April 11th Where we're at.......................

Been putting off the additional shade cloth installation till a cooler day. Well can only wait so long and today was a bit cooler around 36Deg... So added in some 80% shade cloth to the steel frame above the raft system, and then Wanna added in the seeds.

I checked the Ph, just shy of 8 and the Nitrates and Nitrites around 0.3 and 0-12.5 respectively. So within a reasonable margin. I also used my hydroponic EC meter.  940 PMM sees a bit on the low side but adequate for salads. Not I suspect for Tomatoes. So we'd planned accordingly and Wanna had prepared seeds adding in Bak Choi (Thai) and, Bak Choi (Vietnamese) and some other greens used locally for stir frys. This time we used new seeds. Earlier we used up our old ones and all the packets has a use by date, we exceeded them all by a few years..... So little success earlier and really we cannot be to surprised.

Since we started this second system I had always planned to keep tidy and well organised. However we also started with the premise that we would do it as cheaply as possible not a completely compatible idea out the the garden environment. So slowly we have made improvements. I've put the tanks on a concrete base and added a small concrete path round the side of the Grown beds.  We also have lighting and spare electric sockets. So now beginning to look the part. All these extras being done while we completed the house, again keeping costs low and using up all the surplus bits from house construction. Amazing have you ever noticed how much waste is generated in house construction, meters of electrical cable for a start and short lengths of plastic water pipe.  Well I think I found a use for most of it.....

Also with the revamp we've drilled holes in the deliver pipes from fish tank to settlement tank to avoid air blockage which was a bit of a problem, Cleaned out the aeration tank and added proper bio balls instead of old plastic cuttings from water pipe...I've added  a short slide show of today's status. Main thing to watch over coming weeks will be the plant progress. Having been very slack on counting fish numbers and mortality etc I can only guess at food quantities, if they come for food I feed them..