Vermiculture produces a unexpected crop

I didn't document it, but I built a worm bin and combined my two worm beds into it.  I had one bed that was in my old raised bed garden and another that I just threw together in a Styrofoam cooler.  The new worm bin is made from 3 10-gallon tubs, shredded newspaper and the existing dirt from the Styrofoam cooler.

I've been throwing food waste in it and some butternut squash seeds sprouted.
I had just cleaned out the red beans and lettuce from my growbed and now I have space for my summer garden.  I was about to seed some butternut squash seeds and now I have them already.  Yea!

I will be seeding a few Zucchini, yellow squash and few cilantro seeds this weekend.  FYI, I tried seeding a few cilantro seeds directly into the growbed a few weeks ago by wrapping a small piece of paper napkin around them to keep them from flowing with the water, but none of them germinated. 

Picking the red beans and Pulling up the lettuce

The internet says, "let the red beans dry a bit on the vine.  When beans rattle, its time to pick." Half the bean pods are brown, the others are green.  The net said, once you pick, pull the plants up because they only produce once.  The net doesn't lie.

My son and I pulled all the bean plants, shook the rocks out of the roots and pulled the bean pods off.  I planted 24 dry red beans, I got about 100+ fresh, ready to cook (or dry) red.beans.

The lettuce was bolting all over.  Time to pick what I can as I rip it all out.  I got almost another gallon bag of lettuce off of the plants that weren't bolting.

The last picture should be the growbed after we cleared the lettuce and red bean plants.  I cleaned out all of the roots and leaves that I could see.  It looks like I have lots of available space for my aquaponics summer garden.

Lettuce Is Bolting. Nitrates Are Down

 Have you ever had a week where you have plans for a weekend project and just don't feel up to it?  I was going to build a worm growing system, but I was too busy at work this week to come up with a plan.  It is a simple idea, but I still like to have a plan.

My lettuce is beginning to bolt.  I have never grown lettuce, so I have been looking at pictures online of what to look for.  The pictures online aren't much help because their plants are farther apart than mine and grow short and wide.  My seeds flowed together and then grew on stalks as they were fighting for light.  I really should have taken a better picture from above.

I took out about 10 plants, roots and all.  I took those plants, cut them up and put them in the worm beds.  From the remaining plants I got ANOTHER bag of lettuce.  Hopefully, I didn't pick any from a plant that has turned bitter.

I checked the nitrates today and I'm not happy.  20 ppm nitrates is too low.  Everything else was in the normal or ideal zone, so I'm adding a few sheets of  dried seaweed.  I'll check again in a few days.

The tomatoes are going nuts.  The tomatoes look like a grape vine nightmare.  I have grape-like clusters of fruit, but nothing is ripening yet.  Soon.

Tomatoes, 6th bag of lettuce, banana peppers and a few dozen red beans

It has been a while since I posted because the system has been cruising along.  6 bags of lettuce and so far, no bolting.  The banana peppers are huge and ... look like bananas.  The single strawberry plant is yielding 2" long strawberries, 2 or 3 a time.

The tomatoes are coming along.  A pruning accident a while back actually yielded my first tomato bud.  I was pruning off the lower branches of one of the 4 tomato plants, I cut the wrong thing and the top of the plant fell over, leaving the branch that I was trying to prune.  I stuck the top of THAT plant deep into the gravel.  The 2nd picture shows the roots that it created for itself. 

Now, there are several clusters of tomato buds.  Nothing has ripened yet.  The biggest one of them all is abjust under  2" in diameter and growing.

The red beans have sprouted bean pods.  Based on the number of pods... we'll have 50 to 60 red beans.  Cup-o-soup anyone?

Solids, Flowers and Peppers

The solids filter is doing great, but is thorough enough.  I took the tube that goes to the bottom of the fish tank and added a 90 deg to it, along with a tube that runs diagonally across the bottom of the tank.  The new tube has holes on the bottom and slots on the top.  We shall see if the added surface area on the bottom keeps the tank cleaner.

I've been draining out the collected solids and using it to water my new crepe myrtles and the plants along the front of my house.  The 4 crepe myrtles were planted last November and now have spring growth.  I had some plants that weren't doing very well that I planted last spring.  The watering has sparked a pretty impressive amount of new growth.  The picture shows 3 of the bushes that I've been watering.  The one in the middle is healthy.  The outer two are getting there.

The Garden
As far as the garden goes, everything is flowering.  I still haven't seen any tomato buds, but the plants are getting huge.  I need to stake them up a bit more.  The 3 banana pepper plants are covered in buds. The bell pepper has flowers, but no buds.

The red beans ... I don't know what I'm looking at.  Flowers are obvious, but I'm looking for pictures of what the buds will look like.

The strawberry has 6 berries growing.  The bush needs more sun, but the red beans and the tomatoes are shading it.

Day 62... Everything is Blooming

With days in the 70s and nights over 50 degrees, I've taken the plastic off of the hoop house and tied up some tomato stakes above the growbed.  All 4 of the tomatoes are tied with string to the stakes.  All of the tomatoes are blooming.  No noticeable fruit though.

FYI.  I pulled off some tomato suckers and "planted" them by putting the 2" suckers in the media about an 1".  They are both about 4" tall now.

The single strawberry plant has 4 strawberries on it, all green and growing.

The banana peppers (3 plants) have blooms and one pepper is about an inch and a half long.

The ruffle lettuce is over 8" tall and the bibb lettuce is about 5" tall.  The ruffled lettuce is broad but not huge.  The bibb lettuce looks more like baby spinach leaves.  There are ALLOT of bibb leaves.

The bell pepper is recovering from the aphid infestation.  New leaf growth.

The red beans have not only flowered, but there are little red beans popping up all over.

The chili peppers are still tiny.  A VERY slow growing plant.

It Is "If You Give a Mouse A Cookie" Time

Let me start off by saying... brim are pigs and picky eaters.  There is not enough water movement to properly clean the fish tank.  So what do I do?


In my existing setup, my water pump feeds a top growbed with a gravity fed water return into the fish tank AND a straight feed back into the fish tank with a venturi (for air).

This is where the "give a mouse a cookie" comes into play.

• If I build a solids filter to clean the water a bit, then I have to add a sump tank and the water pump will move to the sump. 
• If I build a solids filter, I could build a bio-filter too.
• Since I'm adding a sump, I might as well sink the sump and build some extra beds.
• If I build some extra beds, I will need a larger water pump.
• If I add a larger water pump, I could use the existing pump just to cycle water and add air to the fish tank.

This week I ordered a bunch of Uniseals in different sizes.  Tonight, I built a solids filter based on the YouTube video, "Aquaponic radial flow filter for solids removal..", which is based on this guy's design, "DIY Solids Filter".  Uniseals are awesome.

Tomorrow, I have to go buy some PVC pipe because I bought the wrong diameter.  I used 1 1/2" fittings and Uniseals, but bought 1 1/4" pipe.  Luckily, I had enough pipe on-hand to build the filter itself.

I also contacted a local manufacturer of expanded clay media AND a local billboard tarp dealer.  The tarp should be available this weekend and I can get the media as soon as I have the new bed(s) ready.