Vertical Farming Photos: The Bright Agrotech Vertical Farm – 4/12/2013

A Week in Review

As a way of keeping our readers and friends up-to-date about what’s happening around the vertical farm we’ll be recapping each week with a series of vertical farming and soil agriculture photos about the weekly events.

These photos will be a nice review of our weekly CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) harvest and any other building, planting and community projects that took place during the week.

We hope you enjoy!  Don’t forget you can follow our Instagram feed at: instagram.com/bright_agrotech

Have a great weekend! 

The post Photos From the Farm – Friday, 4/12/2013 appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Building a Greenhouse (Part 3)

This is our third video post in a series on “Building a Greenhouse” and today we’re talking about soil amendments!

In Part 1, we showed you some of the best benefits of building a greenhouse including:

• Extending your growing season
• Gaining more control over your growing variables (e.g. pests, etc.)
• Providing shelter for crops from snow, hail and high winds

And, in Part 2,  we walked you through installing, securing and inflating your greenhouse covering.

Today, we’ll be discussing some basic soil amendments you may need to do once you’ve had your cover on and your soil is fairly thawed out.

Testing manure for salt content

Manure can be a great amendment for new soils.  Soil that’s being worked for the first time will take around 2-3 inches of composted manure to till in- the goal is to get your soil to a minimum of around 5% organic matter.  Soil that has been worked before and has already been amended will take around 1 inch of composted manure each year.

One thing you have to be careful about is making sure your manure doesn’t have too high a salt content.  If you start to see salt accumulating on your soil surface or see salt accumulation on the manure itself, you know that the content is too high!  If you are worried about salt in your manure, you can always have it tested by your local university lab, or by using an EC meter.  If using an EC meter, manure can be diluted to a certain percentage with water (depending on the estimated inches of water to be applied during the growing season) and then measured. I would try to stay away from manures that exceed 6.0 dS/m if possible.  If manures test higher than this, then you know that if you are going to use them, then you must apply much more water to leach out some of the salts.  If your soil has poor drainage, then this isn’t possible, and you shouldn’t use the manure.  One thing that can be done if you are concerned about salts, is to use plastic mulch.  This reduces evaporation from the soil surface and reduces the amount of salt buildup, or salt-pan that can accumulate in the upper portions of your soil.

Testing manure for herbicides

Herbicides are another major concern.  Before buying manure, ask the supplier if any herbicides are used around the corrals, stalls, barns and outbuildings where the manure is collected.

If the answer is yes, then DO NOT USE THE MANURE.

It’s an unfortunate fact, but there are a number of herbicides that persist and can contaminate manure either because they were applied to the manure itself, or because they were applied to the hay used to feed the animals.  For this reason it’s very important to know whether herbicides were sprayed in the area where the manure was collected.  If it was, do not use it.

It’s also important to ask the supplier whether the manure came from animals fed on grass hay that was treated with Tordon or Grazon.  Both of these herbicides contain chemicals (aminopyralids) that last a long time and kill broadleaf weeds.  If either of these herbicides were used on the hay, the manure will kill your garden.  As a sidenote there are other “weed and feed” products and herbicides used on lawns that will do the same, so be careful with composting grass clippings from treated lawns.

Manure can often be tested for herbicides by labs, but these tests are expensive and aren’t always sensitive enough.  Fortunately there’s a way to test manure yourself.

It’s called a bioassay.  It’s very easy to do.  Essentially you just take a number of samples and see if plants planted in those samples show signs of herbicide damage.  For complete instructions, check out this document:

http://puyallup.wsu.edu/soilmgmt/Pubs/CloBioassay.pdf

Types of Manure

There are many types of manure, and they all have different qualities.  Remember that all manures should be composted before they are used. 

Manure from horses and cattle are the most common types of manure available, and when composted are high in organic matter.  Sheep and goat manure is usually of excellent quality, often having less salt content than horse or cow manure.  Poultry manure is very hot when it is fresh, and even when composted can be too nitrogen rich.  Use it with caution, and if it’s still hot after composting, make sure to incorporate carbon rich organic matter with it (i.e. straw, sawdust, etc.) to keep the effects of the nitrogen under control.

Other Soil Amendments

There are many other soil amendments that can be used instead of, or in conjunction with manure.  But that is for another post.  For the beginning gardener, amending soils with manure is a great start.  If you can start with manure, you can graduate on to other things.

So start here, and we’ll do our best to help explain other amendments as time goes on.

Oh! Almost forgot… Happy May Day! 

The post Amending Soils with Manure [Building a Greenhouse Part 3] appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

The Best Way to Plant Seeds

Spring is upon us and that means it’s time to get those seeds started and ready for planting in your backyard farm or garden.

Planting seeds is the first step in any garden, farm, or aquaponics system.

As you may well know, there are several different ways to plant seeds, although some are better than others.

We believe that the best way to plant seeds, (best defined here as the highest probability of getting the healthiest seedlings possible that are easily and efficiently transplanted) is planting seeds using plug trays.

In today’s post, we’ll be discussing:

1. Two different ways to start your seeds and what we think is the BEST way to plant seeds.
2. An easy step-by-step walk through on how to plant them.
   

Seed Planting Methods #1: Direct Seeding

Direct seeding is planting seeds directly into the garden bed or a vertical tower.

Advantages

• Easy: Planting the seed is the only task.

• Inexpensive: All direct seeding requires is the seed and space to grow.

• Fast: Once you’ve planted the seed you’re finished!

Disadvantages

• Wasted space: Space is wasted in the garden bed or tower while the seedling grows and germinates.
• Inaccurate: Unless you diligently plant, seeds could disperse in the garden bed or tower.  Seeds that don’t germinate also waste space in your bed.
• Not suitable for all plants:  Some plants are long season plants that you cannot direct seed, since they can’t be planted before the last frost, and won’t mature before the first frost.
• Reliant on certain climates:  Similar to the point above- some plants just don’t like the cold spring, or cool fall of certain climates, and need to be transplanted after these periods.

Seed Planting Methods #2: Plug Trays

At Bright Agrotech, we experimented with different methods of seeding and decided that plug trays with pelleted seeds is the best way to plant seeds, and here’s why!

Advantages

• Saves time and space: Seeds need time to grow and germinate. By using plug trays, seedlings are allowed to do the initial growing before they move over to a bed or a tower.

• Organized: Each cell houses one seed. Plug trays are already divided up, this ensures each seedling has an ample amount of room to grow.
• Effective: Only the seeds that germinate and grow well are planted.  Seedlings that lack vigor or seeds that fail to germinate can be thrown out.

Disadvantages

• Cost money: Yes, plug trays do add another cost to your garden system. However they are well worth it! They simplify the job, making it easier on you. They save time and space, essentially paying for themselves!You can also use them for many years, if you’re careful to clean them out every season.

• Can be messy: Using pelleted seeds with plug trays. As seen here, multiple seeds were placed in each cell.  This is a real problem with very small seeds like mustard, lettuce, onions or carrots.   Although this causes some problems, there is an easy solution: Pellet Seeds. Pelleted seeds are a single seed rolled in clay making them larger and easier to handle. They have several advantages as well such as reducing waste, saving time and energy.  They’re more expensive, but they end up saving time and money in the long run.

•  Transplanting: Once seedlings sprout and being to grow, transplanting the plant into a tower or garden bed adds another step in the growing process. However, in tower systems this is not too difficult. Each seedling can be planted nice and snug. By measuring each part out, every plant has ample room to expand and grow.
• Sensitivity of Some Crops:  Some plants are also sensitive to transplant- you have to be very careful with transplanting cucumbers, pumpkins, squash and other melons.

Despite these disadvantages, we still believe using plug trays is the best way to plant seeds. It’s the method we’ve had the most success with! 

Step-By-Step: How To Plant Seeds in a Plug Tray

1. Choose the size of tray

• There are several different sizes, select the size that best fits your needs.

2. Place a single seed in each cell

•  If using regular seeds, make sure to plant diligently, planting more than a single seed per cell could potentially cause [major] pains later on when you have to remove excess plants.

3. Select what you want substance you want to grow your seedlings in

• Using a regular potting mix will work but it will require adding in supplemental nutrients. Going with a vermi-compost based solution, your plants should be able to grow without additional nutrients.

