Local Food Production another review

National Geographic image of Earth circa 2210

When I reviewed "A Crude Awakening," CTD suggested I watch three other films:

Fuel - watched that, enjoyed it.

I.O.U.S.A. - havent watched it yet.

Collapse - I think I watched it today.

There are two "Collapse" movies on Netflix.

The first one I watched was a National Geographic film that was part history lesson, part current events tour, and part apocalyptic sci fi.

The conceit was that scientists circa 2210 would have no idea how "we" lived and why our great cities collapsed. Pretty fun, actually, as a dramatic device. Except how did these clueless future scientists manage to have 2010-era equipment (Ray-Bans and scuba gear, for crying out loud)?

The show talked about how dwindling water, food, energy, and trust destroyed past civilizations (the Anazasi, the Romans, and the Mayans).

What happens when your water runs out

The second "Collapse" film was 90 minutes of listening to Michael Ruppert talk. Michael Ruppert is a Cassandra - one who [accurately] foretells the future, but who is largely ignored.

It isnt fun to watch Ruppert talk. Hes mostly angry and bitter, and the future vision he paints is dark and painful. But I did garner a few gems:

Ruppert said, "Local Food production is perhaps the most fundamental key to human survival in the collapse of industrialized civilization. [57:00]" He goes on to talk about what happened when two communist dependencies lost access to oil when the Soviet Union collapsed.

The first state was North Korea. Rigid, hierarchical, and cursed with a harsh climate, the people starved. I remember hearing about how people were trying to survive eating grass.

The second state was Cuba. Castro immediately promoted a return to local food production - every square inch that could be exploited for food production was converted to making food. It didnt hurt that Cuba is a tropical country. Anyway, folks in Cuba now eat better than ever.

I also liked Rupperts suggestion that "Community will save us."

At the end of the day, denial, anger, bargaining, and depression wont help as we face a challenging future. Acceptance of lifes reality, with belief-inspired action will allow us to find the way out.

And when we have discovered the way out, we can learn from the parable of the hundredth monkey.

Ruppert tells of the experiments detonating nuclear bombs on the Bikini Atoll in 1946. And yes, the two-piece swimsuit was introduced around that time.

In the 1950s scientists introduces thousands of monkeys to the island, to study the effects of any lingering radiation. Turned out most things were back to normal. But the coconut husks were still slightly radioactive. If the monkeys continued as they had been going, they would all eventually succumb to radiation poisoning. No one wanted to deal with thousands of dead monkey corpses.

Unable or unwilling to train all the monkeys to wash the coconuts in fresh water to remove the radiation, researchers trained 10 of the monkeys to wash their coconuts. Slowly the ten nut washers converted others to their odd practices. 12 nut washers, 20 nut washers, 50 nut washers.

Then the 100th monkey became a nut washer and overnight the other 9,900 started washing their coconuts.

One assumes the monkeys survived, but I cant find any mention of the state of Bikini Atoll monkeys in our times. At least I didnt find mention of mass extinction of the nut-washing primates.
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So, we already knew aquaponics is a great system for producing food in warm, barren deserts, not to mention how awesome it can be in warm, moist climates.

But if we can get "100 monkeys" to demonstrate a robust aquaponics system that works year-round in cold climates, life starts to get sweet, indeed.

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Your Local Grange

Until I read this story about the [California Grange being sued by the National Grange] I never gave a second thought to the Grange.  To me it was just a big building where they held square dances, but this article  [ What is the Grange?  ]  gives a much better description.

Gwen Schantz is chief operating officer of the Brooklyn Grange rooftop commercial farm in Long Island City, Queens.

According to this article, the California Grange has begun to attract "family sustainable farming".  Im guessing we backyard gardeners might fit that description.   The California Grange has also taken a stance against GMO.
Rick Keel, a spokesman for the California State Grange recently said this “For lack of a better term, it seems to be ‘foodies’ who care about community today and see the Grange as a way to provide community service,”

"Since 1873 the California State Grange has championed the interests of farmers, ranchers, and rural Americans. The Grange stresses community service, and its Youth programs are open to all, urban and rural alike. There are over 185 chapters across the state.  For more information contact the California State Grange at (916) 454-5805. " - California Grange

With the Farm to Fork movement catching on; aquaponics and the local Grange may be a very good combination.   Id like to encourage you to look into your local Grange for services.  It may take a while to bring the National Grange around to supporting sustainable farming, but it has to start somewhere.  The aquaponic and home gardening community have become forces of significant proportion.  I think we can make a difference.

