Fish in a barrel

I played around with aquaponics on a very small scale a few years ago.  I had a small tank of ornamental fish in a classroom.  The water stayed pristine, the fish thrived and the plants did remarkably well.  

My kids have been bugging me for a few years to get fish again.  We have no space in the house for a tank.  I do have some barrels outside, so thought I could put fish in one of them.  

Goldfish are hardy and long lived.  They can survive in clean water as well as dirty water, they can survive in warm water as well as under ice.  Goldfish can eat a wide range of foods, many of which I can grow for free and I will only need to buy some of their food.  So I decided to get some goldfish.

One problem I faced is that goldfish are expensive here.  Locally they are about $9 each for smaller, not very colourful fish, and more for better looking or larger fish.  

Then I found a place online that posts live fish.  They had a deal where I could get ten posted to me for much the price I would have spent buying three locally.  I have never had fish posted before, but they had a live fish guarantee so I figured I would give it a go.  

I could have bought ten comet goldfish, or the same price to get ten shubunkin goldfish, so I had to make a decision. 

Goldfish when they arrived in the post

I love shubunkin, they are prettier than most common goldfish and have an array of colours.  Comets tend to be orange, or sometimes have a little white.

The choice was easy enough to make.  I ordered some shubunkin goldfish.

Shubunkin tend to be less inbred than many other varieties of goldfish, they have short single fins, and long bodies, meaning that they suffer from fewer of the ailments that often kill fancy goldfish. They are colourful and meant to be one of the hardier breeds.

Who knew goldfish cope so well being posted interstate!

When the fish first arrived they were terrified, and were rather pale in colour.  All were alive and looked remarkably well.

They were active and it didn't take them long to colour up quite a lot.  In the beginning they tried to stay down the bottom of the barrel where it was difficult to see them.  They were scared, and I was worried that some would die in the first few days while the barrel was cycling.  I put some wire over the top to protect my new fish from birds.

For the first few days I fed them duckweed and mosquito wrigglers.  That way they could eat when they wanted and not have to worry about me looming overhead.  After they associated me with food I started to also feed fish food.  Now they come to the top of the barrel anytime they hear me.  I now feed them some fish food.  They are remarkably interactive fish, which makes feeding time quite fun.

I keep hearing how goldfish don't stop eating and will gorge themselves and eat to death, but mine only eat a little fish food and then stop.  If I put a lot of duckweed on they will eat a lot, and then stop.  Some times it takes a few days for them to eat all the duckweed.

Goldfish, duckweed, and floating plants

I bought a little submersible pump/filter, floated a pot of plants to help remove some nitrates, and have plans for a flood/drain grow bed for when the weather warms up.  Until I put in a grow bed I am also doing 10% water changes each week, this water goes to the vegetable garden or to fruit trees so nothing is wasted.

Most days I put a scoop of duckweed on the top of the water.  The duckweed is great but only lasts a little while before my fish eat it.  Luckily I have a lot of it growing in other containers so I can scoop more of it in each day.  I also give them scoops of azolla but they struggle to eat that because their mouths are a bit too small.  

Some of the larger azolla has stayed there for a long time, I am happy with this as it would be removing a tiny amount of the nutrients from the water. 

I try to always have a little duckweed or azolla in there so they always have something to eat.  They seem to prefer duckweed to fish food.

My barrel full of fish

I am not a photographer and find it almost impossible to photograph fish.  They are beautifully coloured, each is uniquely coloured, they are very active, rather interactive, and the kids find them interesting to watch.  

I got them mid March and they have doubled in size over the past month or so.  The plants in the floating pot have also exploded in growth, which is a good sign that they are removing some of the nutrients from the water.  At first the fish were eating all the roots, but now the roots are growing faster than they are being eaten.

I know that ten fish are a lot for one barrel.  But I have a few plans for the future which should help a lot.  I am excited to see how much these little guys colour up after they have had some sunlight and more live food.

If you look closely you can see some of my fish when they were new

The fish are growing larger and calmer

The plants are growing well

Shubunkin feeding time

Winter will be here before I know it, and my little fish won't be very active until the weather warms up again.  