4. Transplant your seedlings when it necessary

•  For example, when growing 60 day lettuce, the seeds can be placed in trays for around 35 days. That’s more than half their growing time!

• When transplanting to a  ZipGrow^TM Tower we have several steps that may be beneficial!

• If your tower is new, put it in the system and allow it to get wet. Exposing it to the good bacteria of your system will help the bacteria get established.
• Each ZipGrow^TM Tower comes with our special wicking inserts that help draw moisture to the seedlings roots, ensuring healthier growth. Lay out your wicking material then fold it over.
• Insert the seedlings along the wicking strips inside the Matrix Media.
• Zip the media containing the seedlings into the tower. Having a long bench or flat area helps!

5. Let those seedlings grow up big and strong! 

• Once you’ve transplanted your seedlings, you can get a jump-start on your next cycle!

Hopefully you found this post on the best way to plant seeds helpful as a guide when it comes deciding what seeding method to choose! If you have any questions feel free to comment and we will answer them as soon as possible!

See more helpful videos on our YouTube Channel!

The post The Best Way to Plant Seeds appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Understanding Iron in Aquaponics

*** Fair Warning: This post gets little technical! ***

UPDATE: See the bottom of this post to find out what chelated iron products you can use in your AP system!

Why is Iron Important?

By mass, iron is the most plentiful element on the planet, and one of the oldest metals known to and used by humanity.  It is also an important plant and animal nutrient and thus, very crucial to your aquaponics system.

Iron is very reactive- that is, it exists in a variety of ionic states (from +6 to -2) but exists primarily as Iron⁺⁺(II; Ferrous Iron) or Iron⁺⁺⁺(III; Ferric Iron) and transitions readily between them depending on environmental variables.

For this reason, oxygen is an important component in many organic molecules that fix oxygen, or moderate REDOX reactions.

Animals & Iron

In animals, the most common iron containing substance is heme complexes, of which, hemoglobin is what we are most familiar with.  In hemoglobin, iron helps bind oxygen for transport throughout the body.

Plants & Iron

In plants, iron serves many functions but is an essential component in the production of chlorophyll, the site of photosynthesis.

Without enough iron, plants cannot produce enough chlorophyll, leading to retarded plant growth characterized by interveinal chlorosis. Iron is also a key component of cytochrome- a hemeprotein that plays a key role in ATP generation- the currency of cellular metabolism. 

In this capacity it is irreplaceable to both plants and animals.  Iron is also plays a major role in many other proteins and reactions.

Iron Availability (or Lack thereof)

Unfortunately, because it is highly reactive, iron is typically unavailable.

It flits between soluble and insoluble forms, forms compounds with other minerals and in aerobic environments generally (as far as plants are concerned) plays hard to get.

The Issues with Iron in Aquaponics

This poses a problem for aquaponic producers.  Because systems are generally aerobic (and certainly aerobic in the root zone), iron deficiencies can often arise- even when there is technically plenty of (ferric) iron within the system.

In the aquaponic solution, iron is commonly available in one of two forms- reduced, soluble Ferrous Iron (2+) and insoluble, oxidized Ferric Iron (3+).

Ferrous iron is available to plants (soluble!).  Ferric iron is not (insoluble). 

This is important to understand, because ferric iron is the more oxidized form, whereas ferrous iron is not.

In short, as soon as ferrous iron becomes soluble in aerobic envrionments it is often oxidized, becoming ferric iron or reacts with other compounds to become biologically unavailable (especially at high pH values when different hydroxides are formed).

Now, this relationship between oxygen and iron isn’t a full time thing.  In reality iron is flitting between ferrous and ferric states, but the dominant state in high pH and oxidized environments is ferric- and this means that your plants cannot take it up.

Why are these details important?

Because they dictate how we examine the solutions.

Many practitioners throw rusty iron items into their systems falsely assuming that this will supplement system iron.

In a sense it does add to the reservoir of system iron, but not in a constructive or meaningful way.  All this does is introduce more ferric iron to the system- a form of iron that was most likely already in plentiful supply.

Other practitioners intentionally develop dedicated anaerobic zones, where ferric iron will be reduced by the oxygen free, anerobic environment to produce ferric iron.  This is a more compelling approach, especially in low pH systems, but still does not entirely address the problem of getting the reduced iron ion (Fe⁺⁺) through the oxygenated aerobic zone surrounding the plant roots (especially in high pH systems where hydroxyl ions are plentiful!).

In low pH systems, ferrous iron has a much better chance of reaching the root zone, simply because there are fewer hydroxyl (OH^-) groups to react with along the way, however even in the absence of hydroxyl groups, there are many other chemical obstacles to reaching the plant root zone in adequate quantities.

Plants have adapted to this issue

This is a problem, but one that has not been overlooked by nature.

You see, plants have been contending for these nutrients for eons, and as a result have developed some amazing chemical means of hijacking ferric iron ions, tying them up, bundling them into the soluble, biochemical equivalent of the panel van, and delivering them, bound and gagged, to the root surface for plant use.

Plants also use a few other techniques to make iron available, including acidifying the root surface by excreting hydronium ions, and secreting iron reducing compounds.  But for the sake of aquaponic system management, this first biochemical iron fixing technique is what we will focus on.

Chelation – An Aquaponic Iron Fixing Technique

This process is called chelation- that is, tying insoluble ferric iron ions and compounds to organic molecules to make them soluble. 

Chelation is accomplished by special organic molecules called chelatins or chelating agents.  These are organic molecules that are specially designed to capture, or “dissolve” metals, of which iron is one.

In the plant world, chelatins are produced by the plant roots and leaked into the soil capture and deliver insoluble iron ions.

The most effective of these compounds are phytosiderophores which bind ferric iron very strongly, pulling them from the various insoluble precipitates and substances in which they most commonly occur.  These are special compounds produced by certain plants (phytosiderophores) and bacteria (siderophores) that are incredibly effective at binding iron.  The grasses (Poaceae), and especially barley are particularly effective at producing phytosiderophores for capturing iron.

(As a side note: a great deal of research is being done on using barley to produce siderophores for iron sequestration, and holds some interesting implications for aquaponic system where practitioners are willing to grow barley.)

Other Chelating Agents

Other common chelating agents are amino acids, organic acids (especially humic acids), and polyphenols.

These are compounds that help keep the iron soluble and biologically available to the plants and algae in the system.  While these compounds can be introduced, and humic or “tea-water” solutions can be fostered and managed, they aren’t always enough to keep iron available to the plants- especially in systems with a pH or 7 or above.  In these systems, an artificial chelatin is often required.

Because I use peat potting mixes for all of my seedling germination and transplants, my systems typically maintain high levels of humic substances, however I still supplement chelated iron regularly.

Iron is one of the plant nutrients that must be supplemented in almost all aquaponic systems.

To supplement iron, chelated iron must be added to systems.

Admissible under USDA Organic standards, chelated iron is an artificially chelated iron ion- essentially, iron attached to an organic molecule to make it soluble.

By adding chelated iron, iron deficiencies in your plants can be avoided.

Forms of Chelated Iron

The most common forms of chelated iron are:

FeEDTA: This is a slightly toxic form that aquaponic practitioners should not use.  This type of chelated iron is commonly used as an herbicide to kill broadleaf weeds.  It should not be used just  because of it’s toxicity, but also because it typically only effectively chelates iron up to the pH range of 6.3 or 6.4.  Above this range it is not a stable chelate.  So, using FeEDTA in your consistently pH 7.0 system represents a significant amount of money wasted in comparison to other forms of chelated iron.  For this reason I recommend that AP practioners do not use FeEDTA.  It is ironic that this is the most commonly sold and used form of chelated iron in aquaponic systems as it is fairly ineffective- the equivalent of modern “aquaponic snake oil.”

Fe DTPA:  This is what I recommend for most systems at pH values between 6 and 7.5.  It is commonly available at lawn and garden stores.

FeEDDHA:  This is what I recommend for systems above pH values up to 9.0 (let’s hope your pH never gets that high!), and the best all-round form of iron chelate- especially for starting systems.  Effective at a broad pH range, FeEDDHA maintains iron solublility in almost all of the water conditions encountered by startup aquaponic systems

Chelated iron fertilizer is available from many different suppliers.   I typically get mine from the local hardware store.

