Gunnera, up and looking threatening

The gunnera was obviously warm enough to get a head start on the season.  Maybe a horse blanket, folded poly tarp, spare tire cover and bathroom rug was a layer or two too many.  I removed the protective layers today.  The hump of growing stalks was just a little too obvious.

We should have enough overcast weather to get the foliage acclimated so it doesn’t burn.

Grooming in progress

Post winter depression with promise of spring.

 

The tire holds my gunnera which, at our elevation, will only winter over if mulched and covered. It’s still a bit soon to uncover it . . . maybe in a couple weeks. I want to make sure it isn’t frost bitten. We had hail a couple days ago.

I got the bog filter trimmed up a bit and all last year’s triangular reed foliage trimmed away.

As of yesterday the pump has been cleaned and water is circulating. Having both bog filters full of hydroton takes much less water out of the main tank when the pump starts running.

I haven’t pulled out last year’s hyacinths as the roots are doing funny things and I want to see what happens.

I have no idea if the penny royal in the upper filter survived. I can’t see anything on the surface.

The water beans are growing and the stems are getting thicker each year. Go beans! I’m hoping to get some winter hardy water irises in the big filter this year.

I caught this off a permaculture site.  It’s amazing.  Take a couple minutes and watch.

Broken pot garden

I saw this on Facebook this morning.  It is beyond cool!  What a clever use for a broken pot!

Self-contained counter top herb garden using airlift technology.

On Facebook today Homestead had a post featuring a new Kickstart project, a self-contained aquaponic garden.  This is really neat!  I’ve supported other projects on Kickstart and this one is definitely worthy of support!

Aquarium obscured by Ricinifolia Immense, strawberry begonia and creeping philodendron.

The wall has really grown this summer.  I mean REALLY grown.  It’s now a struggle to see the fish.  Somebody remind me . . . wasn’t this project for the fish?  That’s a 50 gallon aquarium hiding back there!

A happy wall.

This is so not a Pink Floyd thing . . . here’s the wall in all its glory.  I’ve reorganized my sewing space and can’t back up any farther to get the trailing things in the picture.

Begonia as far as the eye can see . . .

Here’s what the wall looks like today. The begonias are taking over . . . and still no new gutter.

There’s a philodendron crawling across the floor . . . and the palm at the top is doing okay.  The spider plans are barely holding their own, the dieffenbachia is also doing well as are all the various dumb cane varieties.

The hoya is doing nothing . . . still.  It does occasionally get sneaky and route water off the wall onto the floor so I’m keeping an eye on it.

Upper tank in August sunshine

Penny royal in small tank.

Hyacinth, bean and fairy moss.

Blooming reed

The larger of the upper biofilter tanks is doing really well, though the water hyacinth has not bloomed this year and I’m holding no hope that it will.  The triangular water reed has nearly tripled in size even after removing half the original plant last spring to give to Mindy.  Jill?  Can I restock you when I cut this back in the fall?

This year this larger filter tank is loaded with hydroton which provides shelter for the roots.  The water bean, hyacinths and reeds are mega happy, sans blooming.

The smaller tank is also filled with hydroton and has last year’s penny royal which amazingly enough, wintered over due in part to the tank being made of closed cell foam (insulative), containing hydroton (insulative) and filled with standing water (insulative).

Because the maple tree and the triangular reed are sheltering the smaller biofilter tank from the sun the penny royal is growing much more slowly, which is a plus.  Last year it was horribly root bound it grew so fast.  I cut out most of it and thew it away, then took the remaining bit and cut it in half to give to Mindy.

I like the fairy moss as a fill-in between the larger plants.  It helps keep the mosquito population down.  Having marigolds growing in a pot on the back frame helps as well.  I don’t worry about mosquitoes in the big tank – fish food!

The reed is blooming, though it hasn’t yet peaked to produce the mass of feathery tendrils that will be the end product.

Tip out plant wall.  Totally cool!

This is beyond cool!  A natural pool!

If I had kids at home, this would be a must have!

The begonia in the gutter has more flower stalks and bigger leaves even though the plant is the wall is older and has more leaves.

My plant wall has two systems.  The wall itself is a drip system.  The nutrients drip down the roots.  The gutter, however, is a flood and drain system.

