Aquaponics - Lettuce Update

This is how it's all settling in. Should have had a control of some sort to see if the Aquaponics helps with growth. The look healthy enough though but it all looks kind of small.

 

 

These are the seeds I threw in.

 

09/06/2013

Pretty things in our Garden

 

Not (quite) everything is functional in our garden :)

 

Aquaponics - Lettuce

 07/05/2013 08:06 Morning after planting

 07/05/2013 18:22 Blocked pipe meant the grow bed hadn't been filling

07/05/2013 20:47 Water restored, plants looking much better

Aquaponics - Update

Where were we. The siphons weren't working and I needed to make gravel guards and add the gravel.

I managed to source a 4" bit of pipe that wasn't a 3m long. I used a bit of duct piping like you would use for putting a pipe through the wall for an extractor fan. You could probably find bits of offcut waving lying around the place though. The gravel I washed and put into the growbeds. I used purple slate. Bigger bits at the bottom and smaller at the top. No noticeable effect on the pond water and the fish haven't died so :) Time will tell if it is an effective grow medium.

I spent a lot of time on the siphons trying different things. What I didn't pick up on and what is very important in that the siphons need a certain amount of water to get going. I was fortunate enough to be able to turn up the amount of water a bit but still not enough to get the siphon going reliably. Enter Affnan. Affnan seems to be some kind of aquaponics genius. Reading his blog and seeing a lot of references to the Affnan siphon I decided to give it a go.

The basic idea is that you use a pipe reducer (although we are expanding) to increase the surface area of water flowing into the standpipe. This causes a Bernoulli effect (so Affnan says) which effectively means that the siphon can be started with less water flowing. The part I am using here is a 3/4" to 1 1/4" reducer. Why this is all still in imperial beats me.




One of the big impacts of the adding the reducer was that my bells no longer fit. Well they fit but there was no room for the water :) I had kind of expected this so I got the parts to make a larger 2" bell.



Bell parts:

• Length of 2" pipe
• 2" pipe cap
• Joiner for putting the cap on the 2" pipe

You would think the cap would go into the pipe apparently not so.

 You can also see that I went straight to the teeth technique we saw in the document about sipons. Much simpler and quicker that drilling holes. I also did not add a breather hole as it was not mentioned on the Affnan spec's. You may also notice that there is no snorkel in this design either. All in all this takes about 5 minutes to make.

After all that the siphons did not work well. One worked pretty well starting a stopping by itself. This was extremely lucky because I was getting fed up at this stage and was loosing faith in the whole thing.

I took the bell off the siphon and had a look at the water going into the stand pipe. What I noticed was that the water was tending to one side and this effectively meant that the water was pouring down one side of the pipe which was never going to block the pipe enough to create the changes in air pressure required to start the siphon. I levelled up the grow bed, previous ministrations where I was trying to cause a u-bend type airlock by raising the end of the outlet pipe had meant that the grow bed was a little off kilter. I straightened it out and checked the standpipe again. The water was flowing evenly down the sides of the pipe so you get a nice circle in the middle. I replaced the bell and guess what.

It worked.

And has continued to work now for the last 3-4 days.

Here it is finished.

I added some companion plants and some herbs at the ends were the grow beds didn't reach and I have planted some shop started lettuce (mostly because I am very impatient) and scattered some seeds. Fín.

Aquaponics - About

Right, I realise that I didn't really introduce the subject of aquaponics. I'll give a brief summary buy for further reading here's the wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaponics :) Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture, raising of fish, pawns, snails, etc. for food and hydroponics the growing of plants in water. Fish produce ammonia through their gills and poop which in fact can become toxic to them. Through bacteria action this ammonia can be converted to nitrites and then into nitrates.



source: http://aquaponicshowtodiy.landscapeideasandpicture.com/aquaponics-systems

Plants like nitrates, fish don't (they don't mind nitrates but they don't like ammonia). Aquaponics takes advantage of this. The water from the fish tanks, pond in my case, is pumped into grow beds where the bacteria live on the stones or whatever material has been used there. The plants live in this material and consume the nitrates, cleaning the water. That water is then returned to the fish tanks, done properly this can also aerate the water which fish also like.

In many cases people raise edible fish so you can get both fish and plants from this kind of system.

There are only three inputs to an aquaponics system. Food for the fish, electricity for the pump and, every so often, water to top up the system.

