Aquaponics is Fun

Exclusion bag on Capsicum..

Pests & rain...
Has been quite some time since I last posted... No single reason, the holidays came & went, School started back up for the girls.. I  think I also became complacent about gardening after loosing most fruiting crops to combination of fruit fly, too much rain & a plague of mini grasshoppers... We still have been harvesting a variety of veggies that didnt get targeted my the grasshoppers or fruit fly..  We did manage to save some fruit by covering them with pest exclusion bags so am thankful for that.. I think we have learnt some valuable lessons & are already planing a defensive strategy to deal with them for next summer...

Plants for the coming months...
    We are looking at Autumn & Winter seasons so have put all the pests & deluges behind us.. We sowed a selection of broccoli, cauliflower, as well as some kale, rainbow chard & tatsoi.. The are also a small tray of tansy that will be used to deter  the ants that love colonising the wicking beds & barrels..  Some roma tomatoes have been planted into one of the top IBC beds & we also have a tray of unknown variety of toms needing to be planted out as well..
Barrels have been selected for this years garlic crop as well as the onions sets we grew last year..
 
 Tadpoles/Froglets & Aquaponics...


We have some movement in the tadpole "ponds" with a few metamorphosing into frogs & disappearing into the garden.. So far we have seen ½ a dozen advanced tadpoles with legs & 2 that are wee small frogs with stumpy tails attached like the little feller to the left..
As much as we love watching them grow & change we would really like the trays free to turn into grow beds for the Aquaponic set up..
The 1 grow bed we have is slowly filling up with strawberry runners which is great as we are looking at trying to build "strawberry wall MKII" in the next month or so.. We still only have the 7 large goldfish & a single Pacific blue eye in the fish tank... We have our name down for 30 Jade perch at one place & have another we still need to check out.. Really want at lest one more grow bed before we put any more fish in just to make sure there is enough medium to filter out the waste...

Below are a couple of the latest clips done of the garden & Tadpoles...



Thats about it for now but will be back a lot sooner this time as we have a few little projects on the go...
Just to finish, here is some of the udumalpet, White & Long Asian purple eggplants we have been harvesting over the past few months...