Garden: Take 53

Yes, that is about how many times I’ve tried this stupid garden thing. Why is this time any different you ask? Well. For one, we got good dirt. Sure it involved my husband guy driving about 15 miles with his mud flaps dragging on the ground because the dirt weighed more than his truck. But it is super good dirt, and if that wasn’t enough I have earth worms in my kitchen doing great and icky things to kitchen scraps so that I can have happy veggies.  Also we will be putting in an irrigation system that does not involve me in any way, in fact it will even have a timer. That’s because I have this bad habit of either drowning my plants, or letting them dry out. Sheesh, picky plants wanting just the right amount of water…gosh. But I can’t wait to give it a go again. Husband man still has his heart set on an aquaponics system, so that might be coming down the line at some point.

It never gets old seeing how excited my kids get when they have a real job to do outside, be it digging or weeding or raking. Makes me smile really big.

  

Speaking of smiling really big. Corra is becoming my outside work buddy. She loves hanging out in her chair while I am outside doing farm stuff. Layna just likes being outside when the shed door is open. That means she can stealthily poach animal cookies (goats love them) while I’m not looking.

 

Naomi decided that she was the “Princess of Dirt” and therefore Garyn was the “Prince of Dirt,” making me, logically, “The Dirt Queen.” Sigh. I’m pretty sure her skirt will never be the same again, but I’m ok with that…it was awesome watching her play on the manure smelling mound with that skirt and pink shoes.

 

This picture was taken just after I finished pouncing Neil for being awesome and bringing me dirt so I could have a garden and then happy dancing in my garden. Moving that much is not conducive to clear pictures. And who needs a Zen Garden when I have a dirt princess to help me de-stress?

Hateful Burning Orb

Saturday we tied the high temperature record at 117 degrees. This was after a week of temperatures above 110 and the forecast through the 4th of July is more days above 110. Neil and I were talking and we thought it interesting that in most places where people farm, winter is the difficult time. The time when you fight nature to keep your animals alive and healthy and you hunker down to wait it out. Not here. I can’t wait for October to hit. Then we enter into a season of much less work, much less stress, and much less death.

I’m not sure if this summer really has been worse than normal. I’ve lived here the majority of my life so you’d think I’d have a good grasp of what normal should look like. Or am I more aware of it because I’m pregnant, have 5 rabbits to worry about, 30 chickens to worry about, or because I’m pregnant? Anyways, here is what farm life looks like if the sun hates you.

The algae in our pool flourished, and I think my pool-keeping, husband guy underestimated the powerful combination of still water and sunlight. The filter couldn’t handle it so we drained the pool (it felt like tepid bathwater anyways) and now we just need to figure out how to get the algae sludge out of the bottom. I’m thinking bleach. If I can’t see green, it must not be there.

The whole garden just died. I started it in May when I should have started in Feburary. I’m a wiser, sadder gardener now and inspite of my black thumb, I will persevere. Big plans for a fall garden are still happening in my head as we speak.

 

Smoothie popsicles and a water table. We don’t have a pool currently, and we are already going to the lagoon tomorrow. So these guys are making due…Red Neck swimming pool revisited. I do have to say, I love that Naomi can still fit into a 5 gallon bucket, two years later. Meanwhile, Little little girl is getting her mermaid on in the bath tub. Filled with cold water I might add. Well the coldest water we can get from our tap, which is not very cold.

These are our new babies (they have been here about 2 weeks), Snap and Crackle…Guess what the buck’s name will be? They are very sweet but the heat isn’t easy on any of them. Rabbit perfect temperature is around 60. We are almost double that.

 

This is what they look like from about 6 am to 9 pm. I’m switching out the frozen water bottles every 4-6 hours and luckily we haven’t lost any. Tonight’s family activity will be heading to Home Depot for a mist system for them, because we’ve already lost 5 chickens and I can’t handle dead bunnies too…the chickens didn’t have names and most of the ones we lost were the ones hurt in the dog attacks. That makes dead chickens a bit easier to deal with. Plus I don’t deal with them…husband guy does. But the rabbits are kind of my project, so I’d be the one to deal with that. So here’s to the mist system being fantastic and solving all my bunny heat problems!