There you have a brief introduction into aquaponics. There is actually loads of stuff on the internet about it. It seems quite popular else where.

Aquaponics

Not sure how or why but noticed this video on YouTube A beginner's Guide to building a Home Aquaponic System on a Low Budget. We have a pond with 4 koi carp in it that we needed to put a fence around so I figured why couldn't the fence be some aquaponic beds.

Now, those fittings are not easy to get here, so there I spent some time looking in generic hardware stores for the parts but ended up going to a local plumbing supplies place DPL. I have to say at this point that the guys here were excellent and very helpful in cobbling together the parts I needed for the system. It was a little different then in the video above, but it does seem to function as expected, although at this stage if any plants grow remains to be seen.

The parts I used to make the siphon are as follows:

• 3/4"Straight Overflow Tank Connector
• A threaded elbow probably also a tank connector
• A threaded brass piece to join them
• A length of 25mm overflow pipe (length will depend on your grow bed size)
• A longer piece of 38mm pvc pipe
• 38mm pipe cap
• Joiner for pipe and cap

Now ideally you would get bit closer to what he has in the video but I was trying to do it in a weekend and not have to order stuff in, in practice that probably would have been cheaper, easier and quicker, but who knew. I already had a pump for my pond so I was sorted there, definitely not the perfect pump for this but will do the job. With all the parts assembled (and still not quiet believing it would work at all) I tried it just holding the pipe filling the tank and low a behold it did actually work.

Now having done some things like this before I am all to aware of my own shortcomings and that I am not nearly as clever as these people on the interweb I was dubious of leaving it running without me watching. This raised issue for about the general operation of the system. You see, as it was not a closed system, i.e. if for some reason the siphons became blocked or the grow beds sprung a leak there was nothing to stop the pump from pumping all the water from my pond, burning itself out and killing my fish. Hmmm.

Thinking about this the first thing that springs to my is some sort of ballcock. Now, being filled with the joys of clever non-mechanical DIY siphons I shied away from buying a traditional ballcock. I figured I could make something similar. I came up with a number of prototypes and spent many evenings trying proofs of concept. All failed. I ended up buying a ballcock in the end. They are designed that way for a reason it would seem. You need the distance between the float and valve to create the kinds of force necessary to compete with the force of the water. Obvious no that you say it but was fun learning anyways.

To my dismay the purchased ballcock didn't work either. The rate of flow for a bog standard ballcock was simply not enough to cope with all the water my pump was moving so even fully open there was still water flowing up to the grow beds (not that I hooked them up at this stage). After two failed attempts at drilling out the valve on the one I had I resigned to wait until the weekend to get back to the guys at DPL to see if there was anything to be done.

Fortunately, there are various rates of flow decided by the piece I had tried to drill. Unfortunately they did not have the fastest flowing one as these has not been seen for at least 18 months. I settled on the red ones and got a few in case I tried my hand at expanding it once again.

Now the other this I did was reduce the amount of water flowing up to the grow beds, there was a bit of creative plumbing but I managed to arrange it so that I could tune the amount of water going up the pipes, this combined with the faster flowing ballcock dealt with my concerns for my fish.

I then proceeded to plumb in the actual grow beds and get the system going properly.

 It did not. The water seemed to be constantly flowing out of the pipes. I played around with my siphons and realised that the siphon was never actually stopping. You see when I had been trying it I was only filling it up to the point where it stopped siphoning and then moved the pipe back into the pond, so the siphon was never running while the grow bed was filling. With the water coming in from the pump constantly there was enough to keep up with the siphon at the end once it slowed as it reached the bottom of the grow bed. This mean that the siphon never disengaged and it would constantly trickle out. Now I figured a hole above the main intake holes would sort this out but I needed some confirmation. I did some googling and found this very useful document regarding siphons, thanks to U of Hawaii. Now this document is great for explaining how to make a siphon. One of the things mentioned is a snorkel. Now you may have noticed, as I did, that there was no snorkel in the video, but there is a small how drilled above the other holes which serves the same purpose.

I adjusted my siphon but reducing the length of my stand pipe (not sure if this was a good idea). Changed my inlet holes to "teeth" as described in the document above and added a small hole. These changes seemed to have the desired effect.

I have noticed now that it is still not quite right. The siphons are not kicking in enough. I need to play with it some more. So, next jobs are to create a gravel guard and add the gravel.

