The Continuing Case of the Mystery Vegetable? Actually, it’s turned into two Mystery Vegetables!

A few days ago, I wrote a post asking for help identifying a mystery vegetable that grew like a weed in one of our Greenhouse Grow Beds, tasted delicious in salads, worked great steamed and in stir fries. One thoughtful person answered our call for help; and just like I had already done, she identified this vegetable to be Turnip Greens. With that one piece of back up evidence, I felt pretty confident we had Turnip Greens in our Grow Bed; but now I’m thinking we were wrong.

Today, I went over to my local Home Depot to do a search in the seed section of their Garden Dept; and I was successful as a seed package came up with a picture on it that looks exactly like the vegetable in our Grow Bed. Now, even though Turnip Greens were quite foreign to me, I had at least heard of them before. This vegetable is a complete unknown to me; and I have never even heard its name. Our helper, Fred, said he’d planted cabbage; and it turns out he’s still right. It’s Chinese Cabbage; and it’s called Michihli. Here’s that seed package.

You can go back two posts to see Michihli growing in one of our Grow Beds. According to the package, it grows easily and loves cool weather, which explains why it grew so well in our Greenhouse when it was in winter mode and night temperatures were in the 30’s F outside sometimes while the Greenhouse stayed  around 60 degrees F. As of today, I’m feeling like Michihli is the mystery vegetable.

Now, I have to share another confession, the same thoughtful person who identified the mystery plant as Turnip Greens also told us in a comment that she didn’t think the Spinach on the other side of the same Grow Bed was actually Spinach. This vegetable was also planted by our helper, Fred, and he couldn’t remember the name of that plant either. I cooked some of that Spinach-like plant up; and I have to admit it doesn’t taste like Spinach because it’s much milder. So, now, we have another mystery plant on our hands; and the package that describes that plant didn’t come up today. Our helpful reader thought the un-Spinish side of the Grow Bed might be Broccoli before it actually grows the Broccoli stocks. But there is no sign of Broccoli stocks on this new mystery plant.

So once again we’re asking for help in identifying a plant that grew like crazy in cool temperatures and looks a lot like Spinach. The picture of that plant is one post back. I was feeling like a real dufus in regard to this Grow Bed that got away from us until I found this interesting Image.

The numbers on this Giff Image are telling you how many different species of vegetables existed in each vegetable category in 1903 (the top thicker bars) and then in 1983 (the bottom skinny bars). When you look at the green colored Cabbage Family bar in 1903, you see it was the largest vegetable family in the sample list of ten crops with 544 different species of Cabbage in it. So when I first looked at this Image, I thought no wonder I don’t know all the species of Cabbage because there are so many.

But that’s actually not the case; and I’m back to being a dufus. Because this Image shockingly shows that by 1983, those 544 species of Cabbage became a mere 28 species. What’s happening to the diversity of our vegetables? One of the things that is happening (and it’s been happening at greater and greater speeds since the mid nineties) is there has been a consolidation of seed companies leading to a corporate domination of our food supply. And the one corporation that has been buying up more seed companies than all the others put together is non other than Monsanto. This pdf, “Seed Industry Structure 1996-2008”  shows eye-opening proof of that statement.

As you most likely already know, Monsanto is one of the main corporations behind the proliferation of GMO’s, which is about genetically modifying seeds and then placing a patent on those seeds followed by a pay-to-play business model. Farmers who use Monsanto’s seeds are forbidden to harvest the seeds they already purchased from Monsanto and must re-purchase new seeds every season.

It appears that in buying up as many seed companies as they can, Monsanto is trying to create a monopoly in which eventually only their patented GMO seeds are available on the seed market. Before they pull the plug on all the natural seeds they now control, Monsanto can pretend to be the good guys who are also interested in marketing natural non-GMO seeds. I’m not buying it; and I’m not buying any seeds from a Monsanto controlled company either.

