Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 7/19/2013

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 another addition of the Bright Agrotech vertical farm photos weekly wrap up!

First, we want to apologize for the lack of posting over the last few weeks! The summer months are so busy for us and with all of us out of town for some time, it made posting on a consistent schedule difficult… Please forgive us!

This week, our Spring^TM system user’s manuals came in from the printers. We’ve tried to design as visually as possible to allow anyone to be able to easily set up their own vertical gardening tower and we’re excited about how they turned out! We’re expecting the first run of Spring^TM systems in sometime today, hopefully!

If you’ve been cruising around this blog over the last two days, you may have noticed we also have a new FAQ page.

To help interested growers gain a better understanding of our ZipGrow^TM Towers, we’ve put together some of the most frequently asked questions and their answers.

Lastly, we had another HUGE harvest for our Community Supported Agriculture partners yesterday (see the photos in the gallery above!).

Hot off the Press: Spring^TM User’s Manuals

After a couple weeks of designing (mostly relearning how to effectively use InDesign…), our Spring^TM owner’s manuals are officially in our hands.

These babies have everything you need to know about growing vertically with your Spring^TM!

From basic setup to running and maintaining your system, to even some additional applications you could do with your Spring^TM to get those wheels of creativity turning in your head, this manual has it all!

The part we’re most proud of is all the visuals! As you know, most user’s guides and owner’s manuals out there aren’t the most user friendly or visually stimulating.

We’ve spared no expense at designing our guide in a way that makes it super simple for anyone to start growing their favorite veggies vertically with ease! The instructions are easy to follow and paired with visuals to walk you through each part of getting your Spring^TM set up, running, and even replanting after harvest.

These summer months are so good to our production, both in our vertical farm and our traditional soil greenhouse.

Yesterday we harvested some serious produce for our CSA partners and they loved it!

We started out by harvesting A TON of squash - everything from yellow squash to zucchini to another hybrid variety and even some HUGE 8-ball squash… I mean… MASSIVE (check out the gallery photos of Paul holding one of those giant cannonballs of a squash.

After the squash, we started harvesting a little lettuce – mostly Jericho this week with a few red leaf lettuce heads in the mix too.

While Noah and I harvested the lettuce, Paul was busy working in the soil hoop house harvesting almost 10 full baskets of kale, a green our CSA partners absolutely love.

He also harvested over 300 radishes from our summer market garden. Talk about a treat! I munched on one throughout the rest of the harvest and it was one of the best radishes I’ve eaten in a long time!

We also harvested some nice heads of joi choi from our ZipGrow^TM towers in our vertical farm.

As you can see, these summer months are helping us over deliver on our CSA baskets. Our half shares (the black baskets) are supposed to be anywhere from 1-2 pounds of fresh greens, herbs and veggies each week. As you can imagine, bringing baskets around the seven pound mark to our CSA customers is an awesome feeling!

The post Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 7/19/2013 appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Pesticides in Aquaponic Systems

The use of pesticides in aquaponics is a very touchy subject.

There are many opinions on the subject with varying degrees of validity.  Over all of these opinions rules a single fact:

Chemical pest management in aquaponic systems must be approached judiciously, thoughtfully and with caution, whether you are using a homemade remedy, or a commercial product.

Homemade Remedies vs. Commercial Products

Many aquaponic practitioners swear by garlic, chili and vermicompost based concoctions, and to be fair, these often have some effectiveness on specific pests.  Having tried almost all of the home remedies over the years, these days I rely entirely upon commercial products.  As a commercial producer I do not have the time or energy that homemade remedies require, nor do I have the luxury of using marginally effective controls.

This means that we use proven commercial products that have been studied and provide the information necessary to determine their effect on our aquaponic system- products that we know from experience kill and control pests.

Speaking From Experience With Pesticides

Before I begin to talk about the controls, you must know that this information was hard-won over the course of many years.  Pests are inevitable in aquaponic systems, and dealing with them has always presented a very difficult dilemma for aquaponic producers, primarily because there are so few pesticides that are non-toxic, or of low toxicity to fish, but also because no one knew how much could be safely used.  We learned about different pesticides in our aquaponic systems through a great deal of effort and research, and offer it to you now.

