I've lost one spider plant at the top. I have others in the gutter I can put in its place, I just need to do it. The hoya is finally showing gwoth. The small leaf is new.

The wall is doing really well.  The gutter begonia is ridiculous and the floor is littered with discarded pink petals.  The flowers are appearing in a slow wave from the bottom of the cascading growth to the top.

The avocado all have multiple roots, though no stalk has appeared.  I am expecting to see that feature shortly.

The hoya has finally started to grow.  This is a very promising sign.

I got an email from Keith at Rex Begonias.  My plants should be here today or tomorrow.

I’ll be filling in some of the empty spots in the next couple days.

Corkscrew willow in upper filter. Terry's antique toy trucks look great on the shop deck.

I had a lovely visit with my brother Dan and his wife Vala yesterday.  They live far enough away that I don’t get to see them often.  I was gifted with some corkscrew willow cuttings which I’ve stuck in the upper bog filter until I can get them rooted and ready to plant.

Wintered over and new plants out in the bog filters 3 gallon buckets ganged for flooding the grow beds Missing end cap allows the near bed to flood more.

It’s still too cold for starting seedlings outside.  The water in the tanks has finally reached 55° which means we can start feeding the fish, but that’s still a bit too cold for plants to grow vigorously.  Within the next two weeks that should all change.

I put the plants I’d wintered over in the laundry room out into the bog filter tanks.  I also stopped at JMH Gardens and picked up some penny royal, fairy moss and some kind of pond bean.  I can’t remember what Jill called it.  I’ll ask when I go back in a couple weeks for the water hyacinths.  I’m pretty sure “bean” is right, but given how I’d managed to mangle all the other things I purchased (fairy frost is a fabric not a plant), I’m feeling a bit less confident at the moment.

Instead of rock in the upper (smaller) bog filter I’ve added hydroton this year.  The lighter medium will facilitate the take-down of the filter in winter.

The grow bed plumbing is finished with the exception of one 1½” end cap.  Three 3-gallon buckets are ganged together using tee-less connectors and 1½” pipe.  Terry painted the buckets black which will facilitate warming the water over the next few weeks.

Once I’ve got the new end cap drilled with holes and installed the flood depth can be fine tuned.  I’ll plant the beds with seedlings the first of June if the water’s warmed enough.

Blossom stalks showing their heads

As well as the begonia that’s being so showy with it’s clusters of pink blossoms, the Cape Primrose is also stretching into spring.

Upper tank with hydroton

It’s still too cold to put out any of the biofilter plants I’ve tried to winter over but it is time to get the tanks in and circulating.  This upper tank is foam.  I got it at a year end sale two years ago for $10, a great buy.

Last year I used a tee-less fitting and a piece of rubber hose for the upper tank outlet.  All last summer I had issues with the upper tank overflowing due to a too small outlet with penny royal root blocking the flow.  I’m hoping I’ve solved some of that with this year’s setup.

I pulled the tee-less connector and inserted a tapering vacuum cleaner wand extension pipe into the hole.  After determining I would get a good seal, I pulled it out, trimmed it accordingly and reinserted it into the hole.  No sealant was required to give a good water tight fit.

This change allows better outlet flow and the mean level inside the tank is lower decreasing the chance of overflow.

What you can’t see (I’ll drop the water level and get a snapshot before I put the plants in) is the 3″ PVC pipe that keeps the hydroton out of the outlet and inside the tank.  The pipe is one foot long with a 45° angled end.  This angle fits over the outlet and is fastened to the tank with a 2½” screw.  The other end of the pipe is a straight cut which is covered with a piece of 30% sun shade cloth.  The length of the pipe has saw kerfs to increase the ability of water to enter the pipe.

Patrick's private wall - aquarium is under the floor (glass) and is 6x8 meters.

Here’s a great thing to share with you, a video of  Patrick Blanc giving a presentation on vertical gardens at the California Academy of Science.  The video is an hour and a half long and is broken into parts.  I didn’t have any trouble with buffering, so give it a try.  He talks about all his walls, what was good, what was bad and includes maintenance, inspiration, plants he used, insect control, maintenance . . . it’s well worth watching at least once if not more.

Blossoms everywhere.

I’m going to miss this plant when it goes into LouAnn’s wall.   It’s so robust and beautiful.