The seed packet above of the Chinese Cabbage, Michihli, is by a company called FERRY-MORSE; and as I trace the ownership, I find FERRY-MORSE is owned by a French company called Limagrain. FERRY-MORSE does not appear in the already mentioned “Seed Industry Structure Map”; but there is a place where there is a crossover between Limagrain and Monsanto. That’s enough to stop me from buying another package of FERRY-MORSE seeds. I guess you could say I’m personally boycotting any seed company connected to Monsanto.

We are presently buying our seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Paramount Seeds and Humble Seed. All three of these companies are, or originated from, family owned US based businesses that emphasize quality, nutrition, health and above all, non-GMO natural seeds. We are actually featuring and selling Humble Seed right on our Aquaponics USA website. Just go to our “Aquaponics and Gardening SEEDS” page to check out these great seeds packaged in long-term unique packaging that maintains the seeds life force.

Hopefully, someone will come forward and help us identify the mystery Grow Bed as both veggies in that bed are still in question. We’ve definitely learned our lesson about the importance of identifying our vegetables. It’s always good to know what you’re eating and from where it’s originating.

Hope this post has been helpful and informative. Until next time, GET GROWING!

Want to see the other side of yesterday’s mystery Grow Bed?

It looks like the mystery Veggie from yesterday is solved, thanks to Usona Asher (hope you don’t mind my giving you credit here, Usona). So far Usona is the only person who has responded to our call for help to identify a vegetable that was unfamiliar to us; and she agrees with my basically wild guess based on pictures from the internet that the mystery veggie is none other than Turnip Greens.

So now all I have to do is get back on the internet, connect to an heirloom seed supplier and order some Turnip Greens post haste as we’re about to start a major seed sprouting project over here. Think I’ll order some Bok Choy along with the Turnip Greens.

This time we’re going to sprout our seeds the tried and true (albeit more time consuming) way, which means I’ll be planting the seeds into a Seed Starting Kit that consists of a black seedling tray with a multi pargro rockwool cube pack with 98 one and one half inch cubes in it and topping the planted tray off with a protective, humidifying 3″ dome cover. This Seed Starting Kit is offered on our website with two different dome sizes.

I’ll be doing a post to show this seedling sprouting process in the near future so stay tuned. Now, on to what this post is all about. I want you to understand that yesterday I only showed you one side of the 11 sq. ft. Grow Bed that is housing the now identified Turnip Greens. As you can see by looking at yesterday’s post, there are a lot of Turnip Greens in that Grow Bed. But what’s really amazing is this:

This is Spinach, which was planted at the same time as the Turnip Greens on the other side of the same Grow Bed. This Spinach is also delicious and seems to be milder than store bought spinach so it’s looking like aquaponically grown Turnip Greens and Spinach are both milder than their soil cultivated counterparts; and do they ever grow fast and thick in our Food Forever™ Growing Systems.

Here’s some interesting information about Spinach from the website I introduced you to yesterday, “the world’s healthiest foods“. A new category of health-supportive nutrients has been found in Spinach called “glycoglycerolipids”. Recent studies show that glycoglycerolipids (they sure can come up with some convoluted words to describe nutrition) from Spinach can help protect the lining of the digestive tract from damage, especially damage related to the big baddy called inflammation.

Here’s another reason why Popeye ate so much Spinach. Out of all the cruciferous vegetables (see yesterday’s post for more information on cruciferous veggies), Spinach is the only one that showed evidence of significant protection against aggressive prostate cancer defined as cancer in stage 3 or 4. It seems Spinach contains certain unique cancer fighting carotenoids called (here comes another one of those impossible to spell or remember words) “epoxyxanthophylls” (spell-check doesn’t even know how to spell it); nevertheless, it’s a really good guy.

So take Popeye’s advice and “eat your Spinach”.

