Applestar’s 2019-2020 Winter Indoor Garden

[applestar]

More fiddling around with the Little Airlifted Dripper systems —

- Replaced the pepper cutting (which was not doing anything) with another lettuce loofah plug in the 2nd 1/2” Pvc elbow
- Figured out a fix for the rear 2xBottle system so I cleaned up a medicine bottle and inserted a Swiss chard seedling loofah plug. The other one has a tomato cutting in it for the time being but I may switch it out to another lettuce plug.

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As soon as I harvest one fruit, more start to blush and ripen. Aren’t they cute?

[TomatoNut95]

Aww! They are cute! And congratulations on saving your guppy! That's ten million times better than I could've done. Fish doctoring is WAAAAAYYY outta my line. I do good to save a plant....

[applestar]

- Trying this kind of aquaponics directly in the front reservoir just to see what happens. The tomato cutting didn’t do too well when the net pot had been hung a little deeper, so I tried raising it to the rim level with 1/2 inch to 1 inch above-water level substrate. The entire basket is exposed when the system cycles.

- and started some more lettuce seeds and one loofah plug of celery seeds (I have to assemble another set-up before they sprout and grow to “planting” size.... )

[imafan26]

It looks like a science project.

[applestar]

Ha! I need the maniacal laughter smilie

[applestar]

I’m lovin’ the way the Winter Paradise tomato shelf looks right now — full of promises



...also, I realized that the Big Tailed mama guppy that had been sick has bluer tail and dorsal fin accents than I had previously thought when I was only looking at her from the frosted container walls and murky water. I noted it while she was in the clear ICU cup, and also noticed it when I was looking at her direct from above. But she wouldn’t stay still for a good photo



...here’s a collage of the 4 adults— Top two photos are the males, and bottom two are the females:

— I need to research guppy genetics to find out what potential patterns can be expected in their babies ... and decide what other colors/patters I might want to get in the future if I decide to expand

[applestar]

It turns out that guppies like to eat — and by this I mean they go ballistic competing with each other for — aphids.

In the past, I’ve described how I use soapy water-moistened bamboo skewers to snag aphids from delicate leaf stems, leaf nodes, flower buds, etc. of overwintering/Winter Indoor Garden tomato and pepper plants. (I called this “embracing my inner ape”)

Recently, I saw some random aphid infestation on the Shimofuri (霜降り) tomatoes and grabbed a bamboo skewer, and not having soapy water handy, just wet it with the reservoir water. Then on a whim, floated the aphids in the guppy’s feeding corner.

At first nothing happened, then an adventurous youngster snatched one, then others followed suit. Pretty soon, they were swarming as soon as I held a skewer above them and babies were snatching aphids from the mouths of adults, or adults would swoop in to suck in big adult aphids that the little babies are pecking at. It’s becoming a daily routine now, but the ladybugs have been pretty efficient, and I can only find 1/2 dozen or so at a time.

[applestar]

I’ll put this here as Winter Indoor Tomato update —

- Most of the remaining trusses of Shimofuri {霜降り} F7 have started to ripen... and first Aztek is starting to blush (yellow):

- The accidentally started Shimofuri {霜降り} F8 VG.SIP-WP2 which had bee off to a slow start seem to have remembered how to grow (Persephone Days over?)
- I also have some new seedlings that are being raised to be aquaponic system-ready in loofah sponges

- The big photo is an unlabeled plant that had been growing in the WPPH (Winter Paradise Penthouse). Judging by the wispy foliage, I *think* this is my Maglia Rosa x Coyote segregate that was starting to show tendency to remain short and bushy determinate (every leafnode starts to grow suckers all at once). It should be F5 or F6, and probably white pointed grape cherry. This isn’t a sweeping/sprawling type and doesn’t seem to want to grow in a basket, so I will support it with a cane and see what happens when raised under the WWL (Winter Wonderland) lights in the family room. I might try pinching the suckers and training to only 2 or 3 main “vines”.

[TomatoNut95]

Looking good!

