Intercepting water from air conditioner

My next plan for my aquaponic is to have a water input from a free source such as rain. Back then in australia, i actually harvest a rain water from my backyard roof. Since my apartment balcony dont have any available roof to be use to harvest the rain water then I decided to reroute my air cond water out take pipe to my water holding tank. Mosquito are more than welcome to breed there because I can use their larve to feed my tilapia. Will start harvesting my air cond water starting today and hopefully it is sufficient enough to top up the water loss due to condensation or transpiration process. Will keep you up to date on the progress.
After this my next big plan is to get the aquaponic off the grid. That ought to be exciting. Until then I tend to take things one step at the time.

May 18th update

It has been two weeks since I put the tilapia fingerlings to my fish tank. Since then there is almost 15 fingerlings has died (which i suspect) due to starvation and other reasons. Up til now the number has decrease to 15 tilapia. Will keep monitoring my tilapia health.

Anyway, my pump has stopped working due to its broken blade. I reckoned the material used for the blade is low quality. So lesson learned out there dont buy sobo pump. It wont last you long. I got the pump replaced with a new one and lets see how it goes.

There are few new comers on the growbed. My carrot has finally grown. There is a zuchinni or maybe pumpkin, not really sure which one, sprouted from seed. Also there are bunch of tomato cherry plant growing. I need to let go some of the tomato cherry because they do occupied a lot of space. We also intorduce a spring onion which we bought from supermarket. My cucumber has grown quite fast. Oh, I forgot we also put in a curry plat to our growbed. Things are getting pretty good now. Just have to wait for our first harvest.

My next plan is to reroute the pipe from my air cond compressor to the fish tank. By having this when I turn on the AC the water wont be wasted down the drain and I dont have to refill the water everytime.

New school in town

Yesterday I received a bag of 20 tilapia fingerlings and they are now happly swimming in my aquaponic pond. May their presence bring more nutrient to the plants and may their growth provide a good stock of fresh tilapia to our kitchen.

My DIY aquaponic set

Recently I talked about aquaponic. I actually set it up last weekend on my small balcony (4ft x 9ft). The set only take about 1ft x 4ft of my balcony space, that exclude the fish container.

It has been running about a week now and I got few plants growing on it. I planted a sweet basil, parsely and some "bayam merah" on the top tier and at the bottom tier I planted some cucumber, cherry tomatoes and carrot. I planted cucumber, tomatoes and carrot from seed and so far only tomatoes and cucumber has sprouted.

Green thumb return

It has been a while since I last post on this blog and it has also been a while since I do my last serious gardening. Things has change a lot in this last few years. First I'm no longer in australia and that means I have to let go of the apartment. letting go of the apartment means letting go my vegi backyard. To cut the story short now I'm back to my apartment with a little balcony for me to do gardening. That is where problem comes in. I want to do gardening but no land to plant anything. Plus with my work right now I barely have time to take care of the plant except on weekends or holiday. Been searching for a solution for many months and I stumbled into Aquaponic. For those who dont know,  aquaponic is a system that combine both aquaculture and hydroponic. I study and researh aquaponic for quite sometime and run a pilot project at my mom's place and things looks pretty good. So over the weekend I went out for a shopping and get myself stuff to put togather my own aquaponic at my tiny little balcony. All system are fired up and it is now to start planting! So guys I'm back to business and it is good to be back!

Companion Planting week : Eggplant & Basil

I love the idea of companion planting and the reason why I started gardening is because I learned the fact the right combination of plant can help each other in term of deterring pest, provides some sort of nutrient or to help cultivate the soil. Anyway, of all my companion planting experiences, the one that worked the most is planting basil plant side by side with eggplant. It helps to prevent aphids from attacking your eggplant. I did some experiment and found out that the one without basil plant is heavily infested with aphids while the one beside my basil plant don't even have a single Aphids. So that is my bit of companion planting for now. Happy planting everybody!

Like a perfect couples. It attract the bees while keeping away the aphids

Safely with basil

Infested with aphids!

They are going to eat my chill and garlic juice pretty soon..

For more info on companion planting please check out MKG

This is why I love rain

I'll let the picture do the talking.

P/s: the calendula, larkspur, nastrium and poppy was actually the seed from MKG.. thanks a lot!.. still trying to grow the evening sunflower.. the other day my daughter pluck the seedling.. :(

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