Dont Overthink or Over Engineer Your Systems

5:44 AM in Aqua, dont, engineer, or, over, overthink, systems, your

It is so easy to get carried away with the physics involved in building your aquaponic grow systems that the  simple becomes unduly complex.  Complex is not good. Complex is rarely if ever easy to maintain. Try to avoid complex as much as possible.

If you think effort goes into designing a large system, just try to re-design a large system after all components are in place but not functioning as they should.  Implementing the re-design means that you have re-do all the previous hard work.  Not efficient use of time or energy.  If you and your garden want  to survive, you need to use your time and energy as efficiently as possible.

The following is a great case in point of over designing a system.  When the a frames for NFT (nutrient film technique) tubes were first designed and built for the Together We Stand project, the designer was greatly concerned that because the water was going to flow through 4 tubes before draining that all the nutrients would be absorbed by the plants on the top row and the plants in rows 2 through 4 would be nutrient starved.  So a complex manifold system was created and installed to give equal feed of the nutrient rich water into the top of the a-frame.  Truly a beautiful design as you can see from here.

Since each A-Frame has two sides, there was a manifold for each side of the frame.  Of course, this system over engineered a problem that didnt exist.  See, the nutrient levels at the top tube of an A-Frame are not significantly lower than the bottom tubes unless your system is extremely nutrient deficient. So, this overly complex design solved a problem that didnt exist.  However what it did do was utilize flow tubing that was so small you didnt get good water flow and it clogged constantly. In addition, since each tube was fed individually, it drained individually.  If you think that manifold was something, then check out this drain system

Looks like some kind of octopus, right?  In addition, note the use of clear tubing.  Well it was clear at the start I am sure.  But because the clear tubing allows sunlight to penetrate, algae growth was a constant problem and because of the design, 8 drain tubes needed to be cleaned on a regular basis.  All to solve a nutrient feed problem that doesnt exist!

The answer was to re-plumb the A-frame so that water enters in one location on each side of the frame and then feeds and drains each tube in sequence.  

So that anyone working on the system in the future will understand how it operates, each tube was marked at the feed and drain points and also with arrows indicating water flow.

 Note the use of dark tubing for the inlet feed tubing.  For the jumper lines between the tubes, in a stroke of genius my husband realized that garden hose would work perfectly and is certainly less expensive than other hosing. 

Since there is now only 1 drain for each side of the frame, only 2 drains are necessary.  That means we can slay the octopus and the task associated with keeping the lines clean.

It was a bit of a pain, but now these A-Frames will perform their NFT tasks much more effectively and will require much less effort to maintain. 

As a side note, you will notice in some of the photos that the tubes are marked with letters and numbers.  This is something that was implemented back when this shade house was first built.  It was done to help keep crop and maintenance records.  Even if your garden is small, if you have more than one grow bed, NFT tube system or multiple raft beds I highly recommend that you develop some sort of identification system to make your record keeping much easier.

So how did you spend your week-end?

Read more

Waste to green or ruin

10:21 PM in Aqua, green, or, ruin, to, waste

Over 3000 years ago peoples in Asia began to practice poly culture, a process development in which they successfully learned how to recycle agriculture wastes to improve the yield obtained by farming a secondary source of protein( yet eventually equally or more important than the initial crop), that protein source was fish.

Now let us go further back in an effort to explore the role of fish as a part of the diet:

Fish and shellfish have been part of the European’s diet for as long as man has been present on the continent. Indeed, 500 thousand years ago, Homo erectus would have caught salmon (probably by hand) and eaten it raw, perhaps accompanied by a few berries and nuts. Today, salmon carpaccio bears a distinct resemblance to such paleolithic gastronomy (first age of prehistory, till 10 000 BC) .

Mesolithic man (between 10 000 and 5 000 BC) appreciated oysters and mussels while fish would have long been established as a highly desirable food. As farming activities developed, man also became able to master the rearing of animals and the same concepts were applied to fish. Reference link: http://www.feap.info/home/FAQ/Answers/ans1_en.asp

The first Publication of "Fish Husbandry", written by Fan Li, was made around 500 BC and it documented a farming process that was in practice (and still in practice) many years before our well accepted and present day world beliefs and preceptions.