On the less dead and depressing side…my worms are doing great and I should have some killer worm dirt for my garden in the fall. Also this is the season for fruit and my family has basically lived on berries, and melons, and peaches, and all the other beautiful tree fruit we can get. I made peach jam this morning (bad for kitchen temperature, good for winter food supply) and my munchkins had UFO peaches for the first time. Little man said he couldn’t help smiling because they were so sweet. Now I’m off to take as cold a shower as my pipes will allow me and hopefully we can survive until the heat drops back into the “lower than 110” range.

Ode to my Dehydrator

Dehydrator ~ a haiku

helping feed my soul

jerky and cookies galore

a plain black white box

Ha Ha just kidding. But seriously, have I told you about my love affair with my dehydrator? Well. I should. This was one of those big ticket purchases that I, true to form, waffled over for weeks. I really wanted the nice one, but it was expensive so I’d take the smaller (who really needs 9 trays? 5 is plenty, right?) with no nifty make-my-life-easier features (like a timer…pshhh, I have one on the fridge! I can be organized!). Then I asked my husband to just go ahead and order me one with the above good but not extravagant specifications. The love of my life, very true to form, ordered me the biggest, most be-whistled model they had, with the non-stick liners! Nine trays, 24-hour timer, and an actual temperature control instead of just high and low. I am in love. The dehydrator rocks my socks off too.

[As a blogger, I’m ashamed of my lack of foresight in photo documentation. I only have 3 actual pictures of the stuff I’ve made. So because I’d feel guilty swiping pictures off the internet, I’ll be annoyingly clear which pictures are mine and which are not and where they came from, because I also couldn’t post with only 3 pictures. It’s against my religion.]

My Excalibur Food Dehydrator might be the most highly utilized kitchen gadget I own. Well that and my blender that runs on a more powerful motor than my husband’s car. Or my food processor, that is only more beautiful because of it’s war wounds. I drop it a lot, ok? Anyways, its spiffy and I use it for everything (including an extra shelf). Here is a list of what I’ve done with it in the last month:

• Beef jerky: so nice to make jerky I could eat because it was sweetened with pineapple juice! (silly diet changes that I’ve made) And it tasted better than store bought! When our rabbits come and then the babies come, jerky is going to be something I’ll get good at because apparently (thank you oh wise internets) the belly flap bit of meat is very thin and not good for much else other than jerky but since rabbit is so lean, it’s a dreamy combination.
• Yogurt: easiest thing in the world ever! Husband milks goats, strains milk into quart jar, I add bacteria, shake shake shake, in the dehydrator for 24 hours and voila! plain delicious yogurt my kids will eat straight.
• dehydrated strawberries (and soon to be apricots): There are a few months of the year where my kids diet reduces in variety to a few things. One of these is strawberry season and one coming up is apricots off of Grandma’s tree. They are both excellent fruits for dehydrating.
• Raw carrot cake: With all these dietary changes I’ve made, I’ve been revisiting some raw vegan recipes I used to do because they 1) don’t use grains 2) lots of fruits and veggies and nuts 3) I can use any sweetener I want, including honey and dates. These wouldn’t taste good if you are coming off of for-real carrot cake, but for me and husband guy who have been off sugar of any kind (besides fruit) for weeks now, it’s heavenly.
• raw lemon cookies: these just make me smile. add in some homemade strawberry jam and they make me swoon.
• Fruit leather: My kids love peanut butter and jelly. It’s a tad difficult when I’ve outlawed most things that even resemble bread. But to my joy and elation (squee!) they love fruit leather PB&J rolls. The awesome thing about fruit leather is that a handful of kale or spinach disappears under the banana and strawberry flavors. Tricksy Mommy.
• Granola: I’m still undecided about whether I prefer it dehydrated or baked in the oven. My current favorite is in the oven, but I need to explore more recipes in the dehydrator. What’s a hippie without a killer granola recipe?
• Stuff that I’ll be doing soon: apples and oranges in the fall (I’ve done both before and they are yummy), herbs (again, I’ve done it before, but I’m excited to do it with herbs from my own garden), I also use it to get bread to rise (not that I’m doing a lot of that anymore, but it is one more reason I love my dehydrator), and greens (you dry green leafy anything then blend it into powder which can be added to anything…brilliant!)

 

You are not allowed to say this looks un-appetizing until you’ve tried them. Besides, strawberry jam makes everything awesome. Thus ends my pictures and here is kind of what my other stuff looked like…mostly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerky

http://www.anediblemosaic.com/?p=490

http://wholenaturallife.com/2012/09/20/how-to-make-gaps-yogurt-in-your-dehydrator/

http://www.adashofcompassion.com/2011/10/dehydrator-basics-a-story/

Next time I’ll remember to take my own pictures. Thanks for letting me gush about one of my favorite foodie hobbies!