Common thinking about adding chelated iron

There are two schools of thought on chelated iron addition.

Some say that chelated iron should be applied any time you see deficiency.  This is a reasonable and reactionary dosing method, but ultimately means that your plants must first suffer from iron depletion and deficiency before the problem is addressed.  In this scenario plant production can be negatively impacted.  The other (and better) school of thought is to apply iron at the standard UVI system rate of 2mg/L every three weeks.

Iron can also be applied through foliar application- using either chelated iron or ferrous sulfate mixed at low concentrations.  Foliar application is great for fast response, but because iron isn’t a mobile nutrient inside plant tissues, iron will have to be supplemented regularly using this method- a time consuming, and ultimately less effective iron supplementation method.

Using this method, iron can be regularly dosed so that iron deficiencies do not arise in your system. 

Cost of Chelated Iron

While many practitioners complain about cost, when bought in the 5-10 pound bag, chelated iron is really not very expensive, and often even in large commercial systems, will last for many months.

At the dosing rate above, a 10 pound, $15 bag of chelated FeDTPA will last well over a year, or less than $1 per month.  At higher iron concentrations it will last much longer.

—

* The above material is copyright Nate Storey, Ph.D *

We hope that helps you better understand the iron in your aquaponics system. For more discussion, please visit our Google+ Community on Aquaponics.

UPDATE:

We’ve had several folks ask about where they can get good iron supplements and how much they cost. Here is that info:

Chelated iron products you can find on the web – available on Amazon and other online stores:

“Miller DP”- DTPA (What we use- on the shelf or ordered through Ace hardware)
“Sequestrene”- DTPA (5 lbs bag on Amazon for $57)
“Miller FerriPlus”- EDDHA (SunshineGardensFl dot com; 1 lb for $20, or 20 lbs for $300)
“Sequestar Iron 6% Chelate”- EDDHA (RoseCare dot com; 5 lbs for $73)
All of these products will work great in your system!

Nate Storey, Ph.D is the Co-Founder of Bright Agrotech & Inventor of ZipGrow^TM Towers.Dr. Nate with some nice looking lettuce.

Nate Storey earned his Ph.D from the University of Wyoming in Agronomy researching aquaponic production and novel produce sales and distribution models.Nate, along with his business partner Paul Bennick operate Bright Agrotech, one of the only independent and profitable aquaponic farms in the world in Laramie, Wyoming. To do this they use ZipGrow™ Towers, developed as part of Nate’s Ph.D. research. Nate continues to research the use of tower production techniques to increase productivity and reduce costs for hydroponic and aquaponic growers.Facebook - YouTube - Twitter - LinkedIn - Instagram

Bright Agrotech is the expert in vertical, high yield, space-saving gardening technology. Our patented ZipGrow Vertical Farming Towers and Matrix Media are helping young upstart farmers around the world achieve maximum yields and feed their communities.

The post Understanding Iron in Aquaponics appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

 Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 5/10/2013

Read on for a weekly recap of life at the Bright Agrotech vertical farm!

Vertical Farm Photos

As you can see, we harvested some REALLY tasty lettuce this week (mostly butterhead and romaine varieties).

Our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) members are treated to fresh and delicious lettuce each week that we grow right here in Laramie. If this is your first time reading one of our blog posts, be sure to check out how we grow food on this TOUR of our vertical farm. 

You can read more about the Laramie grown CSA here.

Another Log on the Fire

Despite it being close to summer in most places across the country, here on the high plains of Wyoming (7200 feet to be exact) our cold temperatures seem to want to stay a bit longer into the “Spring.”

To thwart any slowed or halted production from our vertical farm (we have people to feed, you know!) we recently ordered in another truckload of beetle kill lodgepole pine to keep things toasty on these nippy Laramie nights.

If you’re wondering how we heat our greenhouse, here’s a video to help explain it all.

*** NEW VIDEO — STAY TUNED ***

Today, we shot another helpful YouTube video on the specifics behind our wood-fired furnace. That will be up on the YouTube Channel sometime next week!

Weekly Recipe(s)

Each week we try to attach a recipe to our CSA emails that gives them an idea of what they can cook with their greens/herbs for the week.

This week, some of our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) members got spinach while others received some tasty watercress in their baskets. Thus, we decided it would be a good idea to give them some options when it comes to recipes for the week. We’ve found two really delicious ones!

Recipe #1 – Watercress Salad with Roasted Sweet Potatoes

• 2 medium sweet potatoes (about 1 pound total), peeled and cut into 2-inch-long matchsticks
• 3 tablespoons plus 1/2 teaspoon olive oil
• Coarse salt and ground pepper
• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 2 bunches watercress (12 ounces total), stems trimmed
• 4 ounces feta, crumbled (Optional)

Find instructions here at Paleoaholic!

The post Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 5/10/2013 appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Growing with aquaponics can be a fantastic way to experience higher yields, better efficiency and healthier plants. One aspect of this type of production method that often gets overlooked is Biological Surface Area (BSA) in Aquaponics.

Understanding Biological Surface Area In Aquaponics

This post is to help you better understand the importance of biological and specific surface area to produce higher yields and fewer frustrating mistakes!

What is Biological Surface Area?

To start, Biological Surface Area (BSA) is the amount of surface area inside your system that microbes can live on. BSA is very important in aquaponic systems because these microbes are the engines of a healthy aquaponics system. They oxidize ammonia, assist in nitrification and mineralizes materials like iron in order to foster healthy plant growth and a healthy system overall.

Measuring Biological Surface Area

We typically measure BSA in the total number of square feet per system.

To fully grasp this measurement, we’ll also need to understand how much Specific Surface Area (SSA) is our system. SSA is measured as the number of square feet per cubic feet (ft²/ft³). 

This is the amount of square feet there are inside of the volume of media you’re using. (EXAMPLE: If you were using crushed granite or river rock as your grow media, you would need to calculate the total surface area of each piece of granite/rock.)

Once we have calculated the Specific Surface Area, all we have to do is multiply the SSA by the VOLUME of the grow beds or ZipGrow^TM Vertical Farming Towers to get the Biological Surface Area.

Why Understanding Biological Surface Area is Important

Figuring out how much BSA is in your system will help you to understand:

• Whether or not your fish are understocked or overstocked and help you make the adjustments necessary for a efficient, effective growing system.

Biological Surface Area in Common Aquaponics Media Types

To give you an idea of how much BSA/SSA  is in various media types, I’ll turn it over to Dr. Nate Storey’s research on the matter.

From Storey, 2012:

Table 2.01  Specific surface area comparisons for different substrates.

	Particle Size		Specific Surface Area
Media Type	inches	mm	ft2 ft-3	m-2m-3	Void Ratio (%)	Hydraulic Conductivity (m/d)
Medium Sand	0.12	3	270	886	40	1
Pea Gravel	0.57	14.5	85	280	28	104
Rock	1	25	21	69	40	105
Large Rock	4	102	12	39	48	106
Plastic biofilter media	1	25	85	280	90	107
Plastic biofilter media	2	50	48	157	93	108
Plastic biofilter media	3.5	89	38	125	95	108
ZipGrow Matrix media	N/A	N/A	290	960	91	107*

* estimated to be approximately that of small diameter plastic biofilter media

These studies are especially relevant to this research, and especially the design phase of tower development, during which the properties of the media used had to be closely defined.  Deciding on the media type was difficult and literature detailing the inverse relationship between particle size and Specific Surface Area (SSA in m² m^-3) was useful.  This is due to the relationship between percolation and SSA that is a feature of most aggregates.  As particle size gets smaller, specific surface area for that media type increases, that is to say, the surface area to volume ratio increases, i.e.:

- medium sand (3 mm diameter), SSA= 886 m² m^-3;

- pea gravel (14.5 mm diameter), SSA=280 m² m^-3;

- medium gravel (25 mm diameter), SSA=69 m² m^-3;

- large gravel (102 mm diameter), SSA=39 m² m^-3; (Crites, et al., 2006).

It should be noted that values in the literature can be somewhat contradictory depending on the source.  This is primarily due to differences in measurement and classification standards.  What these values will show however, regardless of technique, is that smaller particles are better suited for integration into systems where high SSA values are important.

