Yap. It is time for cleaning up the growbed. Harvested today for the second time for year 2014.
As you can see, there are some kind of bugs spreading in the growbed. Will stop the new batch for now to let them go away.
This is a good idea too as the growing of the lady's fingers are slow.
Uncontrollable duckweed growth?
Planning to balance it up in my aquaponics system.
Figure is my initial plan and will be carry out once free.
Looks like it's almost the time for harvest.
Currently busy with life and family...spending lesser time for the garden/farm.
Alright...in action...
Next harvest expected to be in two to three weeks...
Will be Chinese New Year by then...
During this Chinese New Year we will be a bit high profile after dark...stay tuned...
Alright! Since Tilapia loves duckweed very much, so the fix for the duckweed growing has to be on higher priority.
Spent this afternoon to figure out how to create a better solution and it has to be a permanent fix for all kind of situation, wala...this is the best I can do for now. My idea...put it up, observe and face the challenges... then fix them!
In my aquaponics system, I call this 150 gallons water tank as main tank.
This main tank is the heart of the whole system running on the roof...either should we call it sky garden or sky farm is not important but without this tank I will be really busy dealing with challenges...
This tank is
1. Supporting the aqua portion in my aquaponics system;
2. An auto watering system to those plants ie. Grape and passion fruits etc..
3. A place for duckweed growing (in coming weeks)
4. Rain collector
There are two DC water pumps in it, supporting each other and for the future expansion.
This's a really simple quick fix for the duckweed before split the main tank to two layers.
As decided to work at home tomorrow, have a chance to stay up late tonight to fix the DC water pump issue.
Last week, found that the water level does matter for DC water pumps to run properly but keeping up a high water level defeated the purpose of the rain barrel feature; moreover, in the long run it will not help in creating a reliable aquaponics system.
The solution was increased the voltage of the dc water pumps from 12v to 18v (with a voltage step up circuit). The results for water cutoff and the siphon action were positive for the smaller pump but for the extreme pump, it needed to be tuned further and it shouldn't be hard to fix it.
Of course, higher voltage here meaning higher energy usage and to me every watts count as the whole system is solar powered.