OMRI Certified Pesticides

This writing will focus on organic pesticides, most of which are OMRI certified.  This is primarily because we, like most commercial AP producers, produce “organic” produce and use pesticides permissible under USDA Organic Standards.

Before we begin to discuss individual brands and products, I would first encourage you to do some research on Integrated Pest Management, commonly referred to as IPM.

IPM is a pest control strategy that incorporates cultural, mechanical, chemical, and biological pest control into a larger context of economics, environment and human health.  

Aquaponics & IPM

For aquaponic producers this is important, not just because you are operating on a budget, but because you have more complex environmental constraints than the average producer, and your customers are most likely concerned primarily about their health.

Operating without an IPM strategy in place, could make pest control unnecessarily expensive, impact your fish health and the health of your system, or impact the health of your customers.  So please examine this topic to determine what types of controls you use and when you apply them.

Here at Bright Agrotech, we use a combination of controls, both biological and chemical.  It is important to maintain diversity in your control techniques to make sure that the pests in your greenhouse are not becoming resistant to the controls that you are using.

I’ve met people that use a single control for many months, if not years on end.  They always say “It works great and I don’t have any problems,” and they might have good control, for a little while longer at least.  But the unfortunate nature of greenhouse and garden pests is that they adapt very quickly to toxins in their environment, and rapidly become resistant to even the most toxic pesticides.

Varying your control methods and incorporating chemical, biological, mechanical and cultural controls in tandem helps prevent resistance developing.

Chemical Controls:

We use a variety of products that exert chemical control over our greenhouse pests, including:

Pyrethrin based products (See Pyganic 1.4, Safer Endall Insecticidal soap, etc.)

Soaps (Safer products)

Azadirachtin based products (extracted from neem oil; see Azamax, etc.)

Neem oil and neem oil derivatives

*Note: Pyrethrins are very toxic and can only be considered for use in ZipGrow Tower based systems

Pest Controls in ZipGrow Towers

In sump based ZipGrow^TM tower systems, all of these products can be used with minimal concerns, as the system exposure is very limited by the design of ZipGrow^TM towers in combination with a sump.

The housing prevents a majority of the overspray and applied insecticide from entering the system solution, with a majority of the excess application running off of the plant leaves and onto the ground.  All of these products are safe to use (according the label) in sump based ZipGrow^TM systems.  In other types of systems, one must do the math.

Calculating Lethal Dose

In order to do the math, one must understand a special rating called the LD₅₀ or LC₅₀.  These represent the median lethal dose or Lethal Dose 50 or Lethal Concentration 50- the concentration at which half of the sample population will die.  In regards to pesticides, they are often studied and the LD50 is determined for a certain time period (usually in hours or days).

While it takes some digging, most pesticides have have an LD50 rating, determined experimentally for a variety of marine organisms.  Fortunately for many aquaponic practitioners tilapia spp. (Oreochromis spp.) are a common test subjects. . .

When I look for LC50 numbers I typically go to the source material- scientific publications that detail experiments with different organisms and chemicals, or the Veterinary Substances Database, and use the lowest LC50 published.

For Instance: Pyrethrins

Pyrethrins are a family of very effective insecticides that most aquaponic practitioners cannot use in their systems because they are highly toxic to fish, and most practitioners have no idea how much is safe and how much isn’t.

To discover how much a system can handle, we must look at the LC50 for pyrethrum (type 1 pyrethrin), the active ingredient in Pyganic 1.4.  When we look for this number we find that the LC50 (in 96 hours) for rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) is 0.005 mg/L and for aquatic crustaceans is 0.0014  mg/L (96 hrs; Americamysis bahia).  Since 0.0014 is the lower number, we’ll use this number.

We need to determine how much pyrethrin is required to hit the LC50 for your system.