Eat Only Irish for a Week: Pasta Bolognese and honey flapjacks

So have been doing the #eatonlyirishforaweek challenge. It has been a real eye opener regarding what is and isn't Irish and what say's its Irish and isn't. What you're left with is basically raw unprocessed veg and other produce. It's great for the evening dinners but breakfast and lunch is a bit more difficult.

Anyways for dinner tonight we had home-made pasta and bolognese tonight.

Pasta was actually pretty straight forward. Normal flour and a whole egg and an egg yolk. Blitz the flour and then add the egg, blitz some more till it looks like breadcrumbs. Then wrap it in cling-film and leave it in the fridge. I left it for 24 hours but 30 mins is enough I think.

Then you have to roll it out.

And cut it and leave it to hang for a few minutes. I used my trusty beer stirring spoon.

And then cook it. Takes just a few minutes.

The bolognese was pretty standard, shallots instead of onions (finding it hard to get onions) fry the mince, then add the tomatoes (peeled, actually surprisingly easy) and a bit of rocket and oregano (from our garden).

It was amazing!

The flap-jacks were honey, (no sugar cos Ireland does not make sugar, nada, zip, nothing) oats and butter. Melt the butter and honey together then add to the oats and cooks for about 20 minutes.

Tasty Good: Why going home is so good

My Dad makes this brown bread it has about 6 million types of flour rice, potato, maize, sunflower seeds (which go green when cooked, who knew?) and a few other things. Last year I was in Portugal and had this amazing bread with Chorizo in it so I thought it might be good with the bread. It was ridiculous. Especially with some Red Leicester cheese :)







The next treat we had was beer BBQ'd roast chicken. The idea here is that you take a beer can with some beer in it, sit the chicken on the beer can and roast it. Do your usual with the chick seasoning wise. The beer flavours the chicken so keep that in mind when you pick your beer. You end up with the best chicken you will ever have ever.

The last thing we had was a spit roast leg of lamb plugged with Rosemary and garlic. This we had with Purple Sprouting Broccoli from the garden and some roasty potato wedges.

Eat Only Irish for a Week: Practice runs

This is the second of our #eatonlyirishforaweek practice dinners so they are mostly Irish as opposed to all Irish.

The first dinner was lamb chops with spinach, fried mushrooms and home-made potato wedges. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of it so you will just have to trust me when I say it was fab. The non-Irish part of this dinner was the paprika and sundry other spices that went into making the wedges but other that than every thing was Irish grown.

Tonight's dinner is butterflied chicken breast stuffed with spinach, mushrooms and cheddar cheese, rosemary roast diced potatoes and roasted cherry tomatoes in balsamic vinegar. The non-Irish part was this dinner was the balsamic vinegar. Irish tomatoes are not as hard to come by as you would expect.

More about Eat Only Irish for a Week can be found at http://www.eatonlyirish.com/

Brewing Up a Storm: The Unbottling

One week was all I could wait...but here is it is. Have to say I am pleasantly surprised with the flavour which is quiet caramelly. It has a great colour. Another couple of weeks  (just in time for my birthday) and it will be amazing!

Brewing Up a Storm: Bottling

So what's been happening. Well the beer has been fermenting away now for about a week. Had a bit of a scare when I took my my first specific gravity (SG) test as the wort was very cloudy so there was a touch of panic that all my sanitisation did not have the desired affect and somehow my beer got infected. Not so and subsequent SG tests the beer had cleared up a lot. Apparently infected yeast is not all that common anyways. The wort had been bubbling away but does not always happen so do worry if it doesn't. What is really important is your SG measurements, as long as this is progressing nicely your beer is fermenting. Beer usually starts at a SG of around 1040 and ends up around 1003. No change over 24 hours tells you that you beer is ready for bottling.

First thing to do is the mind numbing task of sanitising your bottles, this just takes time and bleach or Milton. Use a bottle brush to get rid of any dirt in the bottles (cleaning them out immediately after use makes this much easier) then let them soak in bleach if about 20 minutes. Rinse them out with hot (some say cold) water to get rid of the smell. Make sure you do the caps as well.


