Sunday 12 August 2012

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.

Friday 10 August 2012

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...