Take the volume of your system in liters and multiply it by the LC50 (96 hr) value (we will use my system as an example):

4,300 gal./sys. * 3.79 L/gal. = 16,279 L/sys. * 0.0014 mg/L = 22.79 mg/sys.

Then we take the pyrethrin concentration and determine how much pyrethrin is being mixed and applied in the greenhouse.

The label recommends mixing 1-2 fluid ounces of Pyganic 1.4 with every gallon of water in compressed sprayers (what we use), which is between 2-4 Tbsp/gallon. In my greenhouse, the entire crop can be sprayed with 1.5 gallons of mix, which at the highest application rate is around 6 Tbsp (or 3 fluid ounces).

The label tells us that 0.05 lbs of active ingredient (pyrethrin) is the equivalent of 59 fluid ounces.

0.05 lbs pyrethrin/59 fluid ounces = 0.0008475 lbs pyrethrin/fluid ounce

0.0008475 lbs pyrethrin/fluid ounce * 453592 mg/lb = 384 mg pyrethrin/fluid ounce

3 fluid ounces/system * 384 mg pyrethrin/fluid ounce = 1152 mg pyrethrin/system

This number is much larger than the LC50 for the system.  If I were using operating a raft system or a media bed system I would know that using pyrethrin in my system is not possible, unless I knew that less than half of LC50 value would enter my system, or around 1% of the total application (for crustaceans, or 3% for fish).  However, with towers we’re able to use pyrethrin because such a small percentage of the spray actually ends up in the system solution.

These same calculations for Azamax yield the information:

Azadirachtin LC50: 7813.92 mg/sys

Total Azadirachtin typically applied: 1050 mg/sys

This tells us that Azadirachtin easily comes in under 1/2 of the LC50 value.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this can be a bit complicated to determine, but there is typically much more freedom to control pests in these systems than most people assume.  Instead of dismissing a pesticide, do the calculations to determine whether it can or cannot be used, and use that to make your determination.

It is my experience that if you don’t want to do the calculations for pesticides in aquaponics, you’re generally very safe spraying Azadirachtin products like Azamax, as well as Botanigard.  These are both great for killing aphids, thrips and whitefies- typical aquaponic system pests.

Before this ends, I must insist that you use protective garments, goggles, gloves, etc., and adhere strictly to the label as far as mixing and application goes.  Also please do adhere to a Re-entry Interval or REI to insure that you and no one is exposed to the pesticides unwittingly.

Good luck, check out the videos and please feel free to ask questions.  

The post Pesticides for Aquaponics appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 7/26/2013

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

This Week at Bright Agrotech’s Vertical and Urban Farm

What a week!

On Monday, we published THREE videos and a very detailed blog post regarding pest controls in aquaponics. 

You can find the videos on our Aquaponic Pest Controls playlist on YouTube.

This week we also shipped out over 40 SpringTM systems to our amazing Kickstarter backers.

Our CSA harvest this week was also pretty impressive!

Read on for more details about our week here at the Bright Agrotech vertical and urban farm…

Pest Controls for Aquaponics

Perhaps one of the most frustrating and even controversial topics in aquaponic farming is the effective use of pest controls and bio controls to avoid detrimental outbreaks.

Neither commercial aquaponic farmers and hobbyist growers are totally immune to pest issues.

It doesn’t matter if you’re fighting white flies, aphids, thrips, or any other regionally-specific pest, pests that go unchecked could ruin your entire harvest or even your business. 

In attempts to give our aquaponic hobbyist and commercial farmers more detailed information about the use of pest controls in their systems, we put together what we see as a very valuable blog post and a series of videos.

We hope this information will give you some insight to how you can safely and effectively combat crop-destroying insects without harming your fish or your customers.

First round of Spring^TM systems out the door!

On Thursday, the United States Postal Service came to our office and took 40 packages weighing a total of 750 pounds off of our hands and the first round of our Kickstarter rewards are officially en route to our excellent backers!