Just to make sure you get the picture of how much vegetable growth is possible in one 11 sq. ft. Grow Bed, this picture is worth a thousand words. It shows both sides of the Grow Bed we’re discussing side by side. Now, do you see what’s so remarkable about growing vegetables in a Food Forever™ Growing System? The veggies just love the living fertilizer that they are getting compliments of happy Tilapia swimming in tanks nearby. 

Until next time, GET GROWING!

Would someone tell us what in the world we’re growing in this Grow Bed?

This may be one of the lamest posts I’ve ever done because we have a Grow Bed in our Greenhouse right now that is full of this lovely green vegetable, which is really delicious, works great in a stir fry and is also quite good steamed. Raw, the stocks taste like mild celery. The leaves have a slight tartness to them. They don’t have smooth edges but are notched. Here’s what’s lame. We don’t know what the name of this plant is.

Here’s what happened to create this embarrassing scenario. I, Grace, was out of town for an extended period of time and my partner, Oliver, was busy designing our next Food Forever™ Growing System and creating the manual for the last one, so our helper, Fred, planted seeds into this Grow Bed in the Greenhouse. He just placed the seeds into the bed without sprouting them first; and that was about seven weeks ago.

Now we have this beautiful and tasty plant that’s really great because you can eat the whole thing from top to bottom, and it grew like a weed in this Grow Bed. I’d really like to plant more of this plant; but Fred can’t remember what he planted and said he thinks it is some kind of cabbage.

With that in mind, I googled “cabbage” and found that there are cabbages that are more leafy than head like. It’s common knowledge that both Oliver and I are beginner gardeners and have only been gardening as long as we’ve been running our aquaponics systems, so we’re still amazed to discover all the veggies that are out there waiting to be cultivated. If only we knew the name of this one.

I googled “Bok Choy” and announced to everyone that it is Bok Choy; but when I looked at photos of Bok Choy closer today, I realized it’s too leafy and does not have enough stock to qualify as Bok Choy. Bok Choy is in the cabbage family and is a staple in Chinese cooking. It also works well in stir fries; and is becoming more popular in the West. I plan to plant some this spring as I’m sure it will grow well in one of our Food Forever™ Growing Systems. However, once I knew I wasn’t growing Bok Choy yet, I continued to search and came up with what I think this plant might be–“Turnip Greens”.

I also found a great website called “the world’s healthiest foods”, which is absolutely full of information about the best nutritional foods; and I discovered that Turnip Greens are part of the family of vegetables called “cruciferous vegetables”; and they are, just like Fred said, also part of the cabbage family.

They are considered supper foods because they are full of vitamins, fiber and disease fighting phytochemicals. Phytochemicals are chemical compounds that occur naturally in plants. The term is generally used to refer to those chemicals that may have biological significance but are not established as essential nutrients. Scientists estimate that there may be as many as 10,000 different phytochemicals having the potential to affect diseases such as cancer and strokes.  Although certain phytochemicals are available as dietary supplements, some scientists believe that the health benefits of phytochemicals are greatly enhanced by eating whole foods.

Lends a lot of credence to the phrase “eat your vegetables”. What’s more, I discovered that Turnip Greens have four times the calcium as regular cabbage; and they outscore cabbage, kale, cauliflower and broccoli in glucosinolate content which means they have a natural ability to mitigate cancer. What’s not to like about this rather obscure veggie? It has a reputation for being bitter; and those cancer mitigating properties may be what’s attributing to the more bitter taste.

But here’s the thing. If this mystery plant is Turnip Greens, we’ve got a best seller because they aren’t bitter. They are tart but not bitter. So now you have the whole story and then some. If anyone out there recognizes this plant as Turnip Greens or WHATEVER, please let us know so we can sow more of this delicious, nutritious, cruciferous vegetable.

Even if it turns out I’m not growing them, I’ve certainly gained an appreciation for Turnip Greens today. Thanks for going on this journey with me.

Now, Let’s GET GROWING! (and hopefully, we’ll know what it is)

What’s happening in the Aquaponics USA Growroom Lab?