@Applestar, have you ever tried any of these little fabric pots? They're extremely popular on eBay and I finally decided to get some as cheap as they are. You're supposed to be able to plant the whole thing when it's transplanting time.

[applestar]

Have not tried them though I noticed them on amazon. It sort of looks like a teabag in your photo. How do you stand it up while the seedling is growing? If you use them, please post progress in your garden thread. (I’ll let you trial them first )

[applestar]

Quick update — I prepped the rest of those tomato seedlings in the black square bowl — now I have 6 (+1 more elsewhere) luffah sponge water culture seedlings to play with later once I assemble some experimental systems. Of course tomato is actually an easy plant to make extras by water culture since you can easily root pruned suckers. (But these are Shimofuri F8, so I need to grow them out until 2nd or 3rd set of true leaves to observe level of variegation before culling. )

[TomatoNut95]

Lol, you're right; they do look like teabags! I bought an assortment of 400 for only pennies a pot. A couple of the sizes are made differently to were they look like they will stand on their own when filled with dirt. As for the others I'm not sure. Maybe they're meant to stand up side by side in a deep tray until ready to be planted. I will start working with them this weekend and see how they do. I hope they prove to be more biodegradable than peat pots are.

[applestar]

With the yellow Aztek micro-dwarf cherry tomatoes starting to ripen, this Winter Indoor Garden shelf (WP2=Winter Paradise 2) is looking the way I envisioned Growing these determinate varieties works out well since I will be needing this area for starting and growing this season’s warm weather seedlings very soon.

It’s useful to start some cool weather seedlings in the warmth for rapid germination, then move them out to the Garage V8 (which is what I’m already starting to do with those lettuces, brassicas, etc.) Tomato seedlings will be started here, then moved out to the Garage V8 as soon as weather warms up a bit with the thaw and the garage temperature stabilizes above 50°F. This normally doesn’t happen until after beginning of March.

[applestar]

Subject: Applestar’s 2019-2020 Winter Indoor Garden

More fiddling around with the Little Airlifted Dripper systems —

- Replaced the pepper cutting (which was not doing anything) with another lettuce loofah plug in the 2nd 1/2” Pvc elbow
- Figured out a fix for the rear 2xBottle system so I cleaned up a medicine bottle and inserted a Swiss chard seedling loofah plug. The other one has a tomato cutting in it for the time being but I may switch it out to another lettuce plug.

Those gizmo’s were not working out well. Part of the problem has been that the airlift pump was not reliably operating. I can’t get a good aeroponics cycle going with low flow system. I know the air tubing can be finicky and too narrow for consistent flow-rate. I also wondered if the luffah plugs were causing nitrogen tie-up.

I was also starting to suspect that I was overthinking the design, so I started to look for a way to improve it... and I came across a possible answer when I was looking for a simple aquaponics design for converting a 5 gallon jug:
Jug aquaponics part2 https://youtu.be/_5f6Gy87AOA

Here is my mini-version. I plied the stunted seedlings our of their luffah sponges and planted them in the pumice gravel for the time being, but I may (probably will) grow replacements if they don’t show significant recovery.

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[applestar]

Here’s my new gizmo — A new tweak to the new mini model of a Airlift surge siphon pump for an external filter for the Winter Paradise shelves irrigation reservoirs. This is a mini-version experiment to test designs and learn the concept/mechanism for a swirl/radial filter I intend to set up in the outside system later this year.

I had it working, then added the extension to send the pumped mini-bursts of water to the yellow tray for the lettuce, etc, then added the little drains. Bendy straw has same inside diameter as standard aquarium airlines and can take the connectors — straight, elbow, tee, wye..... They won’t self-initiate the way they are set up, but can be started with a pipette full of water.

This collage is a little hard on the eyes since this is the only quality gif I can get from the app without upgrading, and of course I normally don’t animate all of the panels, but if you focus on one panel at a time as the gif cycles through, it might give you an idea of how this thing is operating?

...but feel free to skip if you are not fond of jumpy animated gifs...