Half-buried tank, two grow bed trays. back side of the grow bed. Note flush bottle. When the water reaches a set level in the bucket above, it then overflows into the tubing feeding the coke bottle. When sufficient weight is reached, the bottle pulls on the cord and flushes the valve in the bucket. A small hole in the cap of the bottle allows the water to drain out and the cycle repeats.

This is my new setup, sans the second bucket.  I am waiting on tee-less connectors to add the second bucket to the dump tank (existing bucket).  I’ll use a short piece of 1½” plastic pipe near the bottom of the buckets to connect them.  The two buckets, connected together, will give me the volume I need to fill both beds in a single dump.

Here’s the list of parts.

• 2 five gallon buckets – mine used to contain pickles and were obtained from a local deli.
• 1 pump
• black tubing running from the pump to the bucket (visible in the top picture as the black loop to the right of the bucket and in the bottom picture).
• 100 gallon Rubbermaid stock tank (buried to first step in the tank side).
• 2 mortar mixing trays (the 8″ deep ones).
• miscellaneous scrap lumber – none of this lumber was purchased new.  I’ve got 4×4 for the four legs (mix of pressure treated and cedar – it’s what I had), 2×6 for the between post supports and 2×4 for the top plate on which the tray rims rest.  The bucket rests on a notched 3×4 and a notched 2×4 held up by 2×8 scraps screwed to the tray frame.
• a handful of 3″ decking screws
• 1 toilet flush valve.
• 1 16 oz plastic coke bottle (flush valve counter-weight).
• black tubing to feed flush valve counter-weight bottle (visible in the second picture – connects to a piece of aluminum tubing which inserts through the bottom of the coke bottle.
• miscellaneous hardware including a collection of stainless nuts and washers to act as the flush valve weight (offsets the weight of the plastic bottle so the flush valve flap closes completely).
• Plumbing parts – some 2″, some 1½”.
• Tee-less connectors to gang the buckets together.  I never order enough tee-less connectors.  They are the first connector I reach for when I have to fasten pipe to pipe or insert pipe into something.  I could have replaced the 2″ tee with a tee-less connector for less than a quarter of the price of purchasing a 2″ tee.

It took me an afternoon to take apart the old single-bed stand (I needed to reuse the legs and some of the shorter lumber) and another afternoon to construct the new two-bed stand.  You cannot see it from the picture, but there is a 2×6 that supports the center of the beds underneath going from left to right.

It took another afternoon to get the new bucket and flush assembly put together and get the tray flood plumbing set up.

I still need another 100 liters of hydroton.  It should only take another 50 liters (1 bag) of hydroton to fill the beds, but I want to increase the size of the gutter for my plant wall so want some extra to ensure I have enough.  Until I get the additional hydroton, I’ll let the beds cycle and build the nitrite/nitrate eating bacteria colony.

The new and updated dump bucket The roller assembly gizmo hanging on the side of the bucket. Note the notch in the bucket collar to accommodate the gizmo. The outboard end of the gizmo assembly. Note the notch in the lid to allow the lid to (mostly) set down on the bucket. The back side. Note the notch in the bucket collar. Stainless long necked bolt.

Yesterday was a  beautiful day, mild, sunny and quiet.  Wadly was off visiting family and I had the peace to putter to my heart’s content.

I managed to get the dump bucket for my grow bed rebuilt.  This time I added a genius gizmo for the flush counter-weight assembly.  This crafty  gizmo was the happy confluence of circumstance and available parts and it all started with the proximity of the flush valve to the edge of the bucket.

Because my 5 gallon buckets have a lot of ridges and raised lettering at the center I mounted the flush assembly against the side of the bucket.  This gave me a smoother flatter surface for sealing the toilet flush valve to the bucket and, by mounting the toilet fill assembly next to the side of the bucket, I was able to reduce the distance between the rollers that lift the toilet flush flap and support the flush valve counter-weight.  I saw the lock assembly for a sliding window sitting on the bench ready to be taken out to the aluminum pile to recycle.   That started the mental wheels turning and I was able to scrounge the remaining parts to pull this gizmo together.

The new roller carrier is small, requiring one small notch in the bucket collar for installation and support.

The rollers are from the bottom of a sliding glass door.