Unfortunately, the reality is that these small particles trap solids much more efficiently and rapidly foul with accumulated biosolids, leading to anerobic conditions and lower dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations that negate the benefits of small particle size.  This low hydraulic conductivity and small pore size (low void space/void fraction) makes small-particle media inappropriate for most biologically active systems with active cycling.  To avoid this problem, larger particle sizes are commonly used (17 mm crushed granite or ¾ inch crushed granite) having higher void ratios (and resulting high hydraulic conductivity) so that solids impact percolation less.  However, even though these crushed aggregates have significantly higher SSA than non-angular and non-crushed aggregates, SSA is still comparatively low, resulting in reduced overall system Biological Surface Area (BSA or total surface area of system measured in m²). 

As you can see, different medias have drastically different Biological Surface Areas. 

Calculating YOUR Biological Surface Area

Remember: as an ABSOLUTE minimum, YOUR system needs at least:

2.5ft² of BSA/gallon of water (at low stocking densities and low feeding rates)

For a healthier system, we would recommend:

10ft²/gallon of water OR 100ft²/pound of fish

EXAMPLE:

If you’re stocking fish at 1 pound per 10 gallons, for every pound of fish, you’ll need 25 ft² of BSA – This will be the amount you’ll need for adequate waste and ammonia processing.

Does the Age of My System Matter?

Yes!

Generally speaking, older systems are going to be MUCH more efficient at processing waste (i.e. the microbial communities inhabiting older systems are much more established, stable and able to operate more effectively as a result).

Younger systems (see: newer/less mature systems),  you’ll need more BSA right away to help in the nitrification process.

Remember:

A truly healthy AP system requires as much Biological Surface Area as possible – BSA is the horsepower of your aquaponics system! 

ZipGrow^TM Towers & High Specific Surface Area

If you noticed in the table above, ZipGrow^TM Towers have a VERY high SSA, BSA and void ratio.

The reason for this is that WE DESIGNED THEM THIS WAY! 

As you see in the table, our Towers and Matrix Media^TM have 290 square feet(!) of specific surface area per cubic foot of our media.

Our media fibers provide a TON of surface area for our microbes to hang out on and keep our system healthy.

The high SSA, in combination with a void ratio of 91%, which allows water and solids to flow through our towers easily, creates a productive powerhouse in our aquaponics system. (Don’t forget the light weight and ease of transport/maintenance!)

Find more examples and equations in our video on Biological Surface Area in Aquaponics. 

Sources:

Table adapted from Crites et al. (2006) by Storey (2012) showing specific surface area (SSA) in square feet per cubic foot and square meters per cubic meter  for several different media types common to trickling biofilters and constructed wetlands.  Nonwoven fiber medium, such as ZipGrow Matrix Media supplements this table for comparison to traditional media types.  Values are those reported by the manufacturer and determined through testing and estimation based on similar media types.

Crites, R., E. Middlebrooks, and S. Reed.  2006.  Natural Wastewater Treatment Systems.  Taylor and Francis Group, Boca Raton, Florida, USA.

Storey, N.R. 2012. Vertical Aquaponic Crop Production Towers and Associated Produce Sales and Distribution Models: Design, Development, and Analysis. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wyoming.

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Best Fish For Aquaponics

One of the first questions people often ask us is…

“What is the best fish for aquaponics? 

The fact of the matter is there is no one perfect fish out there for EVERY aquaponics system.

Each system is different and each are trying to grow in specific environmental conditions.

That said, there are three things you want to keep in mind when choosing the fish the BEST fits YOUR system:

1. Environmental Conditions
2. Feed Sources
3. Purpose

Environmental Conditions

This is perhaps the most important variable. It is crucial that you match your fish with the right environmental conditions!

Some environmental conditions to think about:

1. Water Temperature
   • Knowing your water temperature helps narrow down the selection process. For example, if you know your water temperature is high, trout and other cold water fish wouldn’t make a good fit in the system.
2. Hardness of the Water
   • Different municipalities have different types of water. The type of water is important when selecting fish. Hard water is water that contains dissolved mineral carbonates such as calcium and magnesium carbonates.
   • Different fish live in different hardness levels. As for fish health, water hardness alters osmoregulation. What this means increases fish’s fluid concentration and the surrounding water.
   • Goldfish and Koi flourish in moderate to hard water. If your system’s water is hard keep this in mind.

Feed Sources

Finding an adequate feed source for your fish is key to having a thriving aquaponics system. Availability, consistency, and the type of feed are necessary when selecting a feed source.

Keep in mind the amount of feed your system requires: a commercial or personal amount.

Availability

Availability of feed is important. Having a supplier with readily available feed will help keep your shelves stocked.  It’s great to be able to buy feed locally, but not all feeds are available from your local feed store. Some high quality feeds may have to be special ordered.  If this is the case then it’s good to get on a schedule to make sure you’ll have the feed you need when you need it.

Consistency

By using the same feed each time and feeding at the same time keeps consistency with the fish, ensuring that you don’t over feed them and waste food.

This will help lock you and your fish into a schedule.

Type of food

Research what feed sources are out there. Match a feed source with a fish, this will help.
Fish food is not universal. Different feeds are for different fish.  Protein content is the most important variable in most systems. Omnivorous fish need feed with 20-30% protein, whereas carnivorous fish prefer feeds with a protein content of 40%+.  Also look to make sure that all of the protein is digestible.  Protein sources like feather meal are not easily digested and are usually wasted.

Make sure you can find a sufficient amount of the food that compliments the fish that you are using. If not, you’ll struggle to balance the amount of feed going into your system and your system water chemistry (i.e. nitrogen levels).
Choose the right food!
If chemicals and toxins from fish food potentially leaching into your system is a concern…

Pick a food from a reputable source, and you shouldn’t have any problems.

As stated before, you want to think about the size of your system, smaller systems won’t require the same amount of feed.

Fish Purpose

Fish can serve multiple purposes in aquaponic systems. Some folks enjoy eating their fish after they have a reproducing population. Others aren’t interested in eating fish, they want to utilize nutrients fish produce. Selecting a fish for its specific purpose is important.

Non-food Fish

Some examples of non-food fish are: Koi and Goldfish

Why?

• These fish are resilient as both can survive in relatively poor water quality.
• As for food sources, they will eat just about anything.
• Maintenance of the fish is little to none. They are easy to care for. 
• They’re also relatively inexpensive compared to trout, tilapia, etc.

Food Fish

As for food fish, it is up to you. Know what type of fish you enjoy (don’t pick a fish you wouldn’t eat). Keep in mind the above factors when it comes time to choosing a fish. If you like trout, make sure you have access to cold water.

A general rule of thumb: Be realistic with your fish decision!

Just Remember…

Before you select your fish for you system, remember that the best fish for YOUR system depends on YOUR:

1. Environmental Conditions

2. Feed Sources

3. Purpose of the fish

There is no universal “best fish.” Each system is different, but keeping these three tips in mind will help you when selecting a fish for your system!

The post Best Fish For Aquaponics appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 5/17/2013

Read on for a weekly recap of life at the Bright Agrotech vertical farm!

Market Garden Prep

This week was a BIG week for us as we prepare to plant our summer market garden.

As you can see in the photos, we had some great help from Dr. Nate’s father-in-law who brought over his tractor from Nebraska. He helped us till up the land around our greenhouses and tilled in a serious amount of composted manure we got from a local rancher friend.

Things are really picking up and the planting is officially underway!

Paul and Noah have been keeping very busy planting potatoes outside and laying the drip irrigation needed to get them growing up big and strong.

Noah has also been busy planting flats of bok choy and chard inside our newest high tunnel greenhouse. When it comes to hard work, Noah lives and breathes it!

An International Tour

On Thursday of this week, we showed a group of 30+ German folks around the greenhouse and taught them the Bright Agrotech vision for a more sustainable farming future. Thanks to the UW College of Business, these 30+ German visitors interested in more sustainable tech businesses got to see inside our vertical farm and pick Dr. Nate’s brain.

Overall, they had a great time and learned a lot!

Weekly Recipe – Chicken Lettuce Wraps

Stay tuned for next week’s Vertical Farm Photos!