If you are already a member I hope you will vote Ed Lutrell The National Grange Master out of office in November because he strongly supports GMO.

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Weeding

Ray has documented an experiment where he weeded one section of his garden and let the other go natural.  So what do you think?  Is weeding just for show or does it help your plants grow better?

This link will start his video at the point where he shows his experiment.
http://youtu.be/Zl_zxmqQ1EU?t=8m48s

Or you can watch the entire video about compost tea nutrient extraction which is different from brewing compost tea for microorganisms. 

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Aquaponics Strawberries

Yum.

I love strawberries, and spend way too much money each year in keeping the fridge stocked.

I cant get enough of them.

Here are some free strawberries  from the backyard.









Some are from the aquaponics system, and some from the dirt along the side of my house.

I planted a stack in one blue barrel grow bed, and a stack more in the ground along one side of my house.

The strawberries grown in the aquaponics system are always bigger and juicer. They also look better. Always big and perfectly formed. But Im not convinced they taste any better. In fact I think the ones out of the ground may actually taste better.

When growing grapes for wine, I understand you dont want too much rain as this makes the fruit bigger, but lowers the amount of sugars per lump of grape.

Or so Im told.

This might have something to do with why the strawberries seem to taste better out of the ground. The ground strawberries get watered once a day when its hot, and every couple of days if its not.

The aquaponics strawberries have as much water as they want when ever they want it.

Or...

It could have nothing to do with that. I cant be sure which went where, but there were two batches of strawberry plants. One batch was fully grown mature plants, and the other batch were all new runners. I seem to remember planting the runners in the aquaponics system because they were smaller, and I wanted to see if they would catch up to the others. But I also remember not doing that. I remember mixing them up so I would get a sample from each. I remember a few other contradictory things as well.

So... possible that they taste different.

But I think its going to prove to be water content.

I think Ill do some experiments with the runners from both batches to see if there is any difference when all plants are the same age. Both beds are producing runners, so I think I should know within a few months.

Another thing to try, might be to change how long the aquaponics plants have wet feet. I should be able to control very precisely how much water the plants are exposed to.

I have an electric tap from a sprinkler system, so I might try to make some kind of moisture sensor, and perhaps try letting their roots get almost dry before giving them more water. I have no idea if such a thing is even possible, so Ill find out.

Or...

It could be that the strawberries dont taste as good when they are hot. Very few of the fruit ever make it into the house. Most get eaten straight from the plant, and there is a huge difference between the temperature of the narrow, protected side of the house, and those grown in a hot house. Now that I think of it, I think strawberries grow well in places like England. Im not sure if England is called England or not, but that place thats sometimes called England seems to be the kind of place people grow things like strawberries.

Perhaps a hot house makes the fruit taste different.

Ill have to find some more information.

Im being very fussy here.

All the strawberries from my back yard taste much better than anything Ive ever bought from a shop. Shop strawberries are always under-ripe, and seem to be made of something other than strawberry.

Thats store bought on the left, and back yard grown on the right.

Even with this poor photo, you can see the difference.

I can also smell the difference.

And if you drop a store bought strawberry into a clear drink, you get a strawberry in a drink. But the back yard ones colour the clear drink strawberry colour.

I count aquaponics and dirt grown strawberries as a total success.




120 Things in 20 years - I think Il buy a second hand digital SLR camera so I can take better photos of strawberries and.

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Thinking Local knowledge

When I was in Papua New Guinea - Madang in particular (I think) Mum found some locals that were willing to let us borrow their canoe for a dollar or two per day. I was quite young at the time, and remember being scared when I could see the bottom, but completely relaxed when I couldnt.

