CORN Galore!

In late July the desert monsoons hit and refreshed everything with a down pour of wonderful wetness from above. This photo is a picture of that event. But wait until you see what is growing inside our rain soaked Greenhouse!

Every now and then wonderful summer monsoons hit the high desert of California. This was one of those days.

We have Corn. So much Corn it’s growing right out of the roof vent. Corn that started out as pitiful, wispy weak looking leaves, which you can see in the center Grow Bed in the next photo (which we’ve posted before). We want you to see what has happened in six weeks of time to those little plants.

Focus on the uninteresting middle Grow Beds where the little wisps of corn have been planted.

Better yet, watch the progression (someone suggested we do time-lapse photos) so that’s what we’re showing. Here’s a photo that was taken about three weeks after the one above.

Queen Corn and their lady in waiting, Greek Basil.

Then comes the most recent pictures that were taken six weeks after the first shot with the wispy Corn. These Corn stalks are so thick, they resemble bamboo; and the Corn is growing all the way up to the top of the Greenhouse roof. It’s an amazing sight to see.

Here’s the Corn growing up against the roof of our Greenhouse.

The Corn Silk is beautiful and long. It’s the female part of the flower of the corn plant.

The male part of the Corn flower is sitting above the silk at the top of the picture. You need both the tassel looking male flowers and the silk to get corn. Here’s why.

“Corn is monoecious (mon-ee-shuss) which means that there are both male and female flowers on each corn plant. In some monoecious plants, male and female parts are in the same flower. In corn, male and female flowers are in different locations – the male flowers form a tassel which is at the top of the plant. The female flower is located at the junction of leaves and stem. It consists of a collection of hairs (silks) enclosed in the husks of what will become the ears. These silks are pollen-receiving tubes. Wind-blown pollen from the male flowers (tassel) falls on the silks below. Each silk leads to a kernel, and pollen must land on all silks for the ear to fill out completely with kernels. Kernel “skips” (ears only partly filled out with kernels) often are the result of poor pollination. ” (from Growing Sweet Corn in the Backyard Garden)

Last year we planted corn for the first time but never got actual corn to eat. Actually, we didn’t really plant it. We placed a group of rockwool cubes with corn seeds in them in a back Grow Bed, never separated them from each other and just waited to see what would happen. Corn grew but it didn’t pollinate because the plants were too crowded together; and they were competing with tomatoes. Anytime a plant tries to compete with tomatoes, it loses because tomatoes take every bit of the nutrients from the water in order to put out fruit.

So this year we decided to get serious about planting Corn; and it looks like we’re going to be eating Non GMO Corn on the cob soon. We’ll be blogging all about that joyous occasion. In the meantime, just watching this Corn grow is an event all of its own. Below is a photo of one stalk growing right out of the Greenhouse roof vent.

This stalk is going to prove once and for all if we can actually get cobs of corn as it’s not being stopped by the roof. For this stalk, the sky is the limit.

 And we’re seeing the correct pollination formula with tassels over silk. YEAH!

But Corn isn’t the only thing growing in our Greenhouse right now. Next to the Corn in those same uninteresting middle Grow Beds in the 2nd picture above is Okra. This is the first time we’ve planted Okra and it loves growing in a Food Forever™ Aquaponics Growing System. Between the tall Okra Leaves and the massive Corn Stalks, walking into that part of the Greenhouse is like walking through a jungle canopy.

Welcome to our jungle canopy with Okra on one side of the Grow Beds and Corn on the other.

In the background of the above photo is Greek Basil. It’s also loving this environment and is growing into lovely bushes of luscious smelling basil.

When Okra flowers it puts out this lovely yellow expression of joy.

So that’s what’s going on inside the Aquaponics USA Greenhouse this summer. Not to mention the R&D for our commercial-sized Food Forever™ Farm Systems that we’re designing under our new business, at Aquaponics World.net. We can’t show you that Grow Bed as the new designs are proprietary. But I can tell you it’s getting real exciting around here right about now.

