AQUAPONICS UPDATE MARCH 17

GOTTA LOVE AQUAPONICS

Now this is the type of gardening I like.   After the initial setup of the system we let the pump cycle for a few weeks.  This really wasn't needed but we wanted to make sure all was well before we spent billions (ok ok maybe 10 bux) on fish and plants.  We bought a couple of the Jiffy Greenhouses.

These units come with little 'pellets'.  We call em coccoons.  Simply add water, they swell up, put your seeds in them and wait.   Everything worked well except the cukes.  We had one sprout and it has been going crazy ever since. 

 

Starting the transfer of plants to the grow beds

The Kale, Lettuce, Tomatoes, Peppers and a few of the herbs were growing as much as 1/2 inch (.5 cm) a day.  We only used water from the tanks to feed the plants.  When they were big enough, (we guessed at what was deemed 'big enough') we started planting them in the garden.  In retrospect, I should have planned it a bit better.  We put tomatoes and cukes together with onions and kale.  Next time around we will put the shorter plants in one grow bed and the taller growing ones in the other.  That way the cages won't block out the light to the little guys.

The tear drop on the paper is what we call a Kanban. My past is catching up with me.  This is a signal to let me know if Denise watered the plants that day. 

About the fish.   We used feeder fish (the cheapest you could buy in bulk).  I set up a glass fish tank and had them all in there until they became acclimatized.  Then put 15 in the aquaponics tank.  We had a few (3-4) die but the rest are going great.   I keep track of the Ph, Ammonia, Nitrites, Nitrates etc etc and all are within the so called correct parameters.  At first we had jump started the system (before the fish were introduced) by adding some ammonia to get things going.  Must have put too much in so we diluted it.  Now everything seems to be balancing out.  Need more nitrites / nitrates?  Toss in some more fish.  10 seems to be about right for now. 

 

After 6 weeks

 



This photo was taken 6 weeks after we had initially planted the seeds.  I had to replant some of the cukes, as only one grew.  Hopefully we will have more success with the new batch.  They should be ready just in time for outside planting. 

Denise's Porta - Greehouse with Jiffy pellets soaking up water.

 



 

Now the Plants have more space to grow

 

Denise assembled her portable green house to expand on the seedlings.   Now that the cukes are coiling around everything we put the wire cages in the growbeds for the tomatoes and cukes to grab.  Note the peppers in the far grow bed.  I built a makeshift shelf above the cukes to hold the smaller Jiffy greenhouse.  This one has just been seeded with Beans, Peas and Lettuce. 

I have noticed that some Aquaponamians (what ever ya call people who aquaponicize) do is plant the seeds directly into the grow media. Might try that in the future, but we wanted to control and document the growth rates of the plants.  YES DOCUMENT.  I have a book I have been keeping track of the chemical make up, how much water we need to add weekly, and what seeds, and where we have planted them.  I want to seed the most hearty of the plants for next year's crop. 

A LETTER FROM A DOCTOR REGARDING SELF DEFENSE

This letter was sent to the Canadian Shooting Sports Association by Dr. Mike Ackermann - Sherbrooke, NS.  It is definitely food for thought.

GUEST COMMENTARY:  Nova Scotia doctor takes strong position on self defense

Dr. Mike Ackermann is a rural doctor in Nova Scotia and former member of the Canadian Armed Forces. His total respect for, and love of life, has led him to have a bone-depth belief in the sanctity of human life and the absolute right to its effective and timely defense. As a result he has made a study of both the healing and the martial arts. The use of hands and feet, horse, bow, sabre, rifle, pistol, shotgun, and Medicine are all disciplines he studies to protect life. Mike Ackermann believes that each one of us is our own first line of defense. He shares his observations on self defense with CSSA E-News readers.

Evil people will always exist. You cannot hug them into goodness. Good people will always be at risk of assault and worse from those who lack human compassion, regardless of how idyllic we may think our society has become.

The gun genie is out of the bottle and won’t be put back in. Laws of disarmament only disarm the lawful, leaving criminal individuals and governments unaffected and unopposed.

Despotic governments, who by the way are very strong proponents of restrictive gun laws, are responsible for the genocidal murder of nearly 200 million of their own, disarmed and helpless citizens in the last century alone, far more by orders of magnitude than all other murders combined. Anti-self defense zealots in the so-called women’s and victims’ rights groups are their "useful idiots”.

Even were it possible to somehow make all firearms magically disappear, the world would hardly become a pacifist paradise, no more than it was before the advent of the firearm. In those days the world belonged to the young, the strong, and the lords, who by and large took what they wanted, when they wanted, with little concern for concepts like "rights" or "decency".

The firearm changed all that, allowing the Feudal system to be replaced by democracy, and the weak to have a defense against the strong.

Peer-reviewed criminological studies have repeatedly shown that jurisdictions that encourage effective and timely personal defense see double-digit reductions in assault, rape, and murder, whereas those
regions where personal defense is panned see no such reductions. They have also shown that compared with all other courses of action, including passive compliance with an assailant’s demands, armed self
defense results in the least risk of injury to all parties, criminal included.

Ordinarily when an assault occurs, the advantage lies with the assailant who, aside from the victim, is the only one present during the attack and who also gets to choose the time, place, and manner of attack.

A 55 kg woman facing a 100 kg assailant would do well to avail herself of the only tool that can swing the power imbalance in her favor – the defensive firearm. Whatever else they may be, violent sociopaths are not stupid and they will do all in their power to gain and consolidate their advantage over their intended victims. Thus they are gleefully in favor of restrictive gun laws as well. When faced with a choice of targets, they will pass up the harder target in favor of the weaker.

So those who claim to be concerned for human welfare and safety should be strong proponents for personal armed proactive self defense, but ironically many have the opposite view. They blind themselves the defensive life-saving uses of guns that outnumber the harmful abuses by two orders of magnitude.

When you are under attack, and if you are even able to call 911 at all, what you are asking for is for someone else to bring a defensive firearm to your aid. You will wait the rest of your prematurely truncated life for succor, which will inevitably arrive too late to do ought but draw chalk outlines around your cooling corpse and gather evidence for trial.

This does you little good, and is in every way akin to calling a mechanic to install a seat-belt in your car and put it on you only after you are in the middle of a crash.

- M.J. Ackermann, MD (Mike)

Rural Family Physician