We had to do a Blog post in celebration of the first day of Spring. YEAH! It’s finally here. Hope yours was a happy one and you’ve started thinking about what you’re going to plant this year. You know it doesn’t matter what you plant into, dirt, water, a grow bed; or if you don’t have land and aren’t ready to tackle aquaponics yet, then maybe one of those famous EarthBOXES.

They are available on our website so go take a peek at the Videos here: http://www.aquaponicsusa.com/Aquaponics_USA_Earth_BOX.html

Or maybe you’re ready to take the leap into the one food-growing technology that really makes sense because it grows both food-fish and veggies using the same water. When all is said and done, Aquaponics is the supreme way to grow food. Here’s a peek at the new Food Forever™ Growing System we just introduced that duplicates our most popular system and turns the FFGS-20 into the FFGS-20-20. We can hook multiples of the FFGS-20 together to make an ultra FAMILY SYSTEM.

Back in our Growroom Lab we took an interesting series of shots of lettuce growth in one of our Growroom Grow Beds. This Growroom has a FFGS-40 Food Forever™ Growing System in it, which means instead of two 120 gallon tanks, it has one 320 gallon tank with four Grow Beds.

The first shot above shows the growth of our seeds after one week of growth. These seeds were planted directly into the Grow Bed and allowed to sprout right out of the bed. We experimented with this quicker form of seedling planting but have decided it isn’t as reliable as sprouting seeds in rockwool cubes and allowing them to grow out in their seedling trays for a few weeks and then planting them into their Grow Bed. Above is the same Grow Bed after the seeds have been growing in the bed for two weeks.

This third picture shows the same Grow Bed after three weeks. This gives you an idea of how fast plants grow in a Food Forever™ Growing System. Remember, this is growth from mere seeds, which were placed into the Grow Bed without having been sprouted.

Do you see something different about the light? During this three week experiment with these lettuce seeds, we switched our indoor lighting from florescent lighting to LED lighting. That’s why you now see this pinkish glow in our Growroom.

We now have four of these LED Grow Lights over our four Grow Beds and are using LED’s exclusively. I’ll be doing a Blog post about these LED’s and show you how well they are working in a future post.

This beautiful first spring day is coming to a close. God Bless the folks in Acapulco, Mexico where there was a big quake today; and God Bless all of you who are reading this post.

Stay Safe and Get Growing

Aquaponics USA Installs a Food Forever™ Growing System at Davis Bilingual Elementary School

Aquaponics USA installs an FFGS-40-plus into the Library of the Davis Bilingual Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona.

The Davis Bilingual Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona was the first site of three Tucson Elementary schools to receive Food Forever™ Growing Systems during the whirlwind installation project conducted by Aquaponics USA and the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona.

Now you can view this fascinating installation in a Video recently posted on the Aquaponics USA You Tube Channel. Just click on the Blogroll to your right where the Aquaponics USA TV Channel link is located. The Davis Installation is called “Aquaponics USA Travels to Tucson, Arizona – Part 1 of 4”. You can also watch this installation right here on our Vodpod widget. It’s the second Video from the top.

During the break between Christmas of 2011 and New Years of 2012, Aquaponics USA took a two-man crew with them to Tucson, Arizona where the crew efficiently built, installed and tested three Food Forever™ Growing Systems in three different elementary schools. What was challenging about these installations is that the crew had no idea what the set up was going to look like until they walked into the rooms allocated to contain the aquaponics systems. Then the crew essentially built the systems on site to perfectly fit the allocated space; and, of course, after building the system, it had to be tested. It was an ambitious project that took one day for each of the sites given some of the system construction was done prior to landing in Tucson.

Davis Bilingual Elementary School opted to house their Food Forever™ Growing System in the Library. They tore up a section of carpet, moved book cases, painted the cement floor; and Wah Lah!, the library becomes an aquaponic garden ready to grow out food fish and veggies. This system will serve as a teaching lab for teachers and students in many subjects as aquaponics lends itself to teaching biology, science, physics, language arts and culinary arts.

