One Pound Tomatoes, A New Bio-filter and New Plants

One Pound Tomatoes

All I can say is... wow.  My tomato plants are the Bella Rosa variety.  The stalks are over an inch in diameter and the none of the plants are taller than 3'. One of them has a branch that hangs over the side of the grow bed.  I had to run a string to it so that the fruit wouldn't break the branch.  That is the plant that produced some one pounders.  Out of the 15 or so tomatoes that I have picked so far, three have been 14 oz or more.  I did have to chunk some at the back fence.  Big ol' holes in the sides.  Not birds because I have a bird netting and these were on the inside of hoop house frame.

A Bio-filter In The Sump
My nitrates were flat-lining (less than 20 ppm) and the only thing that I could point to was the city water.  They said that it might have chloramine instead of chlorine.  I started using rainwater only to replenish the system.  Not much change.

My fish tank (through a radial filter) and my growbed both feed the sump tank.  The pipes come in at the same location.  My solution was to put a bio filter tank within the sump tank right where the two pipes come in.  I took a plastic 35 lb kitty litter container and drilled holes one inch apart along the bottom of the container.  Then I added a 12" aquarium aerator, zip tied to the bottom with the hose running out the side.  I attached the filter to the inside top of one end of the sump with some zip ties through both tanks above the sump's high-water line.

For filter media I ordered some bio-balls from Amazon.  In the meantime, I cut some cabinet liner into one-inch squares and dropped them in.  The liner is a kind of rubberized mesh that floated.  Three days later the mesh had sunk to the bottom and my nitrates were rising (almost 40 ppm).  Yesterday I added the bio-balls. I'll test again at the end of the weekend.

New Plants For a New Indoor Aquaponics System
Along with the bio-balls I ordered 50 2" net cups and 100 rock-wool cubes.  I started 6 lettuce and 6 cilantro rock-wool cubes.  My plan is for a 4-3-4 grid on a deep-water culture.  If a friend gives me a 20 gallon fish tank, it will be an aquaponics system.  If I he doesn't give me the tank, it will just be a hydroponics setup with an aerator with no pump.  I have another 12" aerator wand, single port air pump and a small water pump.  Either way, the water will come from the outdoor aquaponics setup.

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.