The bolts holding the rollers are stainless.  I have no idea where they came from.  Whenever we disassemble something for recycling, we take any potentially interesting small hardware and stick it in one of our multiple cabinets with plastic drawers.  We had this particular bolt type in two lengths.  The shorter was twice the length I needed but they do a perfect job.  The additional bolt sticking out is more of a design statement than a flaw.

The holes in the center of the rollers was just a bit smaller than the circumference of the bolt which allowed the bolt to be pressed into the roller assembly.  A bit of judicious encouragement from my rubber mallet did the trick and the rollers are now pressed onto the bolts.

The holes in the aluminum slider window lock handle were just slightly smaller than the threads on the bolts.  Because the piece to receive threads was aluminum and the bolts were stainless,I was able to force screw the bolts into the holes to create the necessary threads in the aluminum carrier.  You see what I mean about a confluence of circumstance?  The bolts were the right size to press into the rollers and the holes were the right size to accept threading from the bolts.  Kismet.

Each bolt has a fiber or teflon washer and a stainless washer to ensure proper spacing for the roller.

The rollers aren’t stainless and aren’t designed to be out in the rain.  Terry painted them for me to help keep the rust at bay.  As to the bearings, an occasional squirt of WD-40 (water displacement 40th formula tested) keeps rust in check and the rollers turning smoothly.  the arrangement allows the cord to be lifted off the rollers and the roller assembly to be taken away from the tank/growbed assembly for maintenance.  At some point I’ll make a plastic cover for the roller assembly to keep the rollers drier.

If you’re wondering what I used to extend the overflow tube on the flush valve . . . it’s a vacuum cleaner hand wand extension pipe.  We’ve got a shelf under one of the benches that gets all the plastic pipe chunks we might need for a later project.  Wand extension pipe is just plastic pipe and the taper makes them perfect for fitting onto other pipe or into openings of not exactly the right size.

Gutter fern Two more different new ferns

The new ferns seem to be doing okay.  I have a couple that are more vigorous, but they are different varieties so the differences in growth are easily explained.

The gutter fern is a delicate thing when compared to the stems of the Hawaiian begonia (Ricinifolia Immense).  The stems of that particular begonia grow to be bigger around than my thumb. The other two ferns aren’t as big as my original wood fern, but they’ve just gotten started.

Increased growth on heliocereus

It’s been almost four weeks since I changed the watering frequency for the wall. The difference is really starting to show.

The heliocereus is putting shoots out of its shoots. It’s acting like it’s spring!

The peperomia is finally producing new growth both at the base and at one of the nodes on one of the stalks.

And finally, the wood fern shows the most dramatic difference. The part of the frond that had grown prior to the water frequency change looks really stunted. The part that grew after the change looks very different.

Peperomia is finally showing some life.

Change in a single frond shows the biggest impact.

Yesterday I rebuilt my aquaponic system to accommodate an additional grow bed.  The single tray I used last year was just not enough.  I have switched out the gravel I used last year for hydroton (expanded clay balls) so (theoretically) the beds will be light enough to move inside when the weather grows too cold to sustain growing.  A single bed filled with gravel would require four muscle men, a pygmy goat and some special equipment.  That so won’t work for portable beds.  With hydroton I should be able to lift the bed onto a rolling cart for transport indoors.

Now that I’ve got two beds to flood, last year’s system won’t work as is.   Two beds means at least twice the water volume.  I will gang together two 5-gallon buckets to make up the required flush volume.  By ganging buckets together using a short length of 1½ pipe and tee-less connectors, I can supply the volume for both beds using my existing fill and drain system bucket.

So far I’ve got one tray filled and water cycling through but I have more to do before I’m ready to consider planting. I need to cut new piping for the drain system.  I want the system to flash-fill the beds so I don’t have to rely on an auto-siphon for drainage.  That reduces the complexity of the system and reduces the parts needed to get additional beds attached to the system.

The tank’s water temperature is still below 55° [brrr] but if I’m going to get a head start on the season, I need to get my beds functioning mechanically now.  To get the beds up to temperature a little more quickly, I’m thinking of installing a solar water heating system for the tank.  We’ll see if I manage to get it done before the tank gets up to temp.

Pink begonia blossoms

The begonia falling down from the gutter has lovely pink blossoms.  The begonia in the gutter has a long stalk of white blossoms.  Spring must be here.