This project has been created by the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, which is serving as a model for how Food Banks in other communities can run their programs. What’s different about this Community Food Bank is it has an arm that is all about food production not just government food distribution. If you find yourself in Southern Arizona and want to see an aquaponics Food Forever™ Growing System in action, make a request to visit the Davis Bilingual School Library. I’m sure they’d welcome you. In the meantime, watch the installation over at the Aquaponics USA TV Channel under our Blogroll or click on our Vodpod widget right here. The Davis Installation is the second video from the top.

All three schools received the exact same system, which is an FFGS-40 plus, which means they got four grow beds with a 320 gallon fish tank, plus an extra brooding and breeding tank that is 120 gallons. Watching all three videos showing these school installations is quite informative as each installation was shot showing different aspects of that installation. Putting all three of them together in your mind will give you a real clear concept of how these systems are built and how they work to grow-out food fish and veggies. (The Video of the third installation and the Interview of the lead on the project from the Southern Arizona Community Food Bank will not be up for a couple of weeks so watch for them.)

Until then have a happy and healthy 2012, which has moved into March faster than we can say “Aquaponics”.

AQUAPONICS USA’s FOOD FOREVER™ Growing Systems go into 3 TUCSON SCHOOLS

The Aquaponics USA Food Forever™ Growing System at Manzo Elementary School

Manzo Elementary School is in the Inner City of Tucson Arizona; and now it’s one of three Tucson schools that are the envy of  the Tucson School District because it has a state of the art Aquaponics USA Food Forever™ Growing System sitting smack dab in the middle of one of its all-purpose rooms, which also houses band equipment and music classes.

Now, you can see a video of this entire installation at Manzo Elementary on our You Tube Aquaponics USA TV Channel. Just go to our Blogroll on the right and click on our Aquaponics USA TV Channel or connect through our Vodpod widget right here. It’s called “Aquaponics USA Travels to Tucson, Arizona – Part 2 of 4 and is on the top of the Vodpod widget below.

The Tilapia that will be swimming around in the 320 gallon fish tank (it sits in the open space between the four Grow Beds) will love hearing the music that the students play in this room as they eat their Aquaponics USA FAST GROWTH Tilapia Fish food and fertilize the plants that will soon be growing under the indoor fluorescent grow lights that will soon be installed over this Food Forever™ Growing System.

The screen you see over the fish tank has been added by the Manzo Aquaponics Team to keep the fish in and the children out of their new and very exciting food growing system. In the main photo above, all the red stuff in the Grow Beds is called Hydroton and was originally created for Hydroponic food growers; and it works just as well for aquaponics because it is pH neutral and has lots of porous space for beneficial bacteria to grow on it. You can learn all about Hydroton from our website by going to our “Products” page and then scrolling down to the “Hydroton” page.

Manzo Elementary School has a wonderful feel and is the epitome of what every elementary school should be these days because it’s all about being and teaching sustainability. There are water-catch cisterns everywhere to catch and save rain water as Tucson is a desert environment.

These cisterns have provided enough rain water to water the schools outdoor gardens this winter.

There’s a courtyard in the middle of a rectangle of classrooms that has a hen house with six chickens that run free during the day  when they’re not laying their one egg a day contribution to food sustainability. 

The above photo shows the chickens in the compost pile. Teaching the children how to compost is another wonderful way to instill the importance of sustainable living.

The addition of their Food Forever™ Growing System is going to add a lot to this program as the students will learn how to raise food fish along with veggies in a cross-linked system that recirculates the water and raises vegetables year round. So many subjects can be taught through a hands on aquaponics system including biology, math, science, language and culinary arts.

