Today I’m making compost tea. I make 2 – 5 gallon buckets every week. Compost tea is made from vermicompost that my composting worms create in my worm bin in the garage. We put all of our vegetable scraps – lettuce, celery, carrot peels, banana peels, etc. into the worm bin. After harvesting lettuce, the…
On Tuesday I work on the Deep Water Culture (DWC) bed. Today I have a 24 hole raft full of Monte Carlo Romain lettuce that I’m harvesting. I’ll harvest the 12 largest heads for New Hope Ministries food pantry in Dillsburg. So people can come in and get a fresh head of lettuce. We’ve got…
It’s a beautiful sunny day here in Dillsburg, PA! It’s 34° outside and about 48° in the greenhouse at 8:37 am. Today we have three rafts of lettuce growing in the DWC – “Monte Carlo” and “Chalupa” romaine from Johnny’s Seeds. The wicking bed has a square of beats. Two squares of kale and some…
Dillsburg, PA. Monday May 1, 2023. It’s been a busy year since our last post! (Sorry its been so long). We were so inspired by Murray Hallam’s Aquaponics Design Course that my wife Kristi and I built a custom version of his Indy 11.5 Aquaponics System in our backyard. Hoop House It all started in…
Tonight our life group has the privilege to serve dinner to the monthly Foster-Adopt support group at Daybreak Church. God has blessed us with a bountiful harvest of Lettuce to serve with the meal! Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me…
Our friends John and Tracey Pieters sent us this visual summary of what they did near the end of February to get the kids to participate in planting. The activity included a parable taught by Tracey on the 4 soils, a craft, games and a time of water play in a small pool. It was…
The new neighborhood Kids Club “Siembra y Cosecha” (Sowing and Harvesting), for ages 5 to 15 had its kick-off event on February 26th, 2022. The event offered the children Games (Juegos), Bible Lessons (Curso), Crafts (Manualidades) and Refreshments (Refrigerio). Fourteen children from the neighborhood came to help plant seeds in the new Square Foot Garden…
The Mexico City team has the Wicking Bed ready to plant seeds of hope and fresh food in the new community Aquaponics House! Thanks to Tracey, Luis, Jerry, and John. This is the first phase of the system build. (The second phase will be the Aquaponics grow bed and fish tanks on the roof!) The…
With thankful hearts, we Praise God for blessing us with the opportunity to attend Murray Hallam’s Aquaponics Design Course and to receive the commercial systems design certification. The 8 week online course included 5 to 8 hours of weekly video instruction, quizzes, and class discussions. The course required the submission of a complete system design….
I highly recommend this technical paper published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. It provides a complete reference for small scale aquaponics and shows how to build three small scale systems using IBC Totes. Somerville, C., Cohen, M., Pantanella, E., Stankus, A. & Lovatelli, A. 2014. Small-scale aquaponic food production. Integrated…