Circle of Life: part the third

Green thumbs are something I aspire too. I was so excited about the aquaponics idea because I thought, “Here’s a garden that I can’t drown! or under water! or fertilize wrong!” Ah, but those stupid rocks, thwarting me at every turn [shakes fist]. Gardening in Las Vegas is possible. I’ve semi done it before (a wilderness of cherry tomato plants and a few watermelons that got lost in their own foliage). The thing is…not only am I a planner and a “we’ve made the decision, why are we not doing it right now?!” type person (which makes me think I can just stay on top of it without a schedule), I over-think and over-worry. That translates into drowned plants because they wilted in the late afternoon and I watered them…again. Or bugs starting and so I sprayed the snot out of them with bug killer (before I cared about organic hippie-ness). Or if a little bit of fertilizer is good then a lot must be fantastic!

I’m also kind of cheap. Even knowing the importance of “good dirt,” I’ve never been willing to pay for enough to get a garden off to a good start. So it’s a bit of good stuff in a whole mess of bad. “But you can amend and improve” the master gardeners are telling me! Yes but I have kids and I’m impatient and think I can just make it work. “I read a book on it, I got this,” I yell back!

Writing this post is a humbler, meeker novice gardener. I’m using my spring garden to experiment and the real work will be done in the fall. However. Little does my garden know that I have a secret weapon. The second part of my circle of life! The Earthworms!

 

Cherry tomatoes don’t scare me. Big ones do, but these little guys I can handle. So they are my control experiment. Only good quality dirt, a watering system that doesn’t depend on me, and a location that is sheltered but with enough sun. My high tech watering system is the water bottle. There is a small hole in the bottom, right about root level, so when I fill the bottle it slowly drips right onto the roots. It’s a red- neck drip system but I’m ok with that. It works with the 5 gallon bucket grow box.

 

This is the rest of the garden. The two white “grow beds” were left over from the aquaponics system. They desperately need some support but, meh, they’ll work for now. The middle, nice looking grow bed is going to give me grief. Stupidly I ignored the voice in my head telling me to put weed cloth down because we have Bermuda back there. Stupidly I mixed a lot of the dirt that was back there (mostly dried-out marginally composted horse manure) with decent dirt but no other amendments. Stupidly I didn’t address the red ant colony that the box was placed on. Everything I planted in it has now died (minus the lone zucchini that could). In my defense we have had some wicked wind storms that haven’t helped anything. Mostly I was in a hurry and stupid. In the fall I will rectify the stupidity and start over. My goal is a killer herb patch in this box for the rabbits.

 

On the happy side, despite my best efforts to kill them, a pumpkin seed sprouted this morning and my watermelons and cantaloupes are all doing well.

So that completes our Circle of Life. The rabbit poop feeds the worms. The worm poop feeds the plants. The plants feed us and the rabbits. The rabbits feed us. The human poop goes to the city sewer system and all is as it should be. I’ll let you know if it all works out accordingly to plan. I’ve realized that being naïve, optimistic, and impatient doesn’t work so well for gardeners. One or the others you can work with but not all three. Alas for me. But there’s always the fall right?

Circle of Life: part two

Our anniversary was this past week, and nothing says “I love you” and “Happy 8 years, babe!” like a vermicomposting system. In my husband’s defense, I claimed this as my anniversary present, because I felt bad spending the money. He actually got me an awesome present complete with a beautiful love letter and cooked me filet mignon (I get what all the fuss is about now!).

Vermicomposting is raising earthworms to create compost. They live in a nifty black box with layers of trays that you fill with shredded newspaper, rabbit poop (or goat poop, among other stuff), and kitchen scraps that rabbits and goats won’t eat. The tray has a grid bottom with holes big enough for the worms to migrate to the tray above once the one they are in is all dirt and no food. Then we get a tray of black, fantastic worm castings (worm poop) to amend the dirt in the garden. And thus completes the second part of our new circle of life!

We went back an forth over ordering an actual system or just rigging one up ourselves. The husband guy (very true to form), after we decided to buy a system, ordered the deluxe model and the most worms that you could possibly fit in it. That would be 5,000! It wasn’t necessary at all, because if they are happy they double their population every 90 days. However, it will totally jump start the process and any excess worms go to the chickens who will love them and are greatly benefitted by eating them (Aww! it’s a cute little circle within a circle…chicken poop is great for worms which are great for becoming…well…um…chicken poop. Ok. Yeah. Cool, but never mind).