We’ll be sharing posts and pictures of what’s happening with this Food Forever™ Growing System at Manzo Elementary School as it progresses through its stages of getting lights, fish and plants so stay tuned. In the meantime, visit the Manzo Elementary School Reconciliation Ecology Facebook page here:   http://www.facebook.com/pages/Reconciliation-Ecology-at-Manzo-Elementary/125141114170146

All three schools received the exact same system, which is an FFGS-40 plus, which means they got four grow beds with a 320 gallon fish tank, plus an extra brooding and breeding tank that is 120 gallons. Watching all three videos showing these school installations is quite informative as each installation was shot showing different aspects of that installation. Putting all three of them together in your mind will give you a real clear concept of how these systems are built and how they work to grow-out food fish and veggies. (The Video of the third installation and the Interview of the lead on the project from the Southern Arizona Community Food Bank will not be up for a couple of weeks).

Until then, enjoy the first two instructional installation videos compliments of Aquaponics USA and Enjoy.

A Mini Aquaponics System

You can turn any aquarium into an Aquaponics System

A while back, we did a post showing this area of the Growroom when we had just set up this aquarium to work as our Tilapia nursery. In that earlier post, the aquarium was just an aquarium with the traditional aquarium filter on the left corner filtering out the fish waste toxins. However, our adult Tilapia in the big 320 gallon tank in this Growroom are so happy with their 80 degree plus degree water and their Tilapia Nesting Condos that they started mating like crazy and produced about 400 offspring, which you can see in this aquarium.

There were now too many fish for the little aquarium filter to handle. So what do you do when you want to house a lot more fish in an aquarium than the filter can handle? You turn the aquarium into a Mini Aquaponics System. We went to Home Depot and bought this 7″ deep black, 5 gallon mixing tray, which we turned into a Grow Bed. We filled it with hydroton, plumbed it and planted lettuce seedlings into it. WALA! A Tilapia Nursery as a Mini Aquaponics System.

The next thing you have to figure out is how much to feed these little guys to keep the system stable. We started out over feeding them; and when we did our water quality measurements, we had way too much ammonia in the system. In fact, the ammonia was so high it was almost lethal. Now, one of the great things about Tilapia is they are so hardy, which makes them capable of withstanding those kinds of mistakes so not one of them died. Tilapia are also gill sifters so they are getting a lot of their nutrition from the algae that naturally forms in the water and on the tank. We are feeding them the #O FAST GROWTH TILAPIA FISH FOOD that we sell on our website and we’re giving them l tsp. a day.

As we prepare to leave for Tucson for five days to assemble and install the three systems in three elementary schools, what do we do about our Greenhouse and

Growroom? We lock the doors and let the systems take care of themselves. We are so confident about the technology behind our Food Forever™ Growing Systems that we can actually leave them unattended for five days without worry. We have automatic fish feeders on all five of our tanks so our fish won’t even notice we’re gone; and because you recirculate the water continuously, we don’t need to add any to the system over a five day period.

Raising baby Tilapia and Lettuce in a Mini Aquaponics System

So off we go. We’ll be bringing back lots of pictures of our adventures in the Tucson school installation and Phoenix where we’ll be picking up our 6,000 watts of solar panels for our next big “Getting Off The Grid” project.

Continue to have a healthy and happy Holiday Season.

Love, Grace

Beautiful Tucson, here we come!

These are the Grow Beds that will be teaching elementary school children in Tucson how to grow veggies aquaponically.

Tucson! We're on our way.

Here are some pictures of the components of our FFGS-40 systems that are going into three elementary schools in Tucson Arizona. We’re going to be glad to load these Food Forever™ Growing System components into the U-Haul truck tomorrow so we can move again in our manufacturing facility, which, right now is full of Grow Beds, Fish Tanks, Stands, Tables, Step Stools, Fish Nets, Fish Food, Water Rings, Plumbing and a lot of other parts that make up three FFGS-40 Growing Systems with three extra 120 gallon Fish Tanks.