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[applestar]

Last photo collage of Winter Paradise tomatoes before harvesting

[applestar]

Some of the oldest of my baby guppies — the 2 "fancy guppy" females might have been already pregnant with these


...it’s hard to tell with these low quality photos, but in addition to the black veined, brilliant yellow and/or orange markings on the tail, Some of them have powder blue in their dorsal fin.

[TomatoNut95]

Awwwww!

[applestar]

I want too see her babies inherit the Big Tail Mama’s gorgeous triangular tail — these appear to be more like the rounded paddle/spoon shape tails unless they will grow out differently, although I think the ones with the blue dorsal fin and/or clear tail might have some of her traits. They are still only about half as big as Big Tail Mama. But the colors, especially the yellow was an unexpected bonus.



What I will start to do I think is cull the less spectacular ones and use them in other aquaponic reservoirs, especially as the ambient temperatures rise to their tolerance. Since I am using the Airlift pump designs as well as the return line aeration, which oxygenate the water, all the reservoirs should hopefully be able to support them.

And this summer, I might not have to buy even the 17¢ on sale feeder minnows and goldfish for the buckets and bog garden. They can be my mosquito squad.

[imafan26]

Your indoor garden is doing better than my outdoor garden now. It has been raining, sometimes continuously and it is very windy. The tomatoes are resistant but not really good at withstanding a long period of wet weather. The red currant still produces fruit, but is showing more signs of bacterial and fungal damage. The fish look very happy.

[applestar]

Thank you! There are always the ups and downs, but I’m always happy when I can call at least some of the experiments a success.

Here are some of the best of the peppers that overwintered and are starting to leaf out. Some set fruit over the winter which are always a bonus since there are significantly less chances of their being accidentally crossed with another variety... and we all know how promiscuous the peppers are, especially with the sweatbees, hoverflies, and predatory wasps helping along during the summer season.

vvv the creamy white variegated foliage plants are all Fish or Goldfish peppers vvv

... I noticed as I was taking these photos that some of them look like they are infested by aphids, but these are the ones that have Aphid Mummy Maker wasps working to correct the problem, so they should turn around soon.

...and here are two of a handful that are still struggling:




- the peppers that are in any protected enclosure are sitting at the floor level, which means they are in the coldest thermal layer AND also vulnerable to our wacky kitties who seem to think pepper leaves are excellent eat-and-chuck greens

- ALL of them suffered from mite and aphid infestation, as evidenced by the stubby brown/russeted/dried up buds in the leaf nodes, but most of them have recovered after early autumn mite predator release and continued periodic ladybug release. You can see that even the one on the right looks as though it might manage to get those lower new buds to grow out.

[applestar]

I’m going to post this here instead of the main 2020 garden thread, since these are strawberries that I’m overwintering in the garage. I had hoped for a more robust performance, but I’ll take what I can get.

Here is the FIRST Elan strawberry with a couple more that will be fully ripening in the next days. Respectable size, considering it is growing in a shallow webtray container along with 6 White Soul Alpines. And you can see more are starting to set and ripen.


...what I’m learning here is that Elan hybrid — which is the first commercial type strawberry that I’ve tried growing this way —seems to be temperature sensitive. UNLIKE the Alpine strawberries which have been setting fruits and ripening almost all winter, albeit smaller than their already small fruit size they grow during the season, the Elan fruits that tried to set while the garage temperatures were in the 40’s never developed beyond the sickly, pale pink shriveled stage (photos top-right bottom-left, bottom-center). I included a photo of the net cup of mummified fruits that I cut off to discard today.

- that one bumpy malformed fruit I think is suffering from boron deficiency and possibly aphid infestation of the blossom. The ladybugs that I released in the garage V8 Nursery have tended to congregate on these strawberry blossoms so they were probably taking care of that as well as snacking on the pollen. I sprinkled some borax and scratched it in along with some citrus fertilizer, so hopefully I won’t see any more of those.

[applestar]

Update collage of some of the guppies grown into their full colors

[applestar]

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...see the large female with pretty tail markings — probably the Big Tail Mama and one of the Tuxedo daddy — with large black lateral fin?