 

That is her excited face, kind of. The worms are tiny right now, but they had to re-hydrate after being in the mail and get settled in. Eventually they will closely resemble the worm I dissected in my 6th grade science class. I won’t tell you here how cool these things really are, because the fact that I am so excited about raising 5,000 earth worms in my kitchen is going to get me enough raised eyebrows and polite, concerned smiles.

 

Just because I know you were wondering what 5,000 earth worms looks like. You’re welcome.

So I always proof read my posts (sorry for any typos that still make it through). As I was re-reading this one, I was struck by how much poop is a integral part of my daily existence. I change poopy diapers everyday, I’m relieved that my bunny is settled in enough to have an established “toilet” corner and I am already thinking about how to get her poop in with the worms, I feel daily guilt about the goat yard that should be mucked out and poop added to the compost pile near the fence, and I mildly swear every day when I go take care of chickens and step in their poop (it’s beyond nasty), I read about the benefits of steer manure vs. horse as an amendment for my garden, and I’m going to be adding a poop making machine to the mix in a few months. At least newborn poop smells like buttered pop-corn. Whatever! It so does!

Circle of Life: first part

These next three posts really could have come in any order. So I’ll go in the order in which we got excited about them. Our last circle of life experiment (Aquaponics system) kind of succumbed to the horrible desert rock situation. Highly alkaline rocks = no plants that would grow = dead fish. Funny thing though…The whole system has been dismantled and repurposed except the fish tank. Turns out gold fish like the flavor of abuse we’ve been dishing out and they are happily living in their tank (which looks a lot like a pond now).

I digress. I forget now how the idea popped into our heads again. We had considered it before but thought… “no, not worth it.” And now it’s back and makes perfect and complete sense. Weird. Rabbits are going to be a regular addition to our farm. After researching like mad for about two days (because that’s how we work) we settled on two different breeds and got in touch with some breeders. Our circle will start with rabbits and their poop.

 

Bunnies need places to live, and kids need worth while holes to dig. Win-Win.

 

The run is right outside the kid’s window in a spot by our house that is mostly shaded during the day. We were planning on splitting the yard in half (Now the plan might be different but nothing for sure yet) so we bought a dog kennel and my brilliant husband rigged up an extra door. There will be a tarp over the top of the whole thing to help with shade and rain and more dens and play things to come with the additional rabbits. Right now we only have Trix.

 

Trix is a Harlequin. They are a smaller breed (6-8 lbs) that has smaller litters (5-9 kits at a time) but have excellent temperaments, are great mothers and have super cool coloring to boot. Sometime the end of May we will hopefully be getting another Harley doe and buck and can start breeding them the end of June. We have really enjoyed her and she seems to be adapting really well to her new, bigger (if dirtier) home.

In mid June / July we will be adding a breeding trio of Silver Fox rabbits. They are bigger (10-12 lbs.) and have bigger litters (9-12 kits). They are supposed to be great in the heat, good temperaments and just great all around rabbits. More on them when they get here.

So just to be clear, all you tender hearted readers. We will be naming (after cereal mascots) the bucks and does that will be with us for a few years as our breeders. They will be pets, however, at some point they too will be eaten. The litters will be raised for 12-16 weeks and then butchered for our own private consumption. (And just so you know it is way, way easier to go from bunny to dinner than it is to go from chicken to dinner). All our rabbits will be pedigreed, and so can be easily sold as pets and any of superior quality can be shown in fairs or rabbit shows. I’m kind of excited about that, and hopefully my kids will be too.

Why, you ask? Why kill a cute furry creature for something so base as eating? Here are some stats for you (and I just found out the going local rate for a dressed rabbit is $22 for a 3-4 lb. rabbit…glad we are doing it ourselves) : found here

• Rabbit has the lowest cholesterol value of any meat product. Compared to the next two lowest, chicken and pork (both with a value of 230 mg per serving), rabbit has a mere 164 mg of cholesterol.
• Rabbit is the lowest calorie meat per serving at 795 calories per pound vs. 810 for chicken, 840 for veal, 1190 for turkey, and 1440 for beef. Pork weighs in at a whopping 2050 calories per pound
• Rabbit meat is the HIGHEST in protein compared to chicken, fish, lamb, pork and even beef
• Rabbit meat is highly digestible and recommended by the USDA for children and the elderly.
• The USDA also proclaims rabbit meat “the most nutritious meat known to man”
•  Rabbits are one of the most productive domestic livestock animal there is. Rabbits can produce 6 pounds of meat on the same feed and water as the cow will produce 1 pound of meat on the same feed and water.
• Rabbit meat makes fantastic jerky because it is so lean. One of these days, I’ll write about my love affair with my dehydrator, and I have big plans for super yummy jerky.