This morning I was catching up on posts on WindowFarms and read a post by Ed where he has modified the bottle window farm into a flood and drain system.  Brilliant!  His post caused me to look at my wall and evaluate its health/growth in comparison to the plants in the gutter.

The begonia in the gutter is faster growing with more flower stalks and bigger leaves.  That’s pretty definite as far as supporting evidence goes.

So the moral here is, if it’s food you’re interested in growing, flood and drain is going to be more efficient/effective.

Yoyo loach

The loaches have done a wonderful job of snail removal.  It’s been over a week since I’ve seen a snail.  Prior to that, I’ve only seen two and they’ve been at the top out of the water and where the loaches couldn’t reach them.  <squish>  Wadly doesn’t like the loaches but I think they’re darn fun to watch.  He likes his slow and mild guppies.

Blossoms for the first time in over a decade.

One of the begonias in the wall has masses of blossoms. The light, the warm water temps and the consistent nutrition are really pumping out the flowers. Now the Ricinifolia Immense is joining the gang. It’s put out a blossom stalk for the first time in over a decade.

The parent plant is the large vertical stem. One offshoot is coming out of the same slit. The arrow is where another of the shoots has emerged. The base is hidden behind a leaf.

I dug into the wall to some cleaning and ran into an interesting thing.  One of the dumb canes I have planted is doing a bit of creeping under the rug.

Lots of new growth

I took a picture of the plant wall last night.  It’s really growing nicely.  I’m still waiting on the gutter.  It must be time to nag them again.  I ordered the new aquarium light.  It should be here next week.  I can’t build the new aquarium cover until I’ve mounted the new gutter and got the new light, so it’s wait . . . wait . . . wait.

The yoyo loaches are keeping the snail population in check and they’re fun to watch, but I doubt I’ll have any new babies while they’re in the tank.  They’re like short fat eels who will eat anything that will fit in their mouth.  They dive into the foliage, wiggling their way through to find buried goodies which is just what’s needed to get the snails and their eggs.  Fortunately it takes them a while to get up a head of steam in open water and the other fish have plenty of time to shift out of the way.  It’s amusing to see our sole head and tail light getting harassed when he has always been the one  harassing others. Payback, gotta love it.

Ready to be put away

I’ve pulled my grow bed apart and gotten it stored away in the loft.  I’ve put the hydroton in barrels and buckets for the winter.  I’ve still got to pull the grow bed frame and cover the tank.  Next year I’ll try and find a nice clean 55 gallon drum (plastic) for storing the hydroton.  That’ll let me put it all in a single container.  The 30 gallon drum I’ve got just isn’t big enough on its own.

Open source window farm

Every so often I do a search on plant walls and vertical gardening to see what’s new.  This morning I ran into this.  It’s pretty cool!  But better than just the idea is the way this system works.  It is built on the airlift model.  Instead of using a pump and timer to handle delivering the nutrient rich water, the system uses an aquarium air pump.  While you can buy the whole system, they provide full instruction for a number of different models that can be made from plastic water bottles.

This is very cool.  If you’ve got a kid who needs a science project, the hanging plastic bottle farm would be a stellar undertaking.  Add an aquarium and some fish and you’ve a great “watch it work” project!

Watch this video.  Then visit our.windowfarms.org and start reading.  Fascinating stuff.

Begonia in the gutter ready to burst into bloom

I haven’t done anything about a gutter yet, and I need to . . . desperately. I’m making that a priority for tomorrow.  I’ve got two sewing machines to run up to be repaired and will handle it on the way.

All the baby fish are doing great.  I lay on the floor and watch them scoot around the tank.  Some are big enough to come out and feed with the adult fish.  I wish I could get a picture but they’re just too small to get into focus through the glass.  I end up with tiny little blobs of lighter colored stuff in a fuzzy greeny background.  Ugh.

One of the gutter begonias has blossom stalks topped with buds ready to bloom.

The big begonia is doing really well though the leaves aren’t quite to the size achieved last summer.  They’re close, just not quite there.  The wood fern is doing well.  I have  some stuff that is just limping along.  My cape primrose isn’t happy.  I’m hoping it will come around . . . it’s really slow to show happy or sad so I just have to be patient and see if the changes I’ve made help.  By late spring I should know.  I think the gloxinia is toast . . . I think it’s been totally overgrown by the surrounding foliage.

