairs.

We grew all kinds of veggies, herbs and fruits here.

You can tell from the leafs that the plants are very healthy.

You will see more and more butterflies appear around here.  Because there are flowers here.  From the veggies or the fruit tree.

Some sort of capsicum. 

The organic lady fingers.

Every time you come down you will see different plot of land being “open up”.

The Compost.  Stinky.

Papaya trees.

Ribena.

South Africa Leaf.

A healthy drink.  It is my office drink.  Just put in the tea bags and you can drink it to lower down your cholesterol.

Super Veggie - Kale.

One of the purpose of this garden is to teach kids how to grow food.

Not to be afraid of dirts and worms.

Its harvesting time.  Time to cook these veggies.

This is our little garden.  Getting big now.  Approved by Condo management.  

Garden Notes - Aquaponics

Date:  Dec 28, 2015

I always love the movie “Water World”.  I really believe one day, earth will be covered by water.  By then, humans have to learn how to survive in water, but they also need to know how to grow plants with water.  hahahaha

Welcome to the world of Aquaponics.

How it works?

Simply type the word “Aquaponics” in Google, and you will get tons of information.   

In summary, you grow fish in a tank and the water is cycled thru the plants and back to the fish tank.  That’s it.

It is an eco-system.

So, when you have fish in the tank, why not grow your food with it.

That’s the whole ideal about Aquaponics.

We have a garden to grown our food downstairs.

These are real organic food harvested from our plot of farm land.

Back in October we test drive the Aquaponics with our small fish tank.

With proper lighting, the veggies grew pretty fast on the small fish tank.

Once, the Aquaponics concepts is proven.

Of course, you will need to select your design.  My wife selected this design.  

This is the system you need.

Of course, where you get these?  From Taobao.  We usually write to Amy, cinagoods@hotmail.com and ask her to buy for us.  (I don’t sell these, so, please do not write to me ask me to buy, you can easily buy from Taobao yourself nowadays or you can ask any buying agent to buy for you.  For me, I have been using Amy’s services for years.)

You will need the pipes.  It is less than $50 for the systems. (not inclusive of shipping)

 

You need pump.

You need to cups to placed in the pipes.  So that water can run thru it.

You will need the foam cups.  To be placed within the cups in the pipes.

You will need seeds too.

 

This is how the setup looks like.  

We placed it at our balcony.  As you can see, there are lightings from the natural balcony.  But I think my wife will be installing some LED growing lights very soon.

A strong pump to pump the water up to the pipes, and water will flow down from the pipes and goes back into the fish tank.

So, you have some fish in the fish tank.  They will survive.

This is the plants grown in the foam.

This is how they grow.

They are ready to be transferred to the cup.

Squeeze the form into the cup.  These are 小白菜 I think.

Place the cup with the plant into the pipes.

The cup sits nicely onto the pipes and water flow thru below.

There you go.  Water Crest veggies.  西洋菜

Quite cool ya!  HaHa… we growing tomato too.

Altogether, we have 3 rows 3 levels and a total of 81 holes for you to grow the aquaponics plants.

Oh ya, we have incubators too.  This is where you grow from seeds to plants.

The growing LED lights.

The incubator foam.

Or you can use this if you wish.

These are the growing LED lights.  Very cool.  And the seeds really grow fast on this.

Wait a minute… Lego?

Yes, Kay Kay build a tower with a holding pad to house the lights firmly.

Let’s see what we have here.  Hi, tiny little plants.

You grew a bit bigger, we will transfer you to the aquaponics home ya.  

Then, we eat you.  hahahahaha

That is our Aquaponics set up.