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Sunday, 11 January 2015

Few More Strawberry Runners Potted

Potted few more today as compared to yesterday's photo below, they should be ready after Chinese New Year.
I have to make sure that they will grow, especially in these heat the chances of survival without parental support is low.
:)

Saturday, 10 January 2015

Vegan Day Today.. :)

Cut most of the greens and what better to do that... gave it to the fish to eat. Too mush for my use so lets not waste anything.
By tomorrow those fishes will strip the branches clean of leaves.
Other that fish feed, expired bread, yesterday's rice and kitchen scraps.. fresh greens is good as supplement to give the fishes.

What Happening Today.. ?

Apart from doing the racking.. as earlier post : Here

Few seedling needs transplant and rear growbed redo to after few weeks of neglect.
Eggplants above don't look healthy, these need urgent attention !! Transplant three of them into individual hydroton pots and place it in the growbed where the Sambung Nyawa are located.
Will see if they recover into healthy plants in a couple of weeks.
After the eggplants, Tomatoes that I transplant last week still has few more of same batch and just re-pot a few and the rest has to be wasted due to overcrowded.
Nothing interesting, just a normal day at the Aquaponics.

Racking for Strawberry Plants

Run out of space for new strawberry runners, October to February are the months where these plants produce lots of runners. Decide to make a rack for these new plants and maybe they can grow better before figuring what to do next.
Above container can hole about 50 pots of new strawberry plants, I will need to get same size pots to get them easily arranged.
Rack above was from surplus material that I have and reassemble to make a 3 shelf rack and I use the car boot plastic tray to hold those pots. Water added to tray and some nutrient to ensure those plants can survive. This is required since I am planting the runners without parental stolon.

Sunday, 4 January 2015

Friday, 2 January 2015

Cali Who ?

It's Calimyrna, I am a twig.. just a thin short twig from USA
Ok, so much for the twig bit.. I'm trying out Fig. Got myself a Calimyrna Fig twig to try planting it here.
Dip the lower end in rooting hormone and pot it.
This variety may not fruit if it requires that special Fig Wasp or a male plant. Just a test for me and see. Will takes about 2 years to find out, that is if this twig survive the equatorial heat.

Strawberry Going Ornamental

It was mint in this Ornamental set, reason for the mint was to test this set how it stand the vigorous root growth of mint.
It has successfully withstand mint and being running about 10 months without problem, so it's about time to change to another plant.
Trim those mints to get it all out, but I find it's very difficult to pull them roots out.
Nothing else can be done but it is best to overturn the mint growbed and hopefully it pop out cleanly.
Yes indeed, just like a freshly bake cake. It pop out with root and all but leaving the siphon and water inlet intact.
Massive root ball, the center hole is where the siphon was.
There are sign of root invasion into the siphon but not much that it stop the siphon from operation. I just give some minor cleaning pulling those roots out and proceed in getting the LECA loose from the root ball.
The amount of roots is massive and the siphon survive it.
I use car boot tray to avoid making a mess, and it did help in containing the LECA from floating away while I rinse it.
Manage to get all LECA free and back into the growbed to start again.
Next are these Strawberry runners, not sure whether they will survive being planted without parent support. They will have a 50-50 chance of making it if the weather stays overcast and rainy over this next two weeks.
If it hot and sunny, then no way they will survive. Oh well I have many more runners in the strawberry bed or these below.

Same Batch But Different Size

Just to share, the Tomatoes that I transplanted few days back on 15th Dec : Here has grown fast. Below the single plant in the pot is from same batch but the different is like night and day.
The one in the pot do not grow as fast as the growbed transplanted.

The Pump Is Dead

On of my pump that running the three barrel CRAFTS set just operate unreliably, it occasionally died and require so knocking to get it going. Remove the pump from the tank and upon close inspection found that the rotor shaft has worn a lot.
Closer look that what the rotor shaft looks like below.
Bought a replacement, same rating of 2000 Liter/hour and this time I ensure that the rotor shaft is made of ceramic.
This Astro 2000 pump set me back RM 40.00, that about USD13.00. I had use this make before and on average it lasted about 3 years.
I would recommend ceramic shaft pump if you can find it, the steel shaft just can't last that long.

Thursday, 1 January 2015