The post Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 5/17/2013 appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Wood Burning Boilers: What’s the hype about?

Heating a greenhouse here in Wyoming is not an easy task. In a place that consistently gets winter temperatures below -20 and howling winds roaring at 40-60 mph sustained, there’s a reason why we’re really the only farm in business all year in this environment.

That said, we needed to figure out a way to keep our plants and fish tanks warm throughout the long Wyoming winter. And, as upstart farmers, we needed to do it in a way that wouldn’t break the bank.

Standard Greenhouse Heating

Most greenhouses today are heated by natural gas – a common and relatively inexpensive source of heat, that is, if you have the infrastructure in place.

When constructing our first greenhouse, installing gas lines weren’t in our budget as they can be rather pricey.

Choosing Wood as a Heat Source

Once we understood that natural gas was outside of our reach financially, we began to look around for other options and ultimately came across wood as a heat source.

We made this decision based on a few factors:

• On a per Btu (British thermal unit) basis, wood is one of the cheapest forms of heat available. 
• The abundance of beetle kill wood in the forest surrounding Laramie that is dried and ready to burn.

Choosing a Wood Burning Boiler

Once we decided that wood would be our fuel source, we needed to select the appropriate boiler for the job. Now, there are a lot of great options out there in this space. Heck, a lot of people even weld their own boilers, but we decided to make the investment in something reliable, long-lasting and with enough volume to keep our greenhouse nice and toasty in these cold Laramie winters.

That said, we ended up choosing a boiler from Central Boiler. 

So, what is a wood burning boiler?

While our boiler system acts as a heater for our greenhouse and fish house, the boiler heats differently from a standard wood furnace or stove.

A boiler, as you can infer, uses water to heat a space. Inside the boiler, there is a firebox (where the wood is burnt), with baffles to act as a heat exchanger (where the heat is actually transferred from fire, to metal, to water) and surrounding both of these is a water jacket (essentially, the firebox is inside of a tank of water).

The water surrounding the firebox is heated to the optimal temperature and is then circulated through insulated tubing or pipes.

This type of system is called hydronic heating – that means it’s a heating/cooling system that uses non-boiling water as a heat transfer medium.

And, while the word “boiler” sounds like we heat the water to 212 degrees, it’s a bit of misnomer. We heat our water to 185-195 degrees and therefore don’t have to deal with high pressure steam, which is much less dangerous.

Instead, the water is heated to around 185 to be pumped through coils in our fish tanks and finally to the heat exchangers/blowers inside our greenhouse. See a video on this here: Heating A Greenhouse.

We control the temperature of the boiler with a thermostat located on the front of the boiler (see photo on left).

There is a damper on the front of the boiler door that will close and smother the fire once the temperature hit 185 degrees. Even though the damper may close, the water inside the boiler continues to circulate throughout the coils in our tanks and to the heat exchangers inside the hoophouse.

Over time the water will slowly cool down and once it hits 175 degrees, the damper opens up and fuels the firebox with more oxygen and once again begins to heat the water back to 185 degrees.

That means the fire in our boiler has only been lit one time back in November – it runs constantly and self regulates in accordance with our preset temperature on the thermostat.

Inside the boiler a pump moves the hot water from the water jacket to insulated tubing strung throughout our greenhouse and fishhouse. 

Our model in particular provides more than one pump hookup so that as we grow we can use the hot water from this boiler to heat additional greenhouses.

Rounds vs. Split Wood

Unlike many smaller scale wood furnaces or stoves, our boiler can actually accommodate rounds (whole logs cut up to 3.5 foot sections). This saves us A TON of time and energy having to split wood throughout the harsh winters.

*Bonus: We’ve found that our boiler will even burn fairly green Lodgepole Pine – it doesn’t ALL have to be completely dried, cured wood.*

We order our logs in by the truckload – a decision we made after realizing how time intensive hauling it in by the pickup truck can be.

Pine Beetle Outbreak

As you may or may not know, the Rocky Mountains are in the midst of a bark beetle outbreak that is 10 times larger than any previous outbreak. Over 3,600,000 acres of Colorado, southeastern Wyoming (that’s us) and surrounding states are undergoing a massive pine beetle epidemic posing a hazard to human recreation, infrastructure like power lines and increased fire intensities with the increase in woody biomass on forest floors. All of this, in combination with decades of _______ (insert desired explicative here) fire management practices puts a lot of stress on the forests.

That said, we’re able to truck in and burn this wood very inexpensively and feel good about doing so since we’re helping reduce fire loads and hazard trees in our surrounding forests.

Using wood to heat our greenhouse not only saves us money, it also affords us the privilege of using a renewable resource.

PS – If you’re living in the west and need some help protecting your trees from the devastation pine beetles inflict, check out our neighbors and friends at TigerTree Land Management.

Why is this Boiler a Good Match for our application?

For starters, let me just reemphasize how brutal Wyoming winters can really be…

Our heat calculations for a 2000ft² hoop house + fish house told us we would need to supply about 250,000 Btu/hour(!) to keep our plants at a comfortable temperature during the lowest temperatures of the year. Of course, there’s no way we could be profitable with this type of utility cost to heat such a small space UNLESS we doubled or tripled our production per square foot with ZipGrow^TM Towers. (See more advantages of Vertical Farming below!)

This boiler could supply the necessary Btu levels we needed!

In addition, the access to inexpensive beetle kill wood also helps our bottom line and ensures our plants and fish can make it through the Wyoming winters.

Are Wood Burning Boilers A Good Choice for your application?

• Do you have access to reliable, inexpensive wood to burn?
• Are you already set up with natural gas lines?

Thanks for reading and be sure to share this blog with others if you’ve found it useful! 

The post Wood Burning Boilers appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Ammonia in Aquaponics

Ammonia, along with iron, is an important player in an aquaponics system. Being one of the primary fish products, Ammonia is important to understand.  Hopefully this post will help you understand Ammonia and ammonium. We also want to rid some of the common misconceptions regarding it.

What is Ammonia?

Ammonia is a colorless gas. This nitrogen and hydrogen compound is produced by fish in an aquaponics system. An indicator of ammonia is its distinct, pungent smell. The gas is toxic but necessary to give plants in a system the proper nutrients they deserve.

Ammonia is unavoidable in aquaponics systems.

In aquaponics, ammonia and ammonium result from the breaking down of proteins in fish tanks. Fish can eat and digest protein turning it into simpler nitrogen compounds. Once the protein is in the fish, bacteria begin to break down the protein. The end product: Ammonium, NH₄⁺.

Difference between Ammonia and Ammonium

Ammonia: NH₃

• Ammonia is more toxic than ammonium.
• Ammonia is a soluable gas. It has no charge.

Without a charge, cells within the fish cannot regulate ammonia.

Ammonium: NH₄⁺

• Scientifically, ammonium is the product of ammonia interacting with a proton, positively charging the ion.

• Ammonium is a byproduct of the metabolism of animals. Fish excrete it directly into the water.
• Due to the positive charge, fish are able to regulate the substance in and out of their cell membranes.

Ways Ammonium Enters the System

This gas, although toxic, is inherently part of the aquaponics system. There are several ways ammonium enters a system:

1. Through the gills of a fish
2. Excreation from the fish

Both these ways bring this necessary “nutrient” into play.

Aquaponic systems require nutrients to help the plants grow. Ammonium provides adequate nitrogen to plants.

pH and Ammonia/Ammonium Levels

To understand ammonia levels you must first understand pH.

• The higher pH in a system, the higher level of ammonia and subsequently lower level of ammonium.
• The lower pH in a system, the lower level of ammonia and subsequently higher level of ammonium.

In your system you want to aim for a relatively low level of pH, making ammonium the dominant substance in the system.

Nitrifcation efficency is a problem many people run into. A higher level of pH increases the oxidation efficency in a new system. Generally folks will gravitate toward having higher pH in their system. However, as the system gets older it adapts and efficency can be reached at lower pH values.

We suggest a good pH level to shoot for is 6-6.4

Once you begin your system it would be intriguing to run at a high pH to increase efficency. Disregard this urge and stick with a lower level to keep a good balance between ammonia and ammonium.

