Monthly Archives: December 2016

Making Room for Indoor Spinach

Aquaponics

The two towering tomato plants have now been removed from the system.  The vegetation growth was quite impressive, however the tomato production left something to be desired.  It’s not the tomato’s fault.  During the time we were growing the tomatoes in the aquaponic bed, we were experimenting with the use of cheap feeder fish.  When the fish thrived, the tomatoes thrived.  When the fish died, the tomatoes stalled.  Just like we would expect.

Now that we have the fish situation stabilized with Oscar, the oscar, and Ally Peters, the algae eater, we are moving on to spinach.  In the left side of the picture you will see a tray of Rootcubes Plus.  I’ve never used these before, but so far so good on the spinach germination.  When these get a bit bigger we plan on transplanting the spinach plants into the aquaponic grow bed to provide spinach for our farm fresh egg omelets.

Cleared out Grow Bed

“Though your beginning was insignificant, yet your end will increase greatly.”
—Job 8:7 (NASB)

2016 Season End Garden Update

Square Foot Gardening (SFG)

So the end of the 2016 home garden season has come to a close.  Here we share our successes and failures so that we can learn from our history and make this valuable hobby more fun and productive.  Bottom line of the 2016 season … we grew a lot of food … for the deer.

Our main focus next year will be to set up some sort of fencing system.  We may install a sonic deterrent as well.  Additionally our wood chip project should be completed, at least in the garden area.  I’m still so happy about having scored about 10 yards of free wood chips!

We didn’t grow as many greens in 2016 as in seasons past.  I’m contemplating if we should focus on that a bit more in the early and late part of the season.  We really need to be eating more greens!

Also, because of the cold May and our late start on things, the compost and leaf mold wasn’t prepared in time to add early in the season.  The low effort techniques we are using backfired for us due to the cold May, but we will be more than prepared for 2017.  Also, we don’t anticipate adding more 4×4 SFG boxes in the next year or so.  My hope is that the wood chip project will be conditioning the soil underneath such that we could perhaps grow some tomatoes up electrical conduit and pruned to a single stem as a way to increase our tomato production to make fresh salsa and better utilize the space in between our 6 established 4′ x 4′ gardening beds.

 

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 ESV 

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; …