EPIC Cucumber Time!

Here's a short video of my monster cucumber plant. It will be interesting to see how much more it grows before winter sets in. I"m hoping to keep the greenhouse warm enough to keep it going!

Aquaponic Maintenance

Here's a few things that I do for general maintenance in the aquaponic system. There really is little work that I have to do on it!

Goodbye Bette!

I’m sad to say that our favorite fish died today. “Bob” was a feeder fish that was won by my daughter at a local fair from a ping-pong ball toss game about 8 years ago. Over the years he grew quickly and we discovered that “he” was a “she” so we renamed her to “Bob-ette”, or commonly “Bette”. Keeping her water clean was a challenge and is the reason for my discovery of the aquaponics world!

Bette’s first public appearance was in a New York Times article about aquaponics (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/garden/18aqua.html). She was also in one of my videos about building an indoor aquaponic system (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NAiTEq9w5o). Most recently she was in a video produced by film maker Kirsten Dirksen (http://youtu.be/VBspR2p0YYM).

Theft!

Hello to all my friends!

A follower has let me know that he saw one of my videos posted on another user’s YouTube channel.  I greatly appreciate the fact that they brought this to my attention.  I am always happy to produce and post videos which are always free for you to enjoy.  What I don’t like is some scumbag ripping and reposting my videos under their own channel.  It probably won’t be a surprise to you, but I am a YouTube partner and do receive some ad revenue from my videos.  (It’s very little, but every penny helps!)

If you happen to see one of my videos posted, and it’s not from the Web4Deb channel, I would be very grateful if you notify me of this theft.  Thank you for your support and I look forward to providing more videos in the future.

-Rob Torcellini

Dipstick

I forgot to include a few video clips in "Aquaponic System Install - 3 of 3" so here's a mini-video about a dipstick. ;-)

Hanging It All On The Line

Why build support posts when you can use a super-strong dome?!?!




I needed to come up with a way to support and spread out some of my vine plants in the greenhouse. By removing a nut on the hubs and installing a coupling and eye bolt, it is an extremely strong point for attaching a cable system to act as a trellis.

Installing it is very simple, loop the cable through on one end and clamp it, feed it through another eye bolt on the other side of the dome, and bring it to another eye bolt to figure out the final length.  On this end, I loop it through a turn buckle.

Alright, moving right along….

Then just hook the turnbuckle into the last eye bolt and tighten the cable.

All that is left to do is to tie the plants on to the cables.  I also run some twine down to the grow beds so that the cucumbers can grow up it and attach to the wire.  Here’s a shot of the tomato and cucumber once they have really started to grow along the line.