How to Reduce Ammonia Levels

Ways to bring down ammonia in aquaponics:

1. Reduce the amount of nitrogen going into your system

• If you over feed, ammonia levels will jump up. To avoid this, cut back on feeding that tank.
• A dead fish at the bottom of a tank will secrete ammonia, do not feed this tank for a day.
• Dead fish or rotting feed are red flags for increasd levels of ammonia. Check your system if you’re undergoing an ammonia spike.

2. Increase nitrification efficency

This method increases the rate at which your ammonia or ammonium is being oxidized, speeding up the conversion of them into nitrates  which plants can pick up. Try to have nitrates in your system. They are non toxic to fish.

Hopefully this blog helps you further understand the complexity of ammonia and ammonium in aquaponic systems.

See the video here!

The post Understanding Ammonia in Aquaponics appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 5/31/2013

Read on for a weekly recap of life at the Bright Agrotech vertical farm!

Bright’s Bountiful CSA Baskets

As you can see, our soil greenhouse is going absolutely NUTS and we LOVE it (and so do our CSA partners). The late spring sun is giving us some really great yields lately and that means very hefty baskets for our weekly Community Supported Agriculture program.

We delighted our customers this week with over three pounds(!) of produce for our half shares and somewhere around five pounds(!) for our whole share baskets.

They seem to really enjoy the bok choy and for good reason, too: That stuff is amazing! We got to take some home last night and indulge in some tasty bok choy stir fry.

In addition to bok choy, we harvested some very delicious Toscano Kale – a rich, tender leave kale with a softer texture than other kale varieties. We also delighted our CSA members with lettuce, watercress and mint for their culinary enjoyment.

Feeding Laramie Valley

Our partnership with Feeding Laramie Valley allows us to donate any of the excess/leftover produce after CSA pickup each Thursday.

This week we were able to donate A LOT of great, locally grown and nutrient dense kale, bok choy, watercress, lettuce and mint to the Laramie Soup Kitchen and a few other humanitarian groups around town.  It’s a good feeling to know that we’re feeding people in need something fresh, nutritious and ethically grown/harvested.

We’re looking forward to large harvests like this for the rest of the summer and feeding this wonderful Laramie community!

The Spring System Prototype

You’ll also find in our photos that the Spring - our home vertical hydroponic tower system – came in this week from the manufacturers.

We got the first one off the line late last week and have been putting it though the ropes, making sure it’s exactly what we wanted.

Creating the best product possible for our fantastic customers has always been our main goal throughout this design/build process. With that said, we did have to make one minor adjustment to the mold, which set us back a few more days in the manufacturing/delivery process.

We address this all in our latest Kickstarter backer update below, if you’re inclined to find out more about the Spring and it’s funding process!

You can find an update we sent to our wonderfully patient Kickstarter backers here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/569973520/grow-up-vertical-farming-for-everyone/posts

Remember, the Spring is our in-home vertical hydroponic farming/gardening tower that allows ANYONE the ability to grow more nutritious food, help subsidize grocery bills and always have LIVING(!) produce on hand for maximum health benefits. 

We’ll be writing more about this turnkey vertical gardening tower in future posts, but we wanted to share with you this photo of five feet of mint growing in about 20×20 inches of space!

Imagine having a tower of living greens, herbs or other veggies in your kitchen window, on your patio or your local school, restaurant or office building!

Sorry to ramble, but thinking about more and more people being able to grow their own fresh, delicious produce gets us SUPER EXCITED!

Weekly Recipe: Grilled Bok Choy

Here’s another great, paleo-inspired recipe we gave out to our CSA members to get their creative juices flowing about what they can do with this week’s bok choy harvest!

Thanks to Crave Paleo for the recipe!

Ingredients   

The post Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 5/31/2013 appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

What is a ZipGrow Tower?

ZipGrow^TM Towers are top of the line, high density vertical farming or gardening towers developed by Dr. Nate Storey at the University of Wyoming.

History

ZipGrow^TM Towers are the product of seven years(!) of research on highly productive, high density vertical farming techniques at the University of Wyoming by Dr. Nate Storey.

Throughout his research in Agronomy, Dr. Storey spent countless hours researching aquaponic production and novel produce sales and distribution models in hopes of helping farmers live better while bringing a higher quality product to market.

Nate, along with his business partner Paul Bennick operate Bright Agrotech, one of the only independent and profitable aquaponic farms in the world in Laramie, Wyoming.

To do this they use ZipGrow™ Towers. Nate continues to research the use of tower production techniques to increase productivity and reduce costs for hydroponic and aquaponic growers.

But, what’s so special about ZipGrow^TM Towers?

Productivity

ZipGrow^TM Towers are specially designed for high density vertical crop production using either hydroponics or aquaponics. These single-sided towers incorporate our special Matrix Media inside a solid PVC housing that allows growers to stack towers in tight configurations while maximizing growth.

By growing vertically with ZipGrow^TM Towers, growers are able to double or even triple that of traditional horizontal production or other tower system designs on the market.

The single-face design is a result of scientific research on the effects of light depletion rates. By ensuring high reflectivity with a white, single-faced design ZipGrow^TM Towers reduce light extinction significantly and maximize yields, especially in high density configurations!

Ease of Use

The single-sided, lightweight design of ZipGrow^TM Towers not only ensures maximum yields in small spaces, it also offers growers several ease of use benefits.

A significant benefit ZipGrow^TM growers enjoy is just how easy it is to move about through the towers making maintenance, pest control and tower transport a breeze. This is contrary to other tower systems with bulky bases or traditional horizontal systems where you have to roll the systems out of the way just to check your crops.

Moving easily through rows of towers not only reduces time and energy, but also some MAJOR headaches. 

Transporting ZipGrow^TM Towers from mass to mass or from greenhouse to a LIVE display at a grocery store or restaurant is also a breeze!

Other Features

ZipGrow^TM Towers are not only more productive than other hydroponic or aquaponic methods out there, they also give growers many other features.

For one, they are light weight and mobile which allows growers to the freedom to pick them up, rearrange them, harvest them in a different spot or easily transport them live to market for customers to harvest themselves.

Second, ZipGrow^TM Towers are one of the only vertical tower designs on the market with a media-based system. Most conventional tower designs are aeroponic in nature which is usually less productive due to the temperature fluctuations in the root zone. Thus, by using media to secure our roots, we’re able to buffer those temperature fluctuations and increase growth rates.

Finally, ZipGrow^TM Towers just last forever! We’ve designed our media to last years and years, with the tower housing lasting much longer. That translates into a single upfront investment that we recoup over and over again as we continue employing our towers to feed our community! 

Irrigation

To irrigate ZipGrow^TM Towers, a drip nozzle is directed to the top of the tower and into the Matrix Media where your plants’ roots are being held. As the water/nutrient solution trickles down through the media, plants are able to uptake the nutrients from their roots.

In addition to the high specific surface area, biological surface area, and very high void space, the towers/media have a whole host of good bacteria inside to help plant growth. We also recommend incorporating redworms inside the towers for aquaponic production to help break down solids, metabolize fish waste and deliver more nutrients to your plants.

Learn More About ZipGrow Towers

To learn more about ZipGrow^TM Towers, visit our website: http://www.brightagrotech.com/

To purchase ZipGrow^TM Towers, check out our online store: http://www.shop.brightagrotech.com/

To find bulk pricing on ZipGrow Towers, send us a contact form at: http://www.brightagrotech.com/Connect.php

The post What is a ZipGrow Tower? appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 6/7/2013

Read on for a weekly recap of life at the Bright Agrotech vertical farm!

What’s Happening This Week?

It’s been a busy week here at the farm. On Monday, we shot a video interview with Fred from the Wyoming Technology Business Center to help folks understand what’s going on with our Spring System – our home vertical farming/gardening tower.

On Tuesday, we filmed more videos about how to choose the right pump for your aquaponics system and how to do companion planting. Keep on the look out for those videos coming up in the next week!

Weekly Recipe: Garlicky Ginger Joi Choi

The post Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 6/7/2013 appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Companion Planting

Understanding how plants interact is crucial to successfully growing multiple crop varieties and for successful farming and gardening in general.