Thanks for visiting. All the effort, wouldn’t be nearly as much fun if we didn’t have you to share it with.

We Have Solar, Finally! Part 2

We lucked out and actually had a place to stack the panels on the roof prior to installing them.

This was a small section on the original porch roof where the solar water heating system wasn’t. Our Master Carpenter turned into a Solar Panel Installer (even though he’d never done this before in his life); and we were soon installing our ten rows of three panels deep across our new Fishroom roof.

In the background of this photo, you can see our Greenhouse. The new Fishroom sits under the Solar Panels that are already installed. The existing Growroom we built in late 2010, sits under the solar water heater strips and extends about 30 ft. to the left of the photo.

Our plan is to connect all three of these areas together into a single recirculating aquaponics system we’re calling our Micro Food Forever™ Farm, which will be about 1/10th the size of a full commercial-sized Food Forever™ Farm. To learn more about our Food Forever™ Farm designs, go to our new website at Aquaponics World.net.

We started the installation process by securing that expensive hardware to the Fishroom roof.

Here’s an up close view of that expensive hardware we realized we needed to purchase to get our Panels secured to the Fishroom roof.

As you can see from the photo below, it requires quite a lot of that hardware to safely secure the Solar Panels especially when you live in the California desert where wind velocities can reach gusts of up to 40-50 miles per hour.

The panels were then secured to the hardware starting at one end.

The above photo also shows the solar water heating system that heats our 32 x 18 ft. pool up to 104 degrees F, at which point we refer to it as a large hot tub.

The photo below shows an important piece of the securing hardware that clamps the solar panels to the rails.

The clamps secure the Solar Panels to the rails.

Below is a front view of the roof line with the Solar Panels installed.

There’s a breezeway between the roof and the panels that is about four inches in height.

Installing the Solar Panels was only one part of the job. They then had to be wired up by our electrician. The photo below shows the power boxes that were installed to facilitate this wiring process.

There are ten of these power boxes. Each box contains the wiring and circuit breakers for three Solar Panels.

Wiring both the Fishroom and the Solar Panels has constituted a large portion of the money this project is costing. We hired a Master Electrician who does not believe in cutting corners when it comes to wiring. We’ll be posting a Part 3 of this project in which we show photos and describe the parts of the Solar Panel system that are hidden away in our garage and home including the Inverter-Charger, the MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking) Solar Chargers, the Generator Control Module and the System Control Panel.

This is an Off-The-Grid System. If the Grid goes down, we stay Up! One of the big problems with signing up for free Solar Panels offered by companies that want to use your roofs (they get the rebates) is these are Grid-tied systems. If the Grid goes down, you don’t have electricity.

We also have a Generator (photos coming in Part 3) that automatically starts and connects when the power has been off too long and there is not enough Solar (night) to keep the system going. It is all very transparent, and we only become aware that anything has happened to the grid supply when we hear the  generator start. This smooth transition is done with the support of 10KWH of AGM batteries that will keep us alive for quite a while if the grow lights in the Growroom are off but only several minutes if the grow lights are on. Grow Lights take quite a lot of power; but once you get the right combination, they work like a charm. Below is a photo of our Fluorescent T5’s growing massive amounts of veggies in this perfectly controlled environment.

Our Fluorescent T5’s growing lettuce and basil.

 Just as we got the final Solar Panels installed, a massive summer monsoon down pour occurred that chased our Installer off the roof.

The best Solar Panel Installer in the business. A real “Dan” of all trades.

Here’s a photo of our Greenhouse in the midst of that down pour. Just wait until you see what’s growing inside of it, which we’ll be sharing in our next post.

Every now and then wonderful summer monsoons hit the high desert of California. This was one of those days.

Thanks again for following our Blog. It’s so much fun to share the joy of being aquaponics farmers.