This project is being lead by Zotero Citlalcoatl the School & Community Garden Program Coordinator of the Community Food Resource Center of the Community Food Bank and the Tucson AquaPonics Project. The Tucson AquaPonics Project is an “open-source, non-profit, community supported training and resource organization designed to help individuals and communities achieve Food Freedom and Food Security”.  The Tucson AquaPonics Project has a new website and is a great place to make an end of the year donation. Tucson appears to be way ahead of the curve when it comes to innovative ways to grow food and create a sustainable community food program; and we are so pleased that Zotero decided to choose our systems for his elementary school aquaponics projects.

Schools of Tilapia in three elementary schools in Tucson.

We’re going to be shooting stills of the trip and the step by step assembly process of each of these systems in the three different schools; and we’ll also be making videos of this adventure to show on our Aquaponics USA TV Channel.

Once we complete the delivery and assembly of our Food Forever™ Growing Systems in Tucson, we’ll be going to Phoenix to pick up a pallet of solar panels from Sun Electric, a reputable solar company there. We’re getting 30 two hundred watt panels for a total of 6,000 watts, which we’ll be using to run our house, our greenhouse and our growroom in the near future. Eat your heart out, Edison. We’ll also be blogging about that early 2012 project under our Getting Off The Grid category so watch for those posts.

So many projects, so little time; and one hour before Christmas dinner.

Our Humble Seed Lettuce 12 Days of Christmas Later

You can almost watch it grow

Merry Christmas 2011, Everyone! Hope you’re having a special day with friends and family.

Our Turkey’s on and I have a little time to post this amazing picture of our Humble Seed Black Seeded Simpson and Red Oak Lettuce, which will be the corner stone of our Christmas dinner salad tonight. During the 12 Days Before Christmas, since December 13th, when we posted our last picture of our Humble Seed Lettuce, this lettuce has grown almost up to our grow lights.

It's almost touching the grow lights.

Before heading off to Houston last week to see children and grandchildren, we made our first Humble Seed Black Seeded Simpson salad; and it was really delicious. The lettuce was really crisp and tasty so our experiment to see how well Humble Seed Lettuce grows in an aquaponics system has been completed with glowing results.

But as I explained in my last post, we’re going to have to run another test on our Humble Seed Romaine Lettuce because our LED Grow Lights have turned out to be a disappointment. The lights are not growing the Romaine Lettuce varieties we planted at all. That Grow Bed is a wimpy, wispy shadow of what a Grow Bed full of Romaine Lettuce should look like by now. We’ve found another source for LED’s and will be running another test on our Humble Seed Romaine Lettuce soon.

When you're in the Lab, things sometimes go wrong.

In the picture below, you’re seeing the back side of our Grow Bed #3 with the Humble Seed Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce growing in it. Above the Grow Bed, mounted to the wall is one of the three air circulating fans we added about two weeks ago. We believe these fans have helped our Lettuce grow and thicken as much as they have in the last 12 days.

It's important to keep the air circulating in an enclosed growroom.

Our Water Heater and the stainless steel ring that’s double wrapped around the inside bottom of the 320 gallon fish tank is working really well to both heat the water and the room. The water is staying right around 80 degrees F; and the room stays around 78 degrees F right through below freezing nights. It’s so humid in this Growroom, I have to shoot these pictures really fast before the camera lens fogs up.

The only metal you can use in an aquaponics system is stainless steel.

Our 320 gallon fish tank is 81 degrees, which is perfect for breeding.

It’s time to get back to preparing Christmas dinner. Enjoy the Holidays. There are many more interesting posts coming in the very near future as we’re off to Tucson AZ tomorrow to install three of our Food Forever™ Growing Systems in three Tucson elementary schools. We’ll be posting all about it so stay tuned.

