@ai6yr are you sure? I mean really all you'd need is to construct a long pool with a couple of circulation pumps pushing the water through it so it can propel a raft around :D
@vxo It grows great in Southern California, but requires some shading to produce well. It actually does a lot better in more tropical conditions (it looks to have evolved as an understory plant that climbs trees...)
"Welcome to our living laboratory, where scientists from Epcot and the US Department of Agriculture are exploring innovative ways to produce bountiful harvests" (at this point, I'm thinking -- huh, this is like a tour of my backyard)
@melanie Yep! Grows best in shade in Southern California. The best source at the moment is to buy the coffee houseplants that tend to be available at Ikea -- make sure to buy one plant and split them up, they are bundled in a mass of about 10 seedlings in a coffee cup. At least at Ikea Burbank. It's a PITA to process then, but cool to be able to grow them. 100% shade on the east side of my house.
@ai6yr It sounds like I should get one, and keep it indoors (since the climate here is so cold pretty much only annuals from that region could ever grow, and that’s if they’re particularly ephemeral)
"When we mention farming, you don't think of fish. Fish farming, or aquaculture, accounts for half of seafood produced globally" #aquaculture#epcot#mybackyard
@ai6yr Whoa, did you actually farm the tilapia (prior residents of the bucket)? Do the fish produce enough waste for all the plants you’ve highlighted or is aquaponics a subset of the garden?
@zachnfine Yes... not without challenges. They grow very well (1:1 food conversion ratio), however, found several problems:
Never harvested and ate the tilapia, because the kids considered them pets 😂
The ambient temperature of Southern California in winter is TOO COLD for Tilapia without additional heating and TOO HOT for Tilapia in summer. (they like 75 to 86F water). That means you really need an indoor system with heating... outdoor is too extreme. And the spouse would not accept a large Tilapia tank in the living room. Your other option would be a greenhouse with both heating and cooling control.
On the plus side: you just have to feed them whatever vegetative matter you have.
@ai6yr I’m in the middle of resetting my hydroponic towers (it’s late I know). On the hottest days of summer I end up dropping bottles of frozen water into their tanks to try and keep them from boiling my plants. I wonder if that would work with fish — it would be interesting to see if they would choose to hover close to the bottles to regulate their own temperature. I did look into aquarium chillers but haven’t gone that route.
@zachnfine I switched to painting my containers grey/white/beige to prevent boiling of plants here, and also tried shade cloth and misting last year with some good success. That one 55 gallon buck is white because it was boiling fish 😬
@j I have had pineapples in my yard for SO long. Just buy a pineapple and start it. It takes about 3 years to get fruit. (hardly worth it vs. the price of the fruit, but fun). Do the "put the tops in water" to start them and then plant them in successfully larger pots outside in potting soil, south or west side of your house with lots of warmth. (they like hot -- they grow them on SCORCHING black rock, lava rock, in Hawaii). I've never managed to get them to survive in the ground because the soil gets too cold here in winter.
Add comment