Begonia and philodendron flourishing in the gutter

I’ve got a lot of blank space in the wall right now.  I tore out all the waffle plants.  I just didn’t like them.  It takes a lot for me to dump a plant, so that gives you an idea how much I didn’t care for this particular variety.

I didn’t tear out the waffle plants until I had a plan for replacement.  I have some rex begonias coming as soon as the weather gets just a bit better.  It’s pointless to spend the money and then have them die in shipping because the weather sucks.  I can be patient.

I’ve got a bunch of stuff in the gutter in preparation LouAnn’s wall.  It’s been an excellent teaching moment.  If you’ve been following the wall since its inception, you’ll know I had my timing set to water running through the wall at set intervals.   From watching plants in the gutter, its become apparent the watering periods were too infrequent.  As a result, I’ve changed the timing.  The pump pushing water to the wall is now on for 15 minutes and off for 1½ hours.  Terry has noticed we are now replenishing the aquarium with twice the volume of water.  This may be too frequent.  I don’t know how long I’ll have to watch the wall to determine if the timing is right.

I got an email from Keith at Rex Begonias Ltd that he was ready to ship my begonias.  I had to put him off.  We still had snow on the ground.  We’re going to coordinate so he can ship when he has good weather to arrive when ours is reasonable as well.  It’s hard to be patient.  I made the order last October and now that he’s ready to ship, I want them NOW.  I’m restraining myself.  NOW and alive and healthy aren’t necessarily compatible given our still wintry weather.

New Wood Fern frond New fern growth Another fern with different shaped fronds The above fern with the base showing additional growth Vine fastened on with runner roots showing new off-shoots Lovely spatulated ends on the heleocerius Fern in the gutter

Check all the new growth!

The wood fern frond is still small in comparison to the dirt-rooted version but I really chopped the heck out of the root structure to get the pieces into the wall.  I expect the robust growth to take a while as the root structure reestablishes itself.

Beside the planting of the wood fern is one of the new ferns I got from eBay.  I won’t know what the fronds will really look like until all the frondlets uncurl.

Up near the top of the wall is another new fern and the fern fronds have a completely different look with the ends of the fronds looking almost purple/black.

At the base of that frond the plant shows new growth that looks different from the frond.  This will be an interesting one to watch.

The bi-colored vine at the bottom of the wall has rootlets growing off the vine into the wall.  It’s showing three or four new shoots.

The heleocerius has got a lot of really good growth with the longer bits showing lovely spatulated ends.

The fern in the far corner of the gutter is really getting stretchy.  I’m looking forward to seeing what it looks like once the fronds unfurl.

A split and company

I’m trying to determine if the warmth of the water and the flood and drain have a big influence on how fast an avocado seed will sprout.  I’ve actually got three seeds in the wall gutter now.  We’ll see how it goes.  The split in the original seed is growing larger each day.  I don’t want to pull it up for fear of damaging the root.

I really need a deeper/bigger gutter.

Baby peppered corydoris catfish Gutter avocado

Well, we’ve got a new baby.  Our Peppered Corydoris catfish have a youngun.  I noticed it this morning.  It’s about an inch long, so it’s been around a while.  I don’t pay too much attention to the aquarium.  The sun was out early and bright and there that little bugger was . . .

As to the attached plant wall, I’m in holding mode until my Rex Begonias arrive.  I dabble.  the current dabble is a gutter avocado.

I eat a lot of avocado.  I have already given away a 5′ tall many limbed avocado tree.  Sometimes I just can’t help myself . . . this was one of those “what if” moments.  I just had to set the seed in the gutter to see what happens.  I checked it this morning and it looks like it’s starting to split!

I’ll give this one away as well once it’s established.  I don’t have room for an avocado tree.

Wood ferns Long frond with a second starting One in the gutter (bottom right corner) and one in the wall, both showing new growth Fronds with legs! <grin> Nubs of growth Orchid cacti

I got a single lot of mystery ferns on ebay. I put as many in the wall as I could but still had some bigger starts left over that I couldn’t find a spot for.  I passed those on to LouAnn.  They might prove to be interesting!

