Now planted out, perhaps a bit early, but the weather seems to be improving...

Peas at the back, four different varieties of lettuce, endives in the front and parsley in the centre.

Celery at the back and silverbeet in this growbed.

At the back, leftside is Basil, on the right is Corriander, centre top is garlic chives, centre lower is spring onions with four different heirloom tomatoes, two on each side.

Brussell Sprouts at the back and a mix of Broccolini and Endives 

(Endives are for the budgies and chickens)

The parsley is doing so well I didn't want to move it, so added the strawberries to the centre, Broccolini top left and a grafted passionfruit is on the right.

Again the parsley is doing well so planted a dwarf lemon in the centre, with capsicum middle right and left. Can't quite see it but at the back is Rubarb coming up.

The overall view of the growbeds. You can see the passionfruit in the second growbed on the fence.

The total area is 4.5m long and only 0.5m wide with goldfish, silver perch, trout and yabbies.
Can't wait for October harvest.

The winter months have not been the best for my system, other than the trout doing well, it was obvious that there wasn't enough light and even the dappled light under the oak was not enough...so...disassemble and reassemble!

It was not easy but this bed will now have a standard garden.

This is now a four tank system, gravity tiered with only one pump in the sump.

The fence give me room to plant the passionfruit and peas, and the natural fall of the land enables a gravity feed system from top to sump.

The first tank hold goldfish and a water plant to help clear the water.
The second tank has Silver perch, the third has Trout and the sump has yabbies.

These photos were taken in mid August and plantings of lettuce, silverbeet, peas, endives, spring onions and b. sprouts.


I did try to convert the continuous drip system to bell syphons but I just couldn't get enough flow into the beds from one pump for the syphon to kick in, I would need to add a pump per tank. So went back to drip system that has worked so well so far. The pump has a good filter so the small outlets shouldn't clog so quickly - also I'm feeding the yabbies the chicken pellets that don't break up as quickly as fish pellets...

Full of spuds

The potatoes are thriving, even growing through the hessian bags. This has been the easiest way to grow spuds with no digging and a much higher yield - so I hope.

Growth Spurt

The warmer weather and longer days, plus the addition of more fish, has really prompted growth.

1. The Silverbeet and parsley have continued to grow after many harvests.
2. Going to seed, but the celery has provided many harvests and I've planted 12 more.
3. Broccolini is just about to form heads so not long to harvesting.
4. Burbless Cucumber, not sure if this will thrive but so far so good.
5. Parsley just keeps growing, even though I cut nearly all
6. And finally, the strawberries have now started to grow well.

Rainbow Trout and Silver Perch

Melbourne has extremes of temperatures that makes fish selection limited.

After extensive research and reading, the obvious choice is Silver Perch which will grow well in the temperature ranges of my region. They appear to be hardy but are on the expensive side, from the local aquarium, as I don't need 100's of fingerlings. Tank 3 is all goldfish, as an ongoing source of biological cycles. The middle tank has a selection of both goldfish and brown feeder goldfish so 6 Silver Perch are housed there.

Rainbow Trout require a temperature range between 0-19 C and tend not to survive above 25C. I purchased 35 Rainbow Trout fingerlings and within that week we had temperatures above 28 C so I lost about 8-10 but the remaining stock is doing well in the third tank. They are on their own, no other fish and may put in a pump with a flow line that I will run under the house to help keep the temperatures lower than outdoor, by at least 10C during the hotter months. I am hopeful of success!

I did have Yabbies in this tank, started with 12, only 7 left. Although they had gained size, it was very apparent that I needed a much bigger area than 215 litres to breed them successfully to lunch size! They have since found a new home elsewhere.

Rapid Growth in October

Now that the system has matured and the bio-nutrients have kicked in, the plant growth is quite rapid. For a period, I tested a system of running for only 45 minutes in the hour, therefore for 15 minutes the grow beds drain. The idea was to allow the roots oxygen, as per the flood and drain method, but I did notice that the tomatoes in particular did not fair well. Since returning to 100% flow, all plants have renewed growth. Lesson: Don't fix something that isn't broken!

The Broccolini and Snow peas have ready regained vigor and growing very well

I use the aquaponics water with diluted worm poo for the potato bags and have they taken off:

I now have four potato bags and have all reached the full height of the hessian bags, nearly a metre of dirt (from the chicken run) and looking forward to harvest in Summer.

Tomatoes are in...

Have now bought four varieties of tomatoes; Roma, Sweet Bite, Cherry Roma and Beams Yellow.

I have included some broccolini and chives, now just waiting for September to plant the Capsicum, one red, one yellow, one green.