That has baffled me for many years until I experienced a recent fishing trip near Port Pirie (South Australia). The clear waters brought on a vivid memory of the Medang canoe trips. The problem I was having was a fear of heights.The water was so clear, that I felt I was going to fall the thirty feet to the bottom.

Not such a strong sensation when witnessed as a grownup, but as a little kid, it was enough to scare.

The point of this is to introduce a story that will be wrapped up much more quickly than he introduction.

I nabbed a cowrie as a result of spending every day I could snorkelling. (sorry nature). It was a real treasure to me, and I was desperate to take it home to South Australia. It was only a few days before our departure date, and I had no idea how to get the now dead snail out of its home in time for a trip through customs.

A local kid offered a solution.

Juts let it sit next to an ants nest for a bit.

It worked a treat.

The moral...

Have a problem that needs solving?

Ask a kid.

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Aquaponics Over Flow

I wandered out to my system last night, and had what is commonly known as an HSM.

It must stand for Holy Ship Moment.

One of my grow beds was flooded, and there didnt seem to be any reason why.

This is the scene a few minutes after the pump was switched off.

There was water on the floor, and the pump was sucking in small air bubble through the little tornado that had formed in the shallow water over the pump inlet.

I couldnt figure out what was going on, so did a search of the system.

I found this blockage in the stand pipe.

It was stuck really well, but eventually to hammer it out with a length of dowel and a hammer.

The culprit, shown here, was a small piece of scoria.

This growbeds media is scoria.

I also found bird droppings. Im guessing a blackbird was in there throwing things around and looking for worms.

I do actually have an over flow pipe, added when I first built the little system, but the input flow from my bigger pump is much greater these days, so the little pipe wasnt up to the task.

Even so, its a good thing it was there because I think it saved the day by delaying the disaster until I discovered it.

Ill upgrade the pipe to cope with the new greater flow, and Ive put a PVC cap over the media guard so that particular issue cant happen again.





120 Things in 20 years think the last thing an aquaponics system needs is excitement when it comes to overflows.

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Easy Tea Brewer

Last year I build a compost tea brewer that created a vortex. Time has taught me a few things and today I rebuilt the brewer to make the whole operation a lot easier.
The whole vortex thing is impressive and fun to watch but I really dont see the benefit.  If you are into the mystical power of vortex then this design is not your cup of tea  (Like the pun?)

Once the tea was made transporting to the garden became a choir that I disliked so much that the tea would often sit too long and ended up being wasted.  The trick was to make clean tea that I could pump through a hose to the garden beds. Experiments showed me that simply placing the compost in a strainer bag did not let sufficient water flow through the bag.

This new design uses an airlift pump to recirculate the tea water through a strainer bag filled with compost. The airlift adds plenty of aeration to the tea.

I built this from parts I had around and will change the 3/4" pipe going to the bag to a 2" pipe for even better flow.   A PVC Slip Coupling on this pipe holds the bag in place with the zip tie just above the coupling.

I also cut the container down to a depth that I can comfortably reach the bottom of.  Cleaning the 33" tall 55 gallon drum was quite difficult and messy since I had to place my head an shoulders into the drum in order to scrub it out.

Im running the new design for the first time right now.  Cleanup will be easy as removing the bag of compost and wiping out the barrel.  Distribution will be done with a high powered sump pump.  I will be able to spray full strength tea on my plants and water them with an abundance of active microbes.

With this easy brewer I will be far more likely to brew very often.

For those who are looking carefully at the photos you may have noticed the 2" pipe connects through the bottom.  This adds stability to the pipes.  I might not have done this except the original design used this hole to create the vortex.  It think it is a good idea and may even replace the cap that I put on to seal the bottom with a 2" valve in case I should ever want to drain the barrel from the bottom.

Most of these pipes are not glued so they all come apart easily for cleaning.

After using this design I saw a way easily increase the flow so I extended the air lift all the way to the ground.  This design works just as well and turned out to be even quieter than the previous design.  Cleanup is not significantly more difficult so I will keep these changes,  In fact it is so easy that I would not have any trouble making tea every day.

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