Thanks for Visiting, Grace

Watch our Humble Seed Lettuce Thrive

Humble Seed Red Oak and Blk Seeded Simpson Lettuce growing in Grow Bed #3

On November 20th, we created a post with pictures of me (Grace) planting seedlings into our aquaponics growroom grow beds. These are pictures of those grow beds 23 days later. The above picture is Grow Bed #3 with two kinds of Humble Seed Lettuce planted in it. The front row is called Red Oak and the back rows are the popular Black Seeded Simpson lettuce by Humble Seed. These two varieties are really doing well in our aquaponics grow beds.

However, had we given them the proper amount of light and put lots of moving air on them from the beginning, they would be doing even better.

About a week ago, we had an esteemed guest whose name is Zotero Citlalcoatl.  Zotero coordinates a gardening cooperative for schools & community organizations for the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona. He is purchasing three systems just like the one in our growroom, which will be placed in three elementary schools in Tucson; and, “Yes”, we’re really thrilled that is happening. Zotero is a walking, talking encyclopedia of plant knowledge; and we learned a lot from his visit as we taught him how to set up and maintain an aquaponics system. I’ll be doing another post soon showing you our new LED lights and our three newly installed fans that keep the air circulating nicely in the growroom.

So besides not having circulating air in our new growroom, we also didn’t have enough lighting to allow our first grow out of lettuce to become thick and bushy. Right around December 1st, we added two more fluorescent lights to the lighting array; and started running the lights 24 hrs. a day  instead of 16 hrs. a day. That means we need to do another test with the same Humble Seed Lettuce starting from seedlings again after this batch grows out. I’m thinking that in 23 days, we’ll have lettuce ready to eat.

So that’s the good news about our Humble Seed Lettuce. Unfortunately, there’s also some bad news that has to do with lighting. In that earlier post, Nov. 20th, we showed pictures of Humble Seed Romaine Seedlings in the rock wool cubes that were about to be planted into Grow Bed #4. They were planted under one fluorescent light for the first couple of weeks and were doing well. However, we realized the single light really wasn’t covering the entire bed. We let things stand as we had ordered some LED lights that we were planning to put over that grow bed, which was full of Romaine lettuce from a variety of vendors including Humble Seed.

We got the LED lights, took down the fluorescent light and hung the new LED lights around Dec. 2nd. To our disappointment, none of the Romaine lettuce is growing properly; and today we just found another source for purchasing LED’s. We’re not ready to give up on using LED’s because the savings in utility costs are so great; and we’re feeling confident that this time we’ve found the right company. This was an expensive mistake. Once we get the new LED’s up and plant new seedlings, we’ll be sharing our LED results and the name of the company whose lights actually work. So stay tuned.

And remember, you can watch all this happening on a live webcam on the “Greenhouse” page of our site. Just scroll down to the bottom of the page where you’ll see our tilapia laying on top of their condos and our grow beds growing lettuce. The red hew over the last grow bed, Grow Bed #4, is coming from the LED’s that aren’t giving the Romaine lettuce in that bed what it needs. You can see there is no lettuce visible in the webcam. Although there are whisps of lettuce in the bed–scrawny, leggy, pitiful Romaine lettuce.

Here’s another photo of some Baker Creek Lettuce in Grow Bed #1. The front row is called Big Boston and the back row is Gentilina. They are doing well also; and were growing without enough light during their first two weeks as well.

Baker Creek Big Boston and Gentilina Lettuce growing in Grow Bed #1

Like we said in an earlier post, our growroom is our laboratory; and we’re learning as we grow and growing as we learn and sharing it all with you. In terms of the fluorescents, we now have the right amount of light and are getting nice, full, heads of lettuce. And we’re really thrilled with how well our Humble Seed Lettuce is doing.

You can purchase Humble Seed Kits right on our website at: http://www.aquaponicsusa.com/Aquaponics_USA_Seeds

Seeds make a wonderful Christmas gift for all of those gardening enthusiasts on your list.

Thanks for visiting our Blog. Have a joyful Holiday Season and check back for more great articles about Aquaponics in 2012.