[applestar]

- Orchids are continuing to bloom — gave us a wonderful show all winter

- Shimofuri 霜降りF8 — I didn’t take care of them as I should have, but here is a representative variegated foliage and they managed to fruit — I like the super pointed ones.

- The yellow-orange fruits to the right are overwintered Aji Dulce Amarillo, and the variegated foliage center-top are the Fish and Goldfish plants.

- I was letting the Shimofuri 霜降りfruits ripen “on the vine” and accidentally overwatered resulting in some split fruits.

- oh, and the big orange fruit is first kumquat harvest. This is a cultivar called ‘Meiwa’ and has larger rounder fruit than the usual one in the store.

[applestar]

I tried draping a strip of skin from a roasted sweet potato on the feeding rings for the guppies to clean up the flesh stuck to the skin. They loved it

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...in the right-most video, I realized — after my DD pointed her out — that the large female with half of her tail missing is the Big Tail Mama. I hadn’t “seen” her in a while and thought maybe she had quietly expired ... but apparently I just didn’t recognize her without her beautiful tail whole.

[applestar]

More guppy updates — these are some of them as seen from above



...it’s not easy to see, but that black one with metallic periwinkle back and flared red-salmon colored Dorsal fin has BLACK paddle-shaped lateral fins and yellow crescent o the tail-fin. There is a 2nd one like it, too.

[TomatoNut95]

They're beautiful! I just love fish, they're so peaceful and fun to watch!

[applestar]

I forgot to take photos of the pepper (Aji Dulce Amarillo) and tomatoes (Shimofuri) before DDs pulled the fruits off and took the plants outside

You’ll just have to imagine all these green fruits from early May, full ripe and some of the tomatoes starting to split by the time they were harvested

[applestar]

One more update of the guppies

[imafan26]

I had guppies when I was a lot younger. I think I had 60 in a 15 gallon tank. There were ( 2 ) 15 gallon tanks because the other tank had baby koi, Black angels, and gourami. It turns out that the Angels and gourami are antagonistic toward each other but it is o.k. to have them in the same tank as long as there were two of each kind. The Angels were afraid of the guppies. Baby koi, came from a carnival. He was caught with a paper net. He got to be about 8 inches long. The tank was too small and we gave him to someone who had a pond but he could not adapt to the pond environment and died. I also found that the guppies have their own kind of birth control. They would eat their young when the tank was too crowded. That was why there was a stable population of 60 guppies. There was a problem with inbreeding. The spines would be deformed and the guppies usually lost their fancy fantails. I had to keep introducing new males to diversify the gene pool.

I also learned the hard way that neon fish were a very expensive meal for the guppies.

[applestar]

I was scrolling back to find a photo, but guess I didn’t showcase BIG B at all?

...I had a Comet Goldfish in the front reservoir, overwintered from one of the SIP reservoir buckets last year. It grew while others that had been kept in the Garage V8 reservoir buckets remained small, so it was maybe almost 2 inches in length by this spring.

Over the summer, it grew so big that my DD’s named it Behemoth, then BIG B. In the last couple of weeks, BIG B had grown so huge in the 4.5 gallon reservoir, that it was probably 3/4 of the width and almost 1/3 of the length. Older DD was tasked with putting it outside in the pond ...which she did yesterday.

This morning, I was anxiously looking down at the pond, hoping for a glimpse ... and it did not disappoint me

BIG B swimming in the aeration bubbles

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BIG B swimming in the aeration bubbles
— According to online sources, Comet Goldfish can grow up to 12 inches and live for 10 to 20 years, and can withstand nearly freezing temperatures as long as it is acclimated to lowering temperatures.

[TomatoNut95]

Oh my goodness, he's beautiful! No wonder he's been named Behemoth! You're lucky, I never had good luck with goldfish. The majority of the fish I've owned were Siamese Fighting fish. (Bettas) A couple lived for years. They are fun to watch, beautiful and are fun to prove into flaring. I haven't owned a fish in years, however. After this Coronavirus dies down, (if it does actually die down) I may consider another one.