Compost tea irrigation
There is a lot of interest in aquaponics, and rightly so. It's pretty cool that you can grow stuff from fish pee. But I am surprised at the lack of interest in compost tea irrigation (CTI), because it is so simple a concept. Until I hear otherwise CTI will be the acronym I will use for the process of using compost tea as the basis for growing plants.
This is a picture of the first stage of my setup:
Why would I want to do this when I have a reasonable amount of space in the backyard to work with? Well, there are 3 reasons temperature, pests and water consumption.
Temperature: I had a sunroom built to passively heat a barn, now it's coming into winter but I want to continue growing vegies. So why not use the sunroom? The picture above is from the start of winter. The snow peas climbing off to the right have now hit the ceiling. Our night time temperatures are about 1 degree C.
Pests: They drive me crazy, snails, slugs, birds and others. I refuse to use chemicals, and while I am working on organic detererents I am spending a lot of time doubling checking whether esquargo is on the menu.
Water consumption: We use drip irrigation with mulch, and that's great, but the water disappears to the water table and the water usage costs money. This can be fixed simply with a water tank and that is certainly on the cards but this way is a lot cheaper. In this setup an aquarium pump on a timer recycles the water in 2 x 15 min periods during the day. It does need to be topped up now and then but it is minimal.
I have to say that this has been the best crop of lettuce I have ever grown. The lettuces in the pic look malformed but that is because I graze on them, rather than picking a whole lettuce I just take some outer leaves now and then.
Stage 2 is taking form it is an expansion of this trial. I'll let you know how it goes.
This is a picture of the first stage of my setup:
Planter boxes ($14 from Big W) contain seasoned compost. They drain into a 1/2 barrel with a pond liner. The barrel has an aquarium pump in it that simply recycles the water back to the planter boxes.
Why would I want to do this when I have a reasonable amount of space in the backyard to work with? Well, there are 3 reasons temperature, pests and water consumption.
Temperature: I had a sunroom built to passively heat a barn, now it's coming into winter but I want to continue growing vegies. So why not use the sunroom? The picture above is from the start of winter. The snow peas climbing off to the right have now hit the ceiling. Our night time temperatures are about 1 degree C.
Pests: They drive me crazy, snails, slugs, birds and others. I refuse to use chemicals, and while I am working on organic detererents I am spending a lot of time doubling checking whether esquargo is on the menu.
Water consumption: We use drip irrigation with mulch, and that's great, but the water disappears to the water table and the water usage costs money. This can be fixed simply with a water tank and that is certainly on the cards but this way is a lot cheaper. In this setup an aquarium pump on a timer recycles the water in 2 x 15 min periods during the day. It does need to be topped up now and then but it is minimal.
I have to say that this has been the best crop of lettuce I have ever grown. The lettuces in the pic look malformed but that is because I graze on them, rather than picking a whole lettuce I just take some outer leaves now and then.
Stage 2 is taking form it is an expansion of this trial. I'll let you know how it goes.
posted by Unknown at
4:19 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home