If my little fish survive the winter they should be large enough to breed in spring.  I plan to put in a spawning mop and see what happens.  If they lay eggs on the spawning mop I will remove it and put it in another tank and try to grow out some of the fry.

For now I am just enjoying these lovely creatures and watching them grow.

FOUR MONTH UPDATE: I now pump the water through a milk bottle full of gravel.  This has increased biological filtration and provides greater aeration.  I still have ten goldfish, they all have grown a lot and their colours are beautiful.  Being winter they are moving very slow.  The plants in the floating pot of gravel have increased in size dramatically and even in mid-winter I have started to harvest the Vietnamese Coriander!

Mystery fly

A while ago I looked into a bucket of water that was in my garden and found a fly.  It looks like no other fly I have ever seen.  I once studied entomology among other things, and I tend to notice insects.  

This fly was dead, so I pulled it out of the bucket and took some photos (as you do).

It looks similar to a hover fly, but with weird white stuff and shiny parts.  The underside is kind of green.  At first I thought perhaps it was a hover fly and the white stuff was a parasite or something stuck onto the fly.  After closer inspection it appears that the white stuff is just part of the fly.

If anyone knows what this is I would love to learn more.

Mystery fly

Green underneath the fly

Green underneath

Shiny back

Maidenhair fern babies

I love maidenhair ferns, they are such graceful plants.  

I got a tiny maidenhair fern back in 2016 as an office fern, and since then it has grown huge.  The fronds are now about 50-60cm long. 

My Maidenhair fern

I also bought a variegated maidenhair fern, I didn't look after it very well so it has not grown as large.  The variegated form of Maidenhair ferns is exquisite.  

Variegated Maidenhair fern

As well as these older, well established ferns, I also have some baby maidenhair ferns.  

I transplanted a bunch into a pot in early January so they would have some room to grow, but still be in one pot so would be simple to care for.  

My timing was a mistake as it was too hot and windy on that day.  As you can see below the fronds got scorched a little.

Planted early January

 

I think that all of the tiny ferns survived, they grew and look healthy.  They are large enough to transplant into separate pots, but I think I will wait for spring before I do that. 

These ones I have grown outside under shelter rather than taking up space inside the house.  They probably need a little more light, but overall they are going ok. 

Mid April

Ready to be divided

I'm not sure what I will do with these little ones.  I plan to separate them into different pots in spring.  Maybe I will sell some, maybe I will keep all of them.  They sure are lovely little plants.

Sarracenia psittacina golf ball form

Late last winter or early spring a very generous person sent me a small plant of Sarracenia psittacina (golf ball form).  I believe he imported seeds and grew this plant from them.   

Sarracenia psittacina is a lovely looking plant, and I have read about the golf ball form.  The few pictures I had seen had large round heads on the pitchers and brilliant colouration.  The few descriptions I had read made it sound like a strong growing plant.

It is a really nice looking plant, my photos do not do it justice.  As I type this I realise that it is now quite a lot larger than it was in any of these photos, I haven't got around to take any more recent pictures.

Look so much larger once repotted

 

When it arrived, the plant was small, but looked very healthy.  It also had a seedling of what appears to be a hybrid Sarracenia tucked under it.  

I didn't want to damage either plant so I left them together to grow larger before attempting to divide them.

The plants not long after they arrived

As I planted them I snapped one of the young pitchers.  You can see it in the photo above.  Not a great start, but the plant seemed to forgive me for this and started growing pretty much straight away.

As the plants grew, the psittacina grew faster and larger than the hybrid.  It got so large that I forgot that I still had the little hybrid.  If you look closely below you can still see it in the pot.

It grew quickly

Before I knew it my plant needed a larger pot.  I kept saying to myself that I would repot it later, and I kept putting it off.  It didn't take long for the plant to be far too large for its tiny pot.

Needed repotting and dividing

It looks a bit silly having such a large plant in such a tiny pot.  It probably would have grown even faster had it been in a larger pot earlier.

This needed to go into a larger pot

It is amazing how much larger plants look once they are in a decent sized pot.  

I separated the two plants and put the hybrid in its own little pot.  The tiny hybrid still looks healthy enough.

repotted and divided

I really like Sarracenia psitticina golf ball form.  I hope I can over winter it successfully and see just how large it will grow next year.