My wood fern is doing fine.  Of the four starts I put in the wall, all are growing.  One has grown a normal hairy foot with two fronds running off through the greenery.  The little one on the left is the one doing most poorly.  It puts out little puny fronds that never seem to mature.

I pulled one wood fern start and replanted it in another part of the wall.  I thought it was dead, but once I pulled it I realized the new growth was down between the backing and the felt.

I’ve got at least two new ferns that are in the gutter.  One I can see easily and it’s got a frond sticking up from the foot.

One of the ferns near the top of the wall has produced a long frond with arms sticking out from it.  That one should be interesting.

I’ve got a fern with a thick stalk that’s putting out multiple blunt protrusions.  That, too, should be interesting.

And finally, I bought a lot of orchid cactus cuttings.  They came all nicely hardened off and I was able to put them directly into the wall.  None of them is showing growth.  We’ll see how they do.

Creeping Jenny on steroids

Here’s a glimpse of the Creeping Jenny I put in the wall last fall.  The leaves on the bottom left are the leaves that existed when I inserted the plant in the wall.  The two leaves in yellow circles are the new leaves.  Look at the difference in size!

Blooming begonia

One of the begonias in the gutter is blooming.  The camera’s flash bleaches out the color, so you can’t tell they’re very pale pink.

Selective picture taking

It’s time for a plant wall update.  Now before you go “oh! Wow!”, note that this picture is of only the lushest part of the wall, not the entire wall.  And the ficus is growing in a pot next to the wall, not in the wall.  Hmm.  I wonder if a ficus would grow in the wall . . .

Let’s take a look at the whole thing.  It’s looking good, but it isn’t overall as lush as the more focused image.  One of the problems with shooting with flash is the lighting up of the background felt.  It isn’t that obvious in person.

The big picture

I’ve done some pretty severe trimming of a begonia and a philodendron in the upper right to expose the Cape Primrose (just over halfway down on the left) so it has a chance to fully recover from the aphid infestation.  Of all the plants, I think it was the hardest hit.

There’s a lot going on in the wall right now.  One of the begonias is blooming, new growth is everywhere (except the hoja and the peperomia) and the plans are overall happy and healthy.

Blooming begonia, lengthy heliocerius, happy wandering Jew.

I really like having plants in the gutter.  I want to pull this relatively small gutter and put on a larger one.

Some of the plants in the wall I’m really blah about.  I’ve got a succulent in there that does not inspire me.  The peperomia’s got to go.  The waffle plants are leaving me uninspired.  I love the viney things, the coleus, rain forest cactus and ivy.  I love the begonias.  I think I’m going to start pulling things out of the wall I don’t care for and add more of the things I like.  I’d love to add a couple rex begonias and more varieties of philodendron.  If I could find a monstera cutting I’d add that, though I know it would be a disaster.  The leaves are almost 2′ long.

The small/grow close to the wall plants have mostly died out due to lack of light.  I need to get in a do a thorough cleaning, getting rid of dead growth.  I’ll do that when I start pulling out and chucking plants in prep for adding new ones to the wall.  The top and left side of the wall is getting inadequate light.  I can’t do anything about it right now, but I’m aware of the problem and will get it resolved eventually.

Blossoms and buds

The Christmas cactus is blooming again.  Beautiful.

A happy jumble of green

This is the left side of the plant wall.  The Ricinifolia Immense is really happy, as is the dumb cane and rain forest cacti.  Everything seems happy.

I’ve cleared out my garden window,  giving away the two hoja and the desert cactus.  I also gave away a 5 foot tall avocado tree in a 12″ pot, but I still have five pots to water.  Two will be torn apart to go in LouAnn’s wall.  Two are very large pots, one a yucca, the other a combo palm and ficus (visible to the left of the plant wall).  I’m hoping I can back off to watering once a week, but probably not.  I still have one small pot of crown of thorns that will require twice weekly watering to continue to bloom and do well.  We’ll see how it does.  The big ones I don’t worry about as much.

Fall is coming . . .

Two days ago this rose was the most beautiful thing, a soft barely pink blossom bejeweled with drops of dew in the morning light.  I kid you not, this rose was gorgeous.   I hurried in to grab my camera, but alas, the battery had insufficient charge to take the pic. By the time I got the camera charged and dashed out to snap a pic, it was just a nice rose.  No beautiful dew, the rose had opened fully and the light was all wrong.  <sigh>

Nascent blossoms on the Christmas cactus

I have new buds on the Christmas cactus in the wall.  I took a picture a couple days ago, but the exposure was off so far I couldn’t tell there were buds on the ends of the branches.