So that’s that. I’m excited and will of course be posting more on our Rabbitry as it gets up and running. Next up…What eats the rabbit poop?

Belated and Beautiful…

They arrived! Monday evening my Valentine’s Day flowers got here…and a box of chocolates (not that I could eat them as they were really chocolate covered pretzels, but the kids loved them so…meh, it’s all good. Just means I get a free pass for chocolate some time right?) I love that some years Neil gives me live flowers that I can enjoy for at least a few months. Every now and then, though, I really like a bouquet of cut flowers. Not only do I get fancier varieties, but it is already understood that they are dead. Live flowers are a commitment, a new responsibility to attend to. This year I just get to enjoy my beautiful flowers and know that, Yes, they will die, and No, I didn’t kill them.

 

Bane of my existance

There are very few things that I absolutely detest. Like “depths of my soul” loathing. I thought I’d share three of them with you tonight. They are, after all, the only things keeping my farm life from being perfectly idyllic. In order from least offensive to most…here is hateful entity number 3:

Ants

 

We have probably 10-20 different species of ants, all with multiple colonies all over our property. I’m actually fine with them chilling, doing their ant thing outside. I take issue when they start being inside. I keep my house pretty clean so when I accidentally leave a bit of banana on the floor and they find it and swarm it in 15 minutes (they come out of the floor and the walls) it’s a little disconcerting. But not nearly as disconcerting  as when little girl eats a cracker in bed and then I wake up to her crying in the middle of the night because she is getting bitten by ants that have invaded her bed. Yeah. The only reason they are number three is because by some magical combination of weather and bug spray they haven’t been as much of an issue these past few weeks. However, I’m still worried about next summer.

Number two on the list of things that shouldn’t be within a 2 mile radius of me:

stupid spiky weed thing

 

This thing grows all over our property and produces these little green bud things that have one or two massive spikes. Now when they are cute and green they aren’t so bad. You step on them, they squish. But. They dry out and become insidious little iron torture devices bent on taking over the world! I have several sore spots on my feet from stepping on them. Heres the deal, we walk outside and they get in our shoes. Then we inadvertently track them into the house where they jump off our shoes and lie in wait…scheming their demonic schemes until one of us steps on them and get a petrified spike in the foot. We all go around barefoot so this one is just plain unfair.

So the above two, I can understand their reason for existing. This last one, not so much:

Common house fly

 

This is the fly trap that is supposed to trap these stupid things. It is an epic fail. I swear I kill flys all day and can’t really tell by the end of it. I keep my house clean (like I said) but no, they laugh at me! I mean seriously…flys copulating on my kitchen table is not ok! (and before you resolve to never accept a dinner invite from me again, I do wipe down everything with bleach wipes regularly) The worst thing about flys is that it only takes one to drive you to violent crimes against anything that can be thrown. Ants…you need hundreds to be really obnoxious. Our weeds…you could avoid just one spike for a while. Not flys. They actively seek you out, knowing that their mere presence will make you twitchy.

But don’t you worry. I will continue to fight the good fight against these abominations. Peace and tranquility will prevail! or I’ll stop being whiny and figure out a way to cope. Yeah. One of the two.

farm gifts

We have decided that we will take it. Whatever our farm gives us, we’ll take it. Oh and it is a farm, it’s going to have an official name and everything once we register our “herd” with a dairy goat association. But I digress. First off the garden…it decided to give us a hard time. Turns out the gravel we are using for our grow medium is limestone based. Which means it is highly alkaline. Which means EPIC SUCK! Plants and fish like a pH of around 6-6.5 (slightly acidic). Our water is running around 8.4 and we thought “hey lets just add some acid.” Adding a gallon of vinegar per day, we could hold it at 8. Bottom line we need to figure out another solution and nothing is jumping out. But high pH aside, our plants are doing much better than I would have thought. And apparently the mint loves alkalinity. Go Figure.