Two harvests of honey

This year we had one large harvest of liquid honey early in the season, I also cut out some honey comb, then things went awry.  Since then things have picked up a little.

After the first harvest I left the supers on and the bees started to fill them again, they drew out some frames to replace the comb I had taken.  

Last weekend I needed to remove a super and pack my hives down a little before winter, the only sensible way for me to do that was to remove the honey and get the bees to clean things up a little, so I got a few jars of honey out of one of the supers. 

Below are jars from the each of the two harvests.  Honey from the first harvest was light in colour and thinner, while honey from the second was far darker.  The darker honey tastes far nicer, it is much thicker, and smells really floral.

I find it incredible how different the two crops of honey are.  They both came from the same hive, with the same queen, in the same location  It makes perfect sense to be different as there were different things blooming at the time, but I still find it fascinating.

New honey on left, old honey on right

Yabby in a shell - hermit crab style

My daughter has been asking for a pet for some time.  I keep trying to convince her that one of the chickens, or guinea pigs, or bees that we already have can be her pet, but she says no.  I tried hard to convince her that one of the daddy long legs spiders would make a fine pet, but she is far too discerning for such things.

Before Christmas we were walking by the river and something small in the water caught my eye.  It was a tiny baby yabbie, maybe 1cm long.  I caught it and we took it home and she fell in love with the little thing.  That little yabby is her pet.  

We have had a yabby as a pet a few times in the past.  Yabbies are simple to feed, cheap to feed, very hardy, forgiving of downright putrid conditions, shed their skin to grow, become relatively tame, are quiet, they live for years, and this one was free. They are a great pet for a child!

As well as watching it, and feeding it, talking to it, naming it, and cleaning out its tank, my daughter put an empty snail shell in there for decoration.  

The yabby has taken up residence in this empty shell.  It sleeps in there, and spends a large part of the day hanging out the front looking reminiscent of a hermit crab.  This is heaps of fun.

I tried to take some photos, they are a bit blurry, but you get the idea.

Yabby in a shell

Yabby living in the snail shell

Glass Gem corn

This year I grew the famous "Glass Gem Corn".  I am not sure how or when glass gem corn made its way to Australia, but there are a few people growing and selling it here now.

To prevent cross-pollination I only grew glass gem corn this year, and no other varieties of corn.  I am not sure if any of my neighbours grew any type of corn, but I doubt it.

Glass Gem corn is not a sweet corn, it is not a GM corn, it is not the same as the 'glass bead' corn that I used to grow.  Glass gem corn can be used to grind for flour, or to feed livestock, and it makes a reasonable pop corn if allowed to ripen and dry properly.  Above all else, glass gem corn is incredibly beautiful.

I have heard so much about glass gem corn that I figured this year I would grow it and see what I think.  I planted similar coloured seeds close together, this means some cobs were largely one colour, and other cobs were filled with mixed colours.  

To be honest I am not sure what I prefer, mixed colours are pretty, and so are cobs of largely one type of colour.

Some cobs of Glass Gem corn have mixed colours.  I like the look of these mixed glass gem cobs.

Glass Gem Corn

Glass Gem corn - mixed colours

Some cobs of Glass gem corn are mostly pink.  My daughters love the pink glass gem corn.

Glass Gem corn - pink

Some cobs of Glass Gem corn are mostly blues.  

Glass Gem corn - blue

Some glass gem corn cobs are mostly pale colours:

Some glass gem corn cobs have darker colours:

Glass Gem Corn

Glass Gem Corn

I was told that glass gem corn plants will produce up to 15 cobs per plant if given enough space, and far less cobs if planted closer.  Some online seed sellers claim they reliably produce 2 to 3 cobs per plant.

For me, under reasonably cramped conditions they produced anywhere from 1 to 10 cobs per plant.  Some plants tiller lots, some didn't tiller at all.  Some produced one or two decent cobs and a bunch of poorly filled out ones (presumably an issue with pollination from being planted too close), others produced a lot of cobs that were all completely filled out, and other plants produced one single cob.

I counted up all the cobs and averaged 4.5 cobs per plant.  This average includes cobs were poorly pollinated and did not have many seeds.