About 1/3 of the rex begonias I planted are still growing.  I think they would have done much better if I’d gotten them in the wall when all the other plants were about the same size.  Now I’ve got stuff that’s gotten huge and the rex begonias are pretty much lost in the undergrowth.  Time will tell whether they make it out of the understory.

All the philodendron, ivy and dumb cane varieties are doing tremendously well.  They really like the wall.  The hoja is doing good.  The rain forest cactus are doing fine.  The Christmas cactus bloomed a couple weeks ago, just one pretty salmon colored blossom.  It’s another plant that’s going to be lost in the undergrowth.  It just grows too slowly to stand much of a chance.  <wince>  Ditto for the epiphytes I planted last summer.  I have to stay philosophical about all this.  That’s what planting a vertical garden is all about, learning what works and enjoying the result.

It looks like the babies I thought were guppies are actually neon tetras.  They’ve finally gotten big enough to have color and shine.  Cool!  Where they were hanging out in the tank should have been a clue.  Guppies stay right at the surface until they’re big enough to not be eaten.  Tetras hang out in the middle darting in and out of the foliage and cat babies cruise the bottom.

We seem to have a steady supply of babies in our aquarium lately.  Right now we’ve got 4 adolescent guppies, at least two baby guppies hiding in the foliage and at least one, maybe two, baby catfish.  Not bad for a 50 gallon tank.

The only change I’ve made recently is in feeding.  I’ve been tossing in a cube (frozen) of blood worms twice a week.  These are gut loaded with nutritional stuff fish need and I think the addition to the diet is making a difference.

The plant wall looks great.  The light is making the difference.  I don’t have a new gutter yet.  It’s still in the planning stage.

I got a florescent fixture mounted for the grow wall this morning.  It’s got daylight bulbs in it.  That should help keep the wall growing and healthy.

I had an epiphany.  I’ve been fussing about what to do for a gutter and I haven’t been making a lot of mental headway until yesterday.  My latest effort to find a gutter for the wall involved an internet search for gutter 12″.  I found a place in CA that custom makes gutters as well as carries all sorts of beautiful fittings for people with lots of discretionary income (aka people NOT like me).  They had copper gutters, galvanized gutters . . . and stainless gutters!

A light finally flicked on inside my head.  We’ve got a sheet metal place local to us where they can custom build me the gutter I need!  They’ve done specialty stuff for me before in stainless.  It won’t be cheap, but it will both look good AND perform good.  What’s not to like with that?  I asked Wadly to pay for my new gutter for Christmas.  He’s game so now I just need to design it.

Bog fern blooming Up close you can see the little feathers.

Remember the hooch in the jungle, the cabin by the lake? The reed sitting in the north end of the bog filter tank is now blooming.

Last year I had two reeds, a small triangular stemmed one that looked like a very small version of this one and a zone hardy one that had small crimson blossoms.  I lost the small reed and the zone hardy one has morphed into this gigantic thing that’s nearly 4 foot tall with blossoms that aren’t crimson this year.

I can safely say I have no idea what’s going on.  I plan to whack this thing in half when it dies back and give half to Mindy.

I came out this morning to a guppy in the sump.  Oops.  I fetched her out but it’s apparent I’ll need some way to prevent the little buggers from taking that ride.

Pump out at the top, wall drain at the bottom. The sump sits in the corner under the plumbing. Plant wall draining back into aquarium. The drain is supported by a hanger on the wall. It just looks like it's sitting on the The black at the top is the wall drain. The clothes pin is pinching shut the primer line.

Wadly and I got the wall connected to the aquarium last week.  The first picture is the plumbing to and from the wall.  When we move into our *real* house I won’t be able to drill holes with impunity . . . darn it.

Yesterday I got the sump connected.  I still have to paint the . . . I’m not quite sure what to call it.  It’s a collection of elbows and short pieces of pipe that takes the place of u-pipe and overflow box for controlling the level of water in the aquarium.  The portion in the aquarium will be green, the part out of the aquarium and inside the sump container will be black.  The next hot day we have I’ll pull it and paint it using Krylon Fusion.