Once you have them all nice and clean you need to add your priming sugars. The intention here is the let the remaining yeast in your beer consume the the sugar producing (a small bit of) alcohol and most importantly CO2. As your bottles are now airtight as the CO2 is produced it will be under pressure and will be forced back into the liquid giving you a nicely carbonated beer. The amount of sugar is largely dependant of the size of the bottle. You can get sugar drops from any of the brewing sites to help getting the amount right. Another option is to prime all your beer at once but adding the sugar to the fermenter or siphoning the beer into a bottling bucket and adding the primer to that. The ensures that all your beer is primed evenly and if you do not have the sugar drops is it much easier to weigh out the total amount as opposed to the amount per bottle.


My beer kit has a handy valve type thingy to help with bottling but a siphon or something like that will do the job. Try to make sure you do not move the fermenter (keep the bottling in mind with finding a place for the fermenter to live) as you will stir up the sediment will has graciously fallen to the bottom of the fermenter and out of your beer. The bottling bucket mentioned above can be useful here as well.

Once all you bottles are full and capped you need to invert the bottles to make sure the sugar is well mixed up. The bottles need now to be stored upright back in the hot press for at least another week. The beer at that point is ready to drink but its recommended to wait up to 3 months (if you can).

Brewing Up a Storm: Primary Fermentation

So the preparation is complete. Time to mix it up. 

I am using Cooper's Indian Pale Ale, 500g of  Light Spray Malt and 450g of Honey. The honey is to replace 300g of Brewer's Sugar (dextrose).

First thing to do is to fill up your sink with hot water and put the can in upside-down. I put the honey in as well. This is the get them all nice and runny to make it easier to pour. That takes about ten minutes. I watched the end of the rugby which was fantastic. 

Pour all of the ingredients into the fermenter. Then add 2 litres of boiling water. Mix it all up with big spoon. The smell at this point is fantastic, you get all that beery goodness.

Fill up the fermenter to 20 litres with cold water.

At this point we need to check the temperature as we want it to be between 21C and 27C. Do this by adding hot or cold water up to 23 litres.

Finally add the yeast by sprinkling it evenly over the top of your wort. Putting the lid on immediately. 

That's it, beer made starting to ferment. You can really smell the yeast getting going.

You need to put your fermenter somewhere that it will stay between 21C and 27C. If the temperature gets outside of this range fermentation can stop all together. Some yeasts can tolerate a wider range of temperatures.

I put mine in my hot-press. This is not easy, get help :) 23 litres of anything is heavy.

Final thing to do is to measure the specific gravity or SG of your wort. This first measurement is know as the original gravity or OG. Beer normally starts around the 1040 mark. I was a bit worried that my honey/sugar switch but I was not too far off the mark.

The amount of hot water at the beginning is not arbitrary. Basically 2 litres of boiling water plus 20 litres of cold water gives you just about the right temperature for the yeast which you add at the end. In colder areas the ratio changes. I had to add a lot of hot water at the end to get my temperatures up.

A week to wait now, then it will be time to check if it's ready for bottling.

Growing Pains: Spuds

Planted our spuds today. They have been chitting nicely in the shed for the past number of weeks. I now its a bit early but the weathers been pretty good so hopefully the ground temperature is not too bad. Planting Kerr's Pinks this year as we prefer the floury types.

Dug two trenches, not giving to much space to spuds this year as they are quiet space intensive. Went for one of the shadier parts of the garden, it still gets a good bit of sun but is partially shaded.

I dug down another 5 inches or so and put in some manure. Make sure you leave the tubers pointing up. I probably didn't leave enough space between each spud but hey.

I've left a good bit of soil for use "planting up" which is covering the leaves of the potatoes as they grow. This increases yield and ensures that the potatoes are not exposed to sunlight.

Exposure to sunlight causes potatoes to become green. The green is actually chlorophyll which indicates an increase in glycoalkaloids which are toxic. More information can be found here.

I never got a chance to water them in because it started bucketing down. Which was great because our water-butt was empty. It is now full!

Brewing Up a Storm: Preparation

Getting ready now to make that actual beer. One of the most important things before you go and mix your wort is to make sure that all you equipment is clean. One of main reasons for home brew not working out is that your yeast gets infected. Make sure you give everything a good clean with hot water and a cloth. Don't use any detergents or clean agents just leave em soak and the wipe them down with a cloth.


Once everything is good a clean then you need to sanitise/sterilise the equipment. So just pile everything into the fermenter fill it hot water and some unscented bleach. Leave this for a good bit maybe a half hour. Then rinse everything with hot water to get rid of the chlorine smell as much as possible. As you can see I did it in the bath. This is the closest my beer will come to a bath I promise.