Glass gem corn tillering - this plant produced 10 cobs

Glass gem corn, I grow beans up the stalks and a ground cover of purslane

I am told glass gem corn grow up to 3 metres tall or more, most of mine were about half that size.  The glass gem corn plants averaged 1.5 to 1.8 metres tall for me, with a few shorter plants in the mix.  I have grown some really tall corn in the past, but this variety did not look anything like them.  I honestly doubt it could get very tall regardless of the space it is given or fertility of the soil.  This is good, shorter corn is better in small gardens.

The cobs themselves weren't overly long, for me they came in about 15 cm long, some a little longer and others slightly shorter.  Not a bad size cob for popcorn.

Glass Gem Corn cobs 15cm long

I like glass gem corn, and my daughters seem to love the pink popcorn even though it still pops white just like the store bought yellow stuff.  

I particularly like all of the different colours and shades glass gem corn comes in.

Glass Gem Corn comes in a myriad of colours

 

When saving the seed I will keep some of the colours separate and sell seeds from cobs that were mostly pink, or mostly blue, or mixed cobs.  While the pinks don't produce 100% pink cobs, they all carry pink genetics and unless pollinated by stray pollen they will mostly be pink similar to the cob in the photo.  Who knows, perhaps your daughter will want to grow pink popcorn too!

I think I will try to grow glass gem corn again, I like it.  As far as popcorn goes it is very pretty, and the yield seems pretty good.  I will probably also sell seeds through my for sale page. 

Solanum acroscopicum - wild potato relative

I have a few potatoes grown from true potato seed.  Tetraploid potatoes are ok, I really like some of my diploids because their taste is vastly superior to any tetraploid potato I have ever tasted and their colouration can be spectacular.

As well as domestic potatoes, I have a few wild relatives of potatoes, or crosses of domestic x wild potatoes.  Being wild plants they tend not to have the highest yields, but they do contain a lot of genes that are not found in domestic potatoes, so hold potential for breeding something spectacular.  Some species can be crossed with domestic potatoes, others cannot.

One wild potato that I am particularly fond of is Solanum acroscopicum.  I am not sure why, there is just something about this species that I like.

I grew some from seed planted August/September last year, and they started flowering mid February.  I have a few domestic diploids flowering near it, but this plant is reluctant to set seed for now.  Hopefully conditions are just right and it produces seed for me one day.  

The flowers tend to be large, unfortunately I didn't think to take any photos until most had dropped off and only the tired looking flowers were left.

Solanum acroscopicum

The tubers produced by my S acroscopicum are smallish, kind of round, have lovely smooth skin, white skin and white flesh.  It has short stolons so the potatoes form nice and close to the plant.  It has a short dormancy, so is not well suited to my winters, but hopefully I work out a system to keep it going.  This certainly isn't the only plant I grow that is not suited to my climate.

The taste is not particularly impressive, it tastes a little better than a store bought potato but really nothing spectacular.  I am told that (unlike modern domestic potatoes) you can eat partly green tubers safely, but haven't tried that myself.  The yield is not huge by any standards.  Like any seed grown potato, first year plants produce smaller yields and subsequent year plants produce larger yields.

Nothing really stands out as being spectacular.  Yet for some reason, I really like these little guys.

The leaves are noticeably different from domestic potato leaves, they are a bit more pointy shaped and are held more upright.  The flowers are usually pretty and often very large, probably not as pretty as the flowers on some of my diploids, and so far it has produced less flowers than my diploids, but they are still rather nice.  I really need to take a photo of the nicer looking flowers.

When grown from seed the plants show a lot of vigour early on, and the seedlings quickly surpassed my other seed grown potatoes.  Once the first year seedlings get more established the acroscopicum survives but didn't really take off.  I tried taking cuttings, but forgot about them and they died.

Solanum acroscopicum at top, tetraploid potato in middle, diploid potatoes lower left

Seedling potatoes and other seedlings

Seedling S acroscopicum on left is stout and sending out stolons, seedling tetraploid potato on right is spindly and weak

At this stage I don't really have any plans for my acroscopicum.  If any survive winter, next year I should try to cross with with various domestic potatoes to see what they can produce. 

I do have some micro tubers that I am willing to trade if someone has another potato that is interesting, or I sell tubers through my for sale page after I harvest them.