 

Zucchini and yellow squash on the left cucumbers on the right. I should go take a slightly more current picture as now the yellow squash’s leaves are almost white because of a nutrient deficency because of the high pH. sigh.

 

Ok mint on the left. It came this close to dying when I transplanted it. I mean no leaves left at all. but now I’m having nightmares of it growing into the house and taking over my kitchen. At least it would smell nice, I guess. Anyways, on the right is a bell pepper that is also doing really well.

The chickens are giving us eggs. Well our pet easter egg-er, Rose (my favorite), died from heat stroke…[sniff, sniff] but before she succumbed to July, she gave us maybe a dozen beautiful green eggs. Daisy, our Leghorn, just started laying cute little white eggs at a rate of one a day. I like having a few egg machines around. Our babies mostly just make us laugh, but give it another two months and we will go from 3 eggs a day to about 14 per day. Funny thing is that any extra dozens we will have are already spoken for. It’s looking like our chickens will pay for themselves plus a few free dozen eggs for us each week.

 

Daisy and Tulip trying to cool off…and Will giving me attitude. This is right before he tried to scratch up my legs and peck my feet to death. I kicked him and he acted like he meant to fly backwards and land on his tail. Me and Will understand each other pretty well.

 

Babies and the reason we do this.

The goats are giving us milk. Lots of milk. So much in fact that I currently have in my fridge a batch of soft cheese, yogurt, my first hard cheese (I’ll let you know how it is in 4-12 weeks), and milk for cereal. And we are meeting with a breeder Monday to talk about getting an actual mini dairy goat which could double the amount of milk we get each day. You can say it…I don’t mind…we are crazy.

 

 

First hard cheese and baby goatie, then Mamas and their boys. Ginger and Dwalin are doing great and tiny baby goats are the cutest things ever invented. He frolics and falls over and his tail turns into a wagging blur when he nurses. Then we have Frosty and Pippin on the left. Pippin is almost as big as his mother but still tries to nurse. This usually ends up with Frosty’s back legs lifting off the ground and Pippin getting a swift kick as soon as her legs return to the ground.  I love my goats.

i [heart] physics

Physics is how my garden grows.

We are going to actually plant stuff! [SQUEEE!!!] <— crazy excited noise. So here is how this rig can allow me to start a garden in the middle of a Las Vegas summer and not doom myself to failure.

 

The grow beds (left) are flooded with water from the sump tank (right) to about an inch below the rock level. The sump also pumps water into the fish tank.

 

Here is the brilliant physics part. When the fish tank water level gets to a certain point it drains out that tube on the right back into the sump tank, but it pulls the water from the bottom of the tank. So ucky fishy water leaves from the bottom while cleaner water flows into the top. Meanwhile in the grow beds, physics is hard at work being even more awesome!

 

This is the auto-siphon inside each grow bed. It is three layers: The open drain pipe attached to the bed on the right, the bell covering thing on the left and then the gravel guard lying on its side in the right picture. Put these together and when the tank fills to a certain point a siphon is formed to drain the water faster than it comes in. So it cycles (filling and emptying) about 5 times an hour. This is excellent for the plants because they have a constant root temperature, constant nutrient rich food supply, and are oxygenated when the system drains. Because of this the plants can grow much faster. But wait there’s more!

I also [heart] chemistry and biology. The way that the ucky fish water can be good for the plants is actually because over time a bacterial colony will grow on the rocks in the grow bed. This bacteria will convert the ammonia to nitrites and then to nitrates (which the plants devour ravenously) as it fills and drains. Then the cleaned and de-ammonia-ified (like that word making up?) water goes back to the sump and back to the fish.

These are the happy plants that get to live in our garden. Best way to start seeds. EVER. Plus it meant I had an excuse for Panda Express. Total win-win. Here we have zucchini and yellow squash up top and spinach on the bottom.

 

On the left we have cucumbers (foreground), Roma tomatoes (back left), and  green beans. On the right we have cherry tomatoes (foreground), cantaloupe (back left) and watermelon.

Once we get these suckers planted, we add in this rank smelling seaweed extract to start the whole process. Then after the system has been running for about two weeks we add our fish. Which means we have a deadline to 1) decide on fish 2) figure out where to buy said fish. Current thought is Koi, unless anyone has any suggestions for a fish that can thrive in 85+ degree water and is easy to keep alive? I don’t have a great track record with fish. So I’m calling them Neil’s fish so as not to bring down my horrible aquatic juju on our unsuspecting aquaponics system.