I have the pump to push the water into the wall in the sump.  The wall drains directly into the aquarium.   I also have a very small fountain pump in the sump to keep the water circulating between the sump and the aquarium when the pump for the wall isn’t running.  I still need to clean up all the water and electric lines, running them so they won’t clutter the landscape and I still need to provide a cover for the sump to keep out debris AND I need to moderate the sound of running water in the sump.

After I manage all that I need to build a custom cover and light array for the aquarium.  And then I need to find and install the gutter for the wall for when the plant wall comes back in.  And install an overhead light for the wall.  Got the light, just don’t have enough electrical current available to run it but that should be fixed soon.

49 gallon aquarium

The larger aquarium is all set up and connected to the wall.  I’ve run 1½” black PVC pipe from the plant wall out in the sun porch through the wall to the left end of the aquarium.  The pump is in the right end with the hose for the pump using a separate hole high in the wall level with the top of the plant wall.

With the new larger tubing I had to put additional slits in the gutter stand pipe to prevent the gutter from overflowing.

I traded the pleco for a very much smaller one.  I bought five small neon tetra to give the two babies I already had a school and I bought two more catfish for a total of four.  With the guppies and adult neon tetra I have about 25 fish in the aquarium.

My next step is to get the sump built so I can maintain the water level in the aquarium when the wall is being watered, dose the wall separate from the aquarium and top the water up without adding water directly to the aquarium.

Jungle hooch

Wadly sits in the kitchen in the morning, drinking his coffee and gazing out over his domain.  This morning he said “our cabin by the lake is now a hooch in the jungle.”  It made me laugh.   The reed has gotten to be a fairly impressive size.

The first picture is what we see when we walk out the door.  The second is what Wadly sees sitting in the kitchen.  You can see why he’s calling it a hooch in the jungle.

Wadly on his beloved John Deere moving the plant wall

In the last couple weeks we’ve made a number of changes to our aquarium/plant wall setup.  We moved our plant wall outside for the summer and swapped our original 28 gallon aquarium for a larger 50 gallon one.

Yesterday I swapped our fairly large plecostomus for a scaled down model too small to eat new hatchlings and sleeping fish.  I also got two more catfish and five neon tetra about the size of the tetra babies we already had.  I think that brings our tetra count to 10.  Wadly will have to buy some more guppies to round out the pack.

I’ve still got a lot to do to the new aquarium.  I need new air hose for one of my stones, I still need to find/build a sump and I need to run plumbing through the wall to connect the plant wall to the new tank.

When we moved the plant wall out we hung it on the horizontal beam on the east end of the sun porch.  To leave it outside and still connect it to the aquarium inside the living room it was necessary to move it to the north wall.  Rather than remove the gutter and disturb all the plants again, we fastened a 2×4 to the back of the plant wall and moved it with the tractor.  It was a little time consuming but very easy nothing damaged in the move.

There’s no way to get it back into the house using the tractor but I wish we could.  This last move was incredibly easy.

I’m planning the changes I want to make to our aquaponic system when the wall comes back indoors.

This time I want the water level in the aquarium to be fixed, so I’m planning to install a sump.  In reading up on sumps I ran into a good tutorial on one of the salt water aquarium sites.  What I found delightful, beyond how clear and informative the information was the author’s style.  “I once had a zebra goby that, despite my lectures, would make the trip several times a week before I finally managed to find an effective way to enforce the height restrictions on the ride.“  Part 3, sump tutorial

Wadly’s changing to a bigger tank.  The new tank is the same depth front to back but is 4″ taller and 18″ longer.  That’s a fairly significant increase in water volume.  The addition of a sump bumps the volume even further.  I will be able to have the tank heater and small circulator pump in the sump along with the larger pump required for feeding the wall.  Moving the pump and heater out of the tank will really clean up the inside which will make Wadly even happier.

Wadly’s current tank has been very successful.  Having it attached to the wall keeps the tank’s inhabitants fairly healthy and clean with little work on our part.  The tank’s health and stability are supported by the baby catfish, baby guppies and, most surprising of all, baby neon tetras we’ve had since the tank was established.  The baby tetras were jousting last night.  They’re so flashy it’s easy to see their antics from across the room.