The Importance of Understanding Plant Interactions 

Successful farmers and growers are well aware of their nutrient demands their crops place upon their soil or aquaponic/hydroponic systems. They know that some plants in particular, like legumes, fix nitrogen and add to soil nutrition while others demand a great deal from the soil or nutrient solution without giving much back throughout their life cycles. Some plants even produce various chemicals that can affect the growth of other plants around them.

Each of these factors play a large role in determining how well plants grow together.

While some plants can inhibit the growth of others, helping to produce maximum yields, surpress pests and facilitate better pollination, pairing the wrong types of plants together can lead to poor or stunted growth and a frustrated farmer/grower.

“Companion Planting” involves planting different plants near each other for overall greater production. 

A Brief History of Companion Planting

While Companion Planting has been prominent throughout the world anywhere polyculture (growing multiple varieties of crops in the same space), it is most famously used by indigenous populations throughout North America.

Using a natural trellis Companion Planting technique, Native peoples used the corn’s stalk to provide a trellis for pole beans to climb, while also fixing nitrogen and subsequently provide essential soil nutrition for the corn. This technique allowed for increased yields for both beans and corn.  

This practice has been widely adopted over the years by organic gardeners and permaculture practitioners believing growing different plant species together helps them all thrive.

Techniques like the “Three Sisters” incorporate squash into corn and bean production in order to create a trifecta of plant triumph.

While the corn provides a natural trellis for the beans to climb (getting rid of the need for poles), and the beans continue to fix nitrogen to promote overall soil health and production power, the squash spread themselves horizontally and help block sunlight/weed establishment.

Companion Planting Resources

Online Guides

Online guides, like the ones below are fantastic resources to help you learn about and keep track of all the various companion plants out there. These guides can range from fairly basic picture guides meant for the beginner companion planter or much more detailed charts for the more experienced hydroponic grower, backyard gardener or urban farmer.

Master Gardeners

Master Gardeners are another really great resource for learning more about companion planting by those who have a wide array of experience in your specific growing conditions.

These are horticultural experts usually trained at the university level who are passionate about sharing their knowledge with their surrounding communities.

A map on the Master Gardeners’ home page allows you to seek out and connect with these wise individuals in your area who can give you great, regional specific growing advice.

Companion Planting For Everyone

Now, you may come across various articles or blog posts depicting companion planting as a myth or a hoax. Ignore these people!

The fact is that some plants grow better together than others and there are many strategies when planting your garden, farm or aquaponics system that can save you some serious headaches if you do a little research first.

At Bright Agrotech, we constantly reference our companion planting guides and resources to make sure that we’re incorporating the best strategies whether we’re planting our vertical aquaponic towers or our soil greenhouse.

Remember, if you decide to just throw some seeds on the soil or some seedlings into a ZipGrow Tower, you’ll often find that your production is stunted or you have some pest problems. Consulting even a basic companion planting chart, reading a book or asking a local Master Gardener can save you a lot of hardship, frustration and money in your gardening, urban farming or aquaponic production ventures!

If you haven’t watch it yet, check out the video here!

The post Companion Planting appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Why is Gardening Important?

If you keep up with this blog, chances are you already know why gardening is important. And yet, many of us get so involved in gardening as a career or a hobby that we neglect to stop and smell the roses (sorry, I couldn’t resist) by which I mean that we don’t often spend time considering the significance of gardening in our lives.

Advantages of Gardening

Taking a few moments to survey the various needs gardening fulfills is a highly advantageous practice.

This consideration can:

Health

Happiness

Education

Community

Environment

• We know that local food is often, if not always, better food. Produce harvested from your backyard or a local community garden is fresher, more nutritious and better tasting than produce that is often picked before it is ripe and shipped to the grocery store. We recognize the benefit to our diets and our budgets, but often overlook how gardening contributes to environmental conservation. By cutting the commodity chain short, gardens help us conserve resources used in transportation and reduce the packaging waste that ends up in the landfill.

The post Why is Gardening Important? appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 6/14/2013

Read on for a weekly recap of life at the Bright Agrotech vertical farm!

What’s Happening This Week at Bright Agrotech?

Things are heating up at the Bright Agrotech Vertical Farm. Summer seems to finally be here and the 80 degree temps with that increased day length are really bringing our production numbers up a notch!

Be sure to check out what else we’ve been posting on our blog this week. On Monday, we posted a video blog post on Companion Planting - a farming and gardening technique to increase yields, combat pests naturally and improve soil health.

Wednesday, Lois gave us all a really great overview of Why Gardening is Important, where she outlined some major benefits hobby farmers and gardeners receive from working in their gardens or fields. These benefits range from health and happiness to community empowerment and education to even environmental stewardship. It’s worth a read!

NEW VIDEOS

Planting Lettuce in ZipGrow^TM Towers

ZipGrow^TM Planting is as Easy as 1-2-3

Once we harvest our ZipGrow^TM Towers (see more on that below), it’s time to plant them again!

Because we’ve specifically designed our Matrix Media to be both reusable (we’re still using our same Media inserts from FOUR years ago!), and to have a high Biological and Specific Surface Area, we get continuously high yields every turn.

Lettuce is on a 5-week turn. That means that it takes five weeks to go from transplanting to maturity in our towers.

And, it’s a staple of our weekly CSA baskets.

Steps to Planting a ZipGrow^TM Tower:

Community Supported Agriculture Harvest

Our plants have been growing like crazy with all this sun and heat. Who knew Wyoming could show us a little summer!

That said, we harvested a lot of really great stuff. This week we harvested some nice Jericho lettuce and bib lettuce. Similar to that of romaine lettuce, Jericho lettuce is a beautiful green with a nice crunch.

We also harvested a ton of awesome Tuscano kale, swiss chard, bok choy and oregano for our great CSA customers (see photos).

Our Whole Share customers (see plans on our website) even got a zucchini squash!

This week is the third to last week for our current CSA, and we’re rapidly enrolling folks for our next 6-month CSA cycle that goes from July to December. If you’re in Laramie and you’re interested in being a part of our Community Supported Agriculture program you can check out our CSA page here.

Special Harvesting Guests!

The last two weeks we’ve been a little short-handed on harvest days since Paul (our other Co-Founder and Greenhouse Operations guy) has been out of town.

That said, we’ve been super fortunate to have some extra special help from Nate’s wife Heather and their beautiful baby Charlotte.

They’re a lot of fun and the last few harvest days would be a little frantic without them!

Charlotte is a big fan of our greenhouses and really it’s no surprise. Babies LOVE greenhouses because of the warm temperatures and higher humidity.

Plus, in a family of farmers, you gotta start them young! 

Weekly Recipe: Savory Swiss Chard Tart

TOTAL TIME: 1 hr 25 min

Prep: 15 min

Inactive Prep: 20 min

Cook: 50 min

YIELD: 6 to 8 servings

LEVEL: Easy

See more great recipes at:  http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes

Ingredients   

• 1 tablespoon oil
• 2 shallots, minced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 4 ounces bacon, cut into lardons
• 1 1/2 pounds Swiss chard, ribs removed
• 3 eggs

• 1 cup creme fraiche or heavy cream and sour cream combined
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 4 ounces Gruyere cheese, grated
• Handful raisins
• Handful toasted pine nuts
• 1 deep tart shell, pre-baked in a 9-inch springform pan or a frozen deep dishpie dough, thawed

 

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Heat the oil in a saute pan and fry the shallots until soft and translucent. Add the garlic and saute for 1 minute. Remove to a plate. In the same pan, fry the bacon until the fat has rendered and the lardons are crispy. Remove to the plate with theshallots. Divide the chard leaves from the ribs: chop the ribs quite small and shred the leaves. First, fry the ribs in the bacon fat until tender. (Cook’s Note: You may want to cover the pan for a few minutes to speed up the process.) Add the chard leaves to the pan, cover, and wilt, about 3 minutes.

Beat the eggs together with the creme fraiche, and season with salt, and pepper.

In a large bowl, toss the shallots, bacon, chard stems and leaves, cheese, raisins, and pine nuts, to combine evenly. Taste, and season. Fill the tart shell with the vegetable mixture, and pour over the cream mixture. Bake until the tart has set, about 30 minutes. Remove the tart from the oven, and cool. Serve at room temperature.