We spent most of the early part of the week packing up boxes, going through checklists, pulling our Matrix Media into our ZipGrow^TM towers that come with each SpringTM and finally printing shipping labels.

It was a lot of hard work, but boy did it feel amazing to get these babies packed up and shipped out after so many months of working through design and production challenges.

Our next set of Spring^TM systems should be in next week from the manufacturer and we’ll be repeating the process to get our backers growing vertically in their own homes!

See our Kickstarter video here!

We filled our CSA member’s baskets to the brim this week!

In order to get our freshly cut produce to our CSA customers by 4:00PM, Paul started the harvest at 8:00AM by harvesting baskets full of squash, broccoli, sweet onions and fennel. 

In the afternoon we harvested LOADS of chard, kale and some lettuce to round out the baskets before delivering them fresh to those enrolled in our community supported agriculture program.

The baskets weighed anywhere from 5-7 pounds this week and I know our CSA partners were thrilled with the amount of fresh, local produce they’re getting to feed their families this week.

We love big weeks like this! It feels great to serve our local community such high quality produce that we’ve grown ourselves.

The post Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 7/26/2013 appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Aquaponics Mistake #1: Designing an Unusable Farm

This is more of a mistake of inexperience than anything else.

Many growers haven’t grown before (at least on a large scale), therefore, they don’t think about work flow and efficiency.

That is, beginning growers don’t effectively use their available space to increase labor efficiency and lower labor costs in general.

Remember:

labor is the largest variable cost of production on any farm – aquaponic or otherwise!

Because of this, they design systems that are:

1. Hard to harvest
2. Require lots of transplanting and tending work
3. Difficult to control pests on

In the worst systems I’ve seen, access to important system components is limited, making the space not only difficult to use, but dangerous to use!

The Bright Agrotech System Design

Our system designs take into account all of these variables, and useZipGrow^TM towers both to increase productivity, but also to help with access, reduce our post-harvest and labor costs and various marketing costs.

So, before you start designing, make a list of all your variables and be sure you incorporate each into your system’s design.

PLANNING AHEAD WILL SAVE YOU MANY HEADACHES

The cure for this mistake is to think carefully from the start about how you will use your system, how you will harvest fish and produce alike, and how you can plan your system from the start to be user friendly and efficient.

Consider all of your variables, from growing needs (e.g. light, water, nutrients, pests, etc.) to user needs (access, convenience, automation, redundancy, etc.) from the start, and ONLY start to design your system after you’ve seriously considered these variables.

Talking to established growers and touring their system designs can be a great help as well.

(You can check out folks who use our towers on our farms page!)

Be sure to ask questions and find out what they would do differently if designing their systems today.

The post Aquaponics Mistake #1: Designing An Unusable Farm appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 8/2/2013

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

This Week at Bright Agrotech’s Vertical and Urban Farm

Another crazy week here at Bright Agrotech. Hope you enjoyed the farm photos above.

On Monday, we published the first mistake made by aquaponic growers - One of the top 10 mistakes you can find in this free E-Book.

Wednesday, we outlined some of the top benefits of green walls or living walls. Here at Bright, we’re big believers in the future of beautiful, living urban landscapes in the form of these green walls. Be sure to give that a read and keep an eye out for the next three Wednesdays for more green wall posts!

Our CSA harvest this week was also pretty impressive!

Read on for more!

The Benefits of Green Walls

Wednesday’s post was a great introduction to the idea of green, living walls as a way to not only beautify a space or a vertical surface, but also for a whole host of other benefits we outlined in the post.

Whether you’ve never heard of a green wall or are already familiar with the concept, I would encourage you to check out this post and be sure to subscribe to our blog’s feed because the next few Wednesday’s posts should delve deeper into this idea!

Read about the benefits of green walls here!

It was another big week for our Community Supported Agriculture partners.

These summer months are great!

This week we harvested even more squash and sweet onions, as well as some really nice heads of romaine and butterhead lettuce (grown vertically in ZipGrow^TM Towers).