Poly culture back then, simply involved using organic waste to naturally produce feed to fertilize plants that the fish ate and converted into a high protein source (Fish) for humans to consume. The Fish waste also became another source of organic food to nourish other plants and vegetables, thus increasing the yield and variety of edible food obtained.

These farming practices were very `green` back when they were invented and practiced. Considering that the inputs and outputs balanced each other without diminishing other resources or relying on such things as inorganic ingredients, the process is very simple and sustainable.

Today, such a process of farming is pretty much considered in the same light as one eyed aliens visiting the earth. There is no big company that is mass producing by using the farming principal, thus it is insignificant and perhaps a topic of dis-flavour in the circles of corporate agriculture .

Perhaps if more people grew fish and fresh vegetables on their own with little or no cost, it could be a real part of being green.

For the most part such practices are in Ruin today.

Read more

A One Year Meal Plan Or What Should We Grow This Year

12:31 AM in a, Aqua, grow, meal, one, or, plan, should, this, we, what, year

This time of year is prime time for garden planning around these parts.  As we were thinking about what we might want to grow this year, we came around to the question of, "Well, what did we eat last year?"  We have a partial record of what we made right here on the blog, so that was a good place to start.  From there, we just had to fill in the things we normally eat for breakfast, lunch, and supper that we dont blog about. There is always a lot of variability depending on whats available (or on sale), the time of the year, how much time were at home, how much snacking on high-sugar dried fruits we do while waiting for the other to come home so we can explosively greet them when they walk in the door (like Hobbes greets Calvin), etc., but as a ballpark figure, could we make an estimate for food intake, assuming three servings per person per day?

The answer is yes!  And the estimate is fascinating. [...says Jake as Katie snores...]  If youve been following this blog for any amount of time, you probably know that a spreadsheet is about to appear.  And so we begin, with three sets of columns: one each for supper, breakfast, and lunch.

Into each set of columns, we enter recipes (copied and pasted from memory or the internet), specify the number of times per year were going to prepare them, and make sure units and ingredient names are consistent (e.g., that we dont say tomato in one recipe and tomatoes in another).

Then we use a pivot table (one each for supper, breakfast, and lunch) to count everything up.  Its a bummer we dont know how to make a pivot table from more than one range at a time (theres probably a way), but thats ok.  The workaround isnt too hard. From each individual pivot table, we create a master pivot table.  From the master pivot table, we can estimate how much of everything we need to acquire during the course of the year.  For example, we learn that we need about 54 dozen eggs, 49 gallons of milk, and 110 loaves of bread (assuming 12 slices per loaf).  If youve been in our kitchen, you know that works out to a surprisingly accurate figure of roughly one dozen eggs, one gallon of milk, and two loaves of bread per week.  And also 23 pounds of mushrooms, which sounds delicious.  Model validated!

More importantly (and to the point), we can estimate how many pounds of vegetables well have to grow and how many pounds of meat well have to catch to be self-sufficient.

Clearly, if we want to keep taking carrots to work for lunch, well need to grow a ton. (Or, a one-fourteenth of a ton, rather).  Similarly, we can see that we ought to devote a lot of our remaining garden space to tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, and greens.  Of course, were going to grow a larger variety of veggies than that, but the quantities we tend to eat (and would need to find storage space for) are instructive.  And honestly, well probably try to grow more winter squash, green beans, and peppers than the chart suggests.

On a similar note, if we want to keep on our current diet, well need to grow another batch of chickens and catch one large deer and a quarter of a pig. (Or raise one deer and catch a flock of wild chickens.  But we dont have space to raise both!)

All things considered, its a pretty balanced diet, not too far from Harvards Healthy Eating Plate.  Were a little heavier on the veggies, but hey!  Maybe well end up being a very localized blue zone.

Its important to keep in mind that these numbers are just guidelines; were not locking ourselves into a whole year of rigidly following recipes.  We substitute veggies and meats in and out of a recipe like a Wall Street bankster swaps stocks (although we hope none of our meals would be considered subprime or toxic assets).  But its nice to have a set of go-to dishes we can pick from and toss together from stuff in the fridge or pantry if weve already spent our creative energy for the day and still need to make supper.  Whatchagotamology at its finest!

We wont vouch for the user friendliness of the spreadsheet, but if you want to play around with it, you can download it here.  Suggestions welcome!


Do you make meal plans?  Whats your planning strategy?  Let us know in the comments section below!

Read more