 

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Sizing a Pump for Aquaponics or Hydroponics

Variables For Calculating Pump Size

Figuring out the correct size of pump for you aquaponics or hydroponics system is something beginner growers run into when starting out. In order to determine the best pump for your system, you’ll need to analyze a few variables.

Gallons Per Hour

Pumps will almost always have a Gallons Per Hour (GPH) rating that tells you how many gallons of water that pump will move every single hour. Obviously, places who favor the metric system (which is really most places around the world) will use liters per hour. 

Pump Height Efficiency

Because almost all aquaponic or hydroponic growers need to move water upwards, you’ll need to also understand how efficient your pump is a different heights. Even if you’re still using a traditional horizontal grow bed model or NFT, as opposed to a high density, productive powerhouse like ZipGrow Towers, you’ll still need to move water vertically from your fish tank to your beds or troughs.

How Much Water Do You Need To Move?

Before we can delve too deeply into pump height and efficiency, it’s crucial to understand how often you’ll need to turn over (fully cycle) the system water.

We recommend that hobby or small commercial aquaponic or hydroponic growers turn over their system volume at least once every two hours. While there is some flexibility here, a good place to start when you’re calculating the size of pump you need for your system.

Hobbyist Aquaponic Scenario

So, let’s say we have a 100 gallon system. Thinking about our minimum recommended amount of water we should be moving, we’ll need to move 50 gallons per hour in order to turn our entire system volume over at least once every two hours.

That means we’ll need a minimum of a 50 GPH pump. 

BUT WAIT. Remember, almost every person reading this post will be moving their water up in some form or another. This includes people using traditional IBC systems, who need to move their water at least two feet of head height. 

What is Head Height?

The distance between the top of your grow bed (or ZipGrow Tower) and the top of the water in your tank.

Now, you’ll need to look further into what pump your using and find the efficiency and head height info usually posted on the side of the box(see photo on left), or contact the manufacturer directly.

Usually pump efficiency at different head heights is almost never a linear relationship (again, check out the example on our pumps).

Now, back to our hypothetical example. If we look at the chart on the whiteboard (see video), we’ll then figure out that when we need to move the water two feet vertically, we’ll need  a pump with a head height of 30 PGH. Any pump capable of pushing 30 GPH (or more) at two feet will work great for our application.

Other Important Considerations

System Variance

When choosing a pump, remember that our recommendation of turning over your entire system volume at least once per two hours is a recommendation. If you shoot a little long, or fall a little short of this recommendation, everything will probably be just fine.

Just remember that every aquaponics or hydroponics system out there varies considerably. Whether the it’s the plumbing, system design, grow media, etc., every system is different and required GPH can vary because of it.

The important thing to remember is that you are exchanging your water fast enough to maintain a good level of dissolved oxygen in your system. Try to avoid those lethal anaerobic zones in grow beds or towers.

Pump Efficiency

When researching pump efficiency and GPH and various head heights for your own application, remember that you’ll be moving water through what could be quite a long length of hose.

That said, the further your system volume travels, the lower your pump’s efficiency will be, and that could mean a decreased GPH or overall system performance. 

While it’s possible to do the efficiency calculations here, it’s much more simple just to eyeball it and calculate anywhere from a 15% to 30% loss of efficiency (this of course depends on your plumbing and system design).

Questions? Post them to the comments below and be sure to share this content if you’ve found it helpful!

Thanks!

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Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 6/21/2013

Read on for a weekly recap of life at the Bright Agrotech vertical farm!

What’s Happening This Week at Bright Agrotech’s Vertical Farm?

Welcome to our weekly vertical farm photos post!

It’s been another crazy week as Paul (our co-founder and head greenhouse operator) is still out of town. Let’s just say, TGIF!

We started out the week shooting some videos and giving a few tours and ended the week with a great harvest for our CSA customers.

Spring System Prototype #2 and Boxes Have Arrived

This week we received the second prototype for our Spring System after making some slight adjustments to the lid to allow the ZipGrow^TM Towers to fit more snug and be more resilient in the wind. It looks really great and we’ve gone ahead with the first production run.

Our Kickstarter Backers and all pre-order customers are in for a real treat!

The Spring System, if you’re not familiar, is our home vertical hydroponic gardening kit, that combines the production power of our ZipGrow^TM Towers.

We truly believe this technology will make life better for so many people. 

From parents that want to feed themselves and their kids healthier, fresher produce, to chefs wanting to reduce the transportation of certain herbs while increasing the flavors of their restaurant dishes, the Spring System is soon to be the hottest vertical growing system on the market! 

See Nate’s T-Shirt? Interested in learning more about different aquaponic setups? Check out the Tour de Tanks!

Community Supported Agriculture Harvest

Despite the brutal greenhouse summer heat, we had quite the harvest yesterday.

Not only did we get to give our CSA customers some delicious Jericho lettuce from our ZipGrow^TM Towers, we also cut a lot of marvelous kale and bok choy from our soil greenhouse, too. Check out the gallery images for more vertical farm photos!

But wait, there’s more!

Our zucchini and yellow squash crop plants have been going absolutely nuts, so we even harvested some early squash as well.

Heck, we even harvested a few beets!

Next week, which is the last week in our first CSA cycle looks to be a whole bunch of Swiss chard, more squash, maybe some oregano or chives and of course more delicious, fresh lettuce.

NEW VIDEO

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A Typical Morning at the Vertical Farm & Soil Greenhouse (VFB)

Since we don’t have a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) pickup this week and thus not too many photos from around the vertical farm, we thought we would give you a look at a typical morning around here.

This video is the first of two (keep a lookout on Monday for the next part) in a series we shot to answer some of the questions folks had about what it looks like to run a commercial operation.

In this video, Dr. Nate will lead you through a typical morning routine as he opens up the greenhouses. He’ll show you the steps we take in getting the vertical aquaponic farm ready to rock for the day, as well as give you some insight to what we’re growing in our traditional soil greenhouse too.

We’ll shoot more videos like this in the future, but consider this a farm update for the month of June, 2013!

Keeping The Vertical Farm Cool

Even though we didn’t have a CSA pickup, we did manage to install another rollup sidewall on our vertical aquaponic greenhouse this week.

This will drastically help out in the summer months because it has been well over 100 degrees in there a few days already.

Here’s a shot of Noah and Paul getting the rollup side put on.

This type of work requires very little wind. Even the slightest breeze could rip part of the unsecured cover off and carry it all the way to Colorado!

Thinking about a greenhouse?

If you’re looking into the idea of building a greenhouse, be sure to check out of other posts and videos on the subject:

Building a Greenhouse (Part 1)

Building a Greenhouse (Part 2)

Of course, you can alway find more helpful aquaponic and vertical farming videos on our YouTube Channel!

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Stocking density is a major consideration for anyone starting out in aquaponics. As so many people have asked about the best density for crop production, Dr. Nate Storey has given us an introduction to stocking density and some great advice that applies to starting, maintaining and managing a healthy and productive aquaponics system.

Rules of Thumb for Stocking Density

Remember that every aquaponics system has variables that must be factored into your choices about the species of fish you select and the density you support. That said, here are a couple of general guidelines to help you estimate the stocking density for your system.

 Lower density means fewer headaches

It is better to err on the side of lower density. You can adjust to the particular capacity of your system once you are comfortable with monitoring and regulating the water quality by adjusting how frequently you feed. Higher densities require more complex filtration and aeration setups. To keep things simple, stick with a lower stocking density.

 A pound of fish, no more, no less

Plan for one pound of fish for every 8-10 gallons of water. This ratio is for the established system, which means you will need to base your initial figure on the approximate weight of full-grown fish. The adjusted ratio of fingerlings to add to the system after cycling works out to 1/10 of a pound of fingerlings per 8-10 gallons of water. When your fish are fully grown out you will have one pound per 8-10 gallons at system maturity.

When you sit down to plan it will save a lot of time and trouble to consider how you want your system to function and figure the stocking density accordingly. Don’t forget that these guidelines are general.

This is a great place to start and it could even work as a rule, but be sure to pay close attention and test the water in your system frequently and consistently. Monitoring the system will help you to make adjustments to suit your production goals.

We hope you found this helpful. If you have questions, send them our way and check out our other videos on what kinds of fish are best for aquaponics, dissolved oxygen in aquaponics, and how to regulate pH in aquaponics systems.

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