As you can see in the photo on the left, we also harvested quite a bit of collard greens – which are one of the healthiest, nutrient-dense greens out there. They contain over 300% of your daily vitamin A needs! (See more collard green nutritional info here)

These babies love growing vertically in our towers and they do super well for multiple harvests producing beautiful, full, nutritious collard green leaves each time we cut them.

In addition to the collards, we also harvested quite a bit of delicious Swiss chard from our soil greenhouse, and some wonderful chives from our towers. Be sure to check out the photos in the gallery where we harvested over FIVE POUNDS of chives from a single tower. This is pretty impressive from a space efficiency standpoint as each ZipGrow^TM tower takes up just over a square foot of space.

All in all, our CSA partners we’re very excited about this week’s share of green goodies!

The post Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 8/2/2013 appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 8/9/2013

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

This Week at Bright Agrotech’s Vertical and Urban Farm

This week we’ve been busy fulfilling more Kickstarter Backer rewards and sending out Spring^TM Home Vertical Gardening Systems like mad!

On Wednesday, we published another post on the Challenges and Criticisms of Living Green Walls. This is a continuation of last week’s post all about the benefits of these living walls.

We also published the first video in our Spotlight Series - a videos series dedicated to highlighting the innovative and creative aquaponic projects around the U.S. Be sure to check out who we’re highlighting this week!

Make sure you browse the photos of our CSA harvest this week too. Our customers we’re really excited about all the delicious root veggies.

First Spotlight on Innovation and Creativity Video Published!

At Bright Agrotech, we’re excited about the future of aquaponics and the potential it has to change our food system for the better.

What’s really exciting though is that there are many groups out there that are just as enthusiastic about moving aquaponics forward and creating a bright food future.

One group in particular is the subject of our very first Spotlight Series videos.  

The students at Oshkosh North High School are doing some amazing things with aquaponics.

Let’s face it… Aquaponics can be a frustrating, confusing and at times painful journey/hobby/business.

While it’s getting easier with the advent of quality, tested and open-source information, the fact is that one needs some serious motivation and determination in order to be successful in aquaponics.

Mr. Schinkten’s students at Oshkosh North High School (that’s right, High School!), have demonstrated a passionate determination to grow their aquaponic system into more than just a school project!

I have a strange feeling these kids are up to something big and that we’ll be featuring them and their aquaponic adventures again soon! 

Challenges and Criticisms of Green Walls

Last week we introduced green walls and listed a handful of the incredible advantages that green walls offer. This week, we’re exploring some of the challenges behind designing, building and incorporating living green walls into homes, offices or even on the sides of buildings. 

Some of the most common challenges are:

• The overwhelming cost per square foot
• The extraordinary weight these living structures bear on vertical surfaces
• The staggering amount of maintenance traditionally designed green walls require

In Wednesday’s post, Lois examines these common criticisms of green wall design and offers some potential solutions as well. Be sure to read the entire post for more green wall information!

Read the rest of the post here. 

Our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) partners received some really awesome root crops along with other fresh goodies grown locally in Laramie, WY.

As you can see, we harvested a whole lot of sweet basil from our ZipGrow^TM towers.

See the pesto recipe below if you’ve got a hankering to whip up some dips or spreads!

We also harvested two rutabaga, two beets, a squash and an onion for every basket!

Lot of flavor and nutrients in those babies!

In addition to the root veggies, we harvested a boat load of beautiful, delicious and nutritious tuscano kale!

The dark leaves of the tuscano kale are loaded vitamins K, A and C and very popular in central Italy in soups and stews.

We gave our CSA partners a nice break from lettuce this week and focused on filling their baskets with heavy, hearty root veggies and squash.

Weekly Recipe: Paleo Pesto

Serves: 15

Ingredients

• 4 cups fresh basil leaves
• ½ cup raw pine nuts, toasted
• 2 small or 1 large clove of garlic (see NOTES)
• 1 Tablespoon nutritional yeast
• ¾ teaspoon kosher salt
• ⅛ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• ⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil

Instructions

1. Combine all ingredients except olive oil in the bowl of a food processor or blender
2. Process until smooth and slowly add in olive oil.
3. Transfer finished pesto to storage jars or serve and Enjoy!