New vine Grapefruit seedling in the gutter Happy Ricinifolia Immense

LouAnn has a vine in her yard I just love.  I don’t know what it is, I just know it reseeds itself readily.  It’s got a lovely leaf shape, a pretty flower and is a nice compliment to my wall.  I stuck it in the hole left by the expired orchid.  If you look at the Cape Primrose leaf in the background in the center of the image, you’ll see a mess of seeds dropped from one of the seed pods.  At this rate I should have a mess of these in the gutter by this time next year.

This summer I had a couple of grapefruit that had sprouting seeds.  I dropped them in the hydroton in the gutter.  Of the three or four seeds I dropped there, two have produced plants.  I don’t know what they’re going to do, but they’ll be fun to watch.

The Hawaiian begonia is happy in its new space.  Both begonia transplants are growing vigorously.

Pennyroyal crowding itself out of the upper filter

I was looking back through my posts and updating post tags and saw the picture of the biofilter I took at the beginning of what we are laughingly calling summer.  What a difference.  Next summer I’ll see if I can find a yellow canna to add to the mix.  The orange and red are lovely, but yellow would rock.

I’m still battling aphids in the plant wall, but I am making headway.  Instead of seeing a dozen, I’m seeing an occasional very lethargic speck of green with legs.

Jill at JMH Water Gardens gave me a recipe for a fish safe aphid spray that seems to be working really well.  The fish are alive and the aphids aren’t.  I see that as being the measure of success.  Oh, did I mention it’s cheap to make out of common stuff?  Yeah, that too.  Blend oil into a beaten egg white, store in the fridge.

Jill’s recipe says 1 cup of oil to 1 tbsp of egg white.  I confess to not being that precise.  Store in the fridge, mix a bit with water in a spray bottle and spray.  I did say I wasn’t that precise, didn’t I?  Her instructions say 2½ tsp of the egg/oil mix to 1 cup of water.  I don’t need that much at a time so I mix a little over a teaspoon to ½ cup of water.  Spray as needed.  It doesn’t keep so dump what you don’t use right away and mix new each time you need it.

I’ve gotten four meals of lettuce out of my growbed so far.  I don’t have a lot of lettuce in the bed . . . I should have a lot more.  I’m supplementing with store bought lettuce.

I found a place to get hydroton in Olympia.  It was max expensive, $40 a bag when the going rate is closer to $28.  I bought two bags.  That should be enough to fill both growbeds with a bit left over.

I pulled the gravel out of the wall gutter and replaced it with hydroton.  I also trimmed the heck out of a bunch of plants in the grow wall to allow some slower growing things a little bit of daylight.  I put some of the trimmings in the gutter along with a couple of sprouting grapefruit seeds.

The orchid in the wall is not doing well.  I don’t know if it will recover or not.  Time will tell.  I should have moved it ages ago.

I long ago faced my addiction to plants and decided it was not a bad thing.

Wall in profile with ricinifolia Immense on display.

I was forced to shuffle plants around in the plant wall.  Terry couldn’t feed his fish without having to fight through the ricinifolia Immense, and the plant was happily increasing in size.  The largest leaf is over 18″ long on a 2′ long stalk.  As the leaves matured the situation was going to get much worse, so decisions had to be made.

To reconfigure the wall I pulled a areca palm on the left side of the wall and increased the opening and installed one of the begonias.  Then I cut another opening in a blank spot and installed the other, removing the majority of the large leaves at the base of the plants.

Orchid is the stick at the very right of the wall half-way up, the Immense begonia is on the left and the new philodendron is center right.

I pulled the orchid and put it in a new spot against the right side of the wall next to the window and put a split leaf philodendron in the spot where the largest begonia was removed.  This fills in the spot and gets the orchid out to where it’s not so crowded.

I was amazed when I pulled the ricinifolia Immense how little root it had added since being installed in the wall.  It had not much more root than when I put it in the wall, but the leaves were getting . . . well . . . IMMENSE.

Now Wadly can get to his tank to feed his fish without  having to do it by braille.