Read more:

http://www.everydaymaven.com/2013/paleo-pesto-recipe/

That’s it for this week!

Remember, you can find more photos on our Instagram!

Have a terrific weekend!

The post Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 8/9/2013 appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Bright Agrotech Spotlight Series

Our Spotlight Series seeks to highlight innovative and creative projects in aquaponics, vertical farming and sustainable agriculture. A few times a month we’ll be featuring these types of projects on both our blog and YouTube channel. 

Spotlight on Oshkosh North High School 

For our first ever Spotlight Series video,  we wanted to give a special shout out to the hard working students of Oshkosh North High School.

At Bright Agrotech, we’re excited about the future of aquaponics and the potential it has to change our food system for the better.

What’s really exciting though is that there are many groups out there that are just as enthusiastic about moving aquaponics forward and creating a bright food future, even some student groups!

Under the leadership of Oliver Schinkten, a long-time proponent of hydroponics and aquaponics alike, the students of Oshkosh North High School have been working tirelessly on their aquaponics build.

High School Aquaponics?

Let’s face it… Aquaponics can be a frustrating, confusing and at times painful journey/hobby/business.

While it’s getting easier with the advent of quality, tested and open-source information, the fact is that one needs some serious motivation and determination in order to be successful in aquaponics.

Mr. Schinkten’s students at Oshkosh North High School (that’s right, High School!), have demonstrated a passionate determination to grow their aquaponic system into more than just a school project!

We’re excited for updates on this high school aquaponics project and we’ll be sure to keep you updated as well!

The post Spotlight on Oshkosh North High School Aquaponics appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Using ZipGrow Towers for Living, Food-Producing Green Walls

Green walls have attracted a great deal of attention recently and folks are curious about ways to incorporate green walls into their gardens and landscaping projects.

In answer to the many queries: Yes! You can certainly build a green wall using ZipGrow towers. The green wall at the Bright Agrotech farm is a testament to the success of this approach.

In an effort to answer more of your questions, here is a short list of the ways that ZipGrow towers maximize benefits and simplify the maintenance of green walls.

Independent Towers Decrease Pest and Disease Issues

Each tower is independent. Disease or pest problems of any kind can be addressed quickly and effectively by removing a single tower.

Using Towers Minimizes Green Wall Costs

Depending on how you choose to space the towers in your green wall, the cost is roughly $14-20 per square foot.

This compares to the average cost of traditional green walls ranging from $100-$150 per square foot as we saw in our “Challenges and Criticisms of Green Walls” post.

Lightweight Towers Drastically Reduce Infrastructure Requirements

ZipGrow towers only weigh 6.5 lbs. (3ft) and 8 lbs. (5ft) prior to planting and, on average 10 lbs. (3ft) and 12-15 lbs. (5ft) with mature plants.

Lifting the towers out of the frame and the system for maintenance or harvest is a simple task; it is actually easier than rearranging soil-filled pots on the patio.

Since the towers are so light, creating a frame for support becomes a weekend project instead of an architectural nightmare.

Towers Help Save Water and Control Salts

The media in ZipGrow towers is almost entirely covered by the housing. The towers have less open surface area which minimizes evaporation from the hydroponic system and, in turn, reduces the frequency of maintenance required to keep salts at an acceptable level for your plants.

Using Towers Offer Variety and Flexibility When Choosing Crops

Flexibility is, to me, one of the most appealing aspects of building a green wall with towers. It is nice to have the option to make changes and I haven’t found another method that can accommodate alterations without a lot of hassle.

Most green walls are designed to be permanent and plants are only replaced if they die.

ZipGrow towers can be easily rearranged and exchanged, which allows for adjustment based on personal preference and the success of plants in a given location. This flexibility invites the incorporation of edible plants into the design and allows for seasonal adjustments too.

If you have more questions about building a green wall with ZipGrow towers, please contact us. We are always pleased to hear from you, so don’t be shy!

The post Green Walls and ZipGrow Towers appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 8/16/2013

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

This Week at Bright Agrotech’s Vertical and Urban Farm

We’ve got our living green wall up and running! If you’re subscribed to our YouTube Channel, you can find it under our “Green Wall” playlist! 

You can continue learning more about green walls in this Wednesday’s post on a new, more affordable and highly productive method using towers.

Finally, we’re recapping our weekly Community Supported Agriculture harvest for our CSA community here in Laramie, WY.

The World’s First Aquaponic Living Green Wall

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been digging deeper into the concept of vertical, living green walls for use in personal, corporate or municipal applications.

Green walls can bring many benefits including:

- fresher air,

- greater energy efficiency,

- or even beautifying a space, whether a city wall or the fence in your own backyard.

However, these benefits are often overshadowed by the countless challenges connected with designing, building and maintaining these green walls.

This week on the Vertical Food Blog, we featured a highly productive, flexible and much more affordable green wall technique using ZipGrow towers. 

This type of technique solves many, if not all, of the challenges often faced with creating a living wall including:

- decreasing pest and disease issues

- minimizing the cost of building a green wall

- and, reducing the water consumption and salt build up often encountered with traditional green walls.

In all, if you’re interested in the potential of green walls for greening our cities and growing food without compromising space, I’d encourage you to give this post a read!

Laramie CSA Harvest

Despite a couple of wicked Wyoming summer thunderstorms bringing hail and strong winds to the Laramie Valley, we were still able to provide a bountiful harvest for our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) partners this week.

As you can see in our photos above, we had some slight hail damage to our zucchini, yellow and 8-ball squash this week.

While this is purely cosmetic and doesn’t affect the flavor or taste of the squash, we’re still a little bummed to have to give out UGLY produce.

One thing I know we were really excited about was the really nice beets and fennel we harvested.

After having a few grilled beets this past week, I think I’ve found my new favorite vegetable. (Be sure to check out the recipe section below if you’re looking to get wild with some beets/fennel!) 

Another nice treat for our CSA members this week was our sweet basil (see photo on right).

This stuff not only tastes amazing, it also packs a serious Vitamin K punch delivering about 60% of your recommended daily value. It’s also full of many other vitamins. Here’s a list if you’re interested!

Finally, we stuffed the CSA baskets full of Swiss Chard, another super food containing 13 polyphenol antioxidants! 

Talk about good and good for you.

Weekly Recipe: Roasted Beet and Fennel Salad

Ingredients

• 3-4 medium sized beets
• 2 to 1 fennel bulb
• ~1 T olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Fennel fronds (optional)

Instructions
“I hesitate to put any exact amounts because this dish is so flexible. I personally did not measure, though if you look at the photos you’ll realize that I used about four small beets and one fennel bulb. This was largely due to the fact that this is the amount I got in my CSA box! I hate to be so vague, but it is really up to you what amounts you want to make. I think 3-4 regular sized beets to a small fennel bulb is not a bad starting point, but feel free to adjust based on your preference!Remove the green stems from the beets and cut them up into similar sized pieces. I usually don’t bother peeling beets because I’m happy enough eating the outer skin as well (and I don’t like wasting time). Cubes work the best to maintain juiciness, though slicing works OK as well.Slice the fennel bulb into 1 cm strips. Combine beets and fennel strips with about 1-2 tsp olive oil (or use an oil spritzer if you are trying to avoid using too much oil) ensuring that all pieces are at least somewhat coated with oil. Season with salt and pepper and stir to combine everything.Roast at 350 °F for about 20-30 minutes, checking periodically to see when the pieces are done. Once finished, remove oven and let cool or serve immediately.If serving as a cool salad, you can optionally add a splash of citrus for fun.Enjoy!”

Read more:

http://www.tinyurbankitchen.com/2013/07/roasted-beets-and-fennel-salad.html

Another Week in the Books!

As always, thanks for being part of our community to cultivate a healthier, brighter and more sustainable food system.

Please know we deeply appreciate your readership to the Vertical Food Blog and participation in this mission!

Remember, you can find more photos on our Instagram!

Have a great weekend!

The post Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 8/16/2013 appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Solids Lifting Overflows

SLOs or Solids Lifting Overflows are a wonderful resource for aquaponic and hydroponic growers, aquaculturalists and anyone with a koi pond.  A SLO combines the benefits of an overflow (setting a constant water height) with the benefits of pulling water off of the bottom of the tank, pond, or reservoir (removing settled solids).

An overflow is very simple- imagine a beaver dam across a stream.

The water fills the area behind the dam and eventually runs over the top of the dam.  The height of the dam sets the height of the water behind it.

This is very useful for the beaver because he needs a pond with a relatively constant height to survive.  The drawback to this arrangement is that solids that flow down the stream are captured behind the dam, eventually filling in the pond until it is muddy and shallow.  These solids also consume a lot of oxygen as they decay, making life tough for aquatic organisms that need lots of dissolved oxygen.

The same thing happens in hydroponic catchments, sumps, aquaponic and aquaculture fish tanks and ponds.  Unless water is pulled from the bottom of the reservoir, where all of the heavy solids are collecting, the system can get fouled in a hurry.

The Solution: SLOs

Enter the Solids Lifting Overflow.  The SLO typically consists of two pipes- a drain/overflow pipe and a casing or solids lifting pipe, or one pipe that water flows up, and one pipe that water flow down to drain.

There are many different ways to arrange these pipes to get the same effect, but fundamentally all SLOs operate on the same principle.  In my system, I have a large outer pipe that forms the solids lifting pipe, and an inner pipe that is the overflow pipe.

The Overflow Pipe

The overflow pipe is on the inside of my casing in my SLOs.  This pipe drains down, directly into my drainage system.  Because it is sealed into my drainage system at the bottom, this pipe sets the water level in my tanks.  Unless there is a hole somewhere else in my tank, the water in my tanks can only drain to the top of my overflow pipe.  This is a great failsafe measure for any aquaponic or aquaculture practitioner who doesn’t want to come home to a tank full of dead fish left high and dry.

The overflow pipe alone can set our tank water level, but pulls the water from the top of the tank, leaving the solids to collect on the bottom.  So, in order to create a SLO from a simple overflow, we must install another pipe to feed the overflow pipe that pulls from the bottom of the tank.  In my system, I do this by simply casing the overflow pipe with a larger pipe.

The Solids Lifting Pipe

The solids lifting pipe is open to the atmosphere at the top so as not to form a siphon with the overflow pipe.  If it’s not open to the atmosphere at the top, a siphon will form and can completely drain the tank- defeating the purpose of installing an SLO.

In my system, this is a 4 inch PVC pipe that fits around my overflow pipe and rises around 4-5 inches higher than the top of the overflow pipe.  This difference in height forces the water to pull from the bottom of the tank to reach the top of the overflow pipe.

The solids lifting pipe has screened openings at the bottom so that water can flow from the bottom of the tank into the bottom of the solids lifting pipe and up the inside to the top of the overflow pipe.

In this way, my tank volume is set, while solids are lifted from the bottom of the tank.  The best of both worlds.

Other Configurations

There are many different configurations for SLOs, each with an appropriate application.  In it’s simplest form, it is a simple overflow and solids lifting (casing type) pipe, that allows water to drain directly into the sump below.  In others it is a pipe U extending through the tank wall, with a Tee substituted for one of the elbows (open to the air to prevent siphoning), draining to the sump.

SLOs can be a great tool to anyone operating a sump based system.  If you’re interested, check out our videos on drainage and consider installing one in your system.   For sump-based systems they’re guaranteed to increase your system health and reduce the chances of a tank draining catastrophe.

Plant Nutrients in Aquaponic Systems

Plants are one of the primary components of aquaponic systems, and, if you’re a commercial producer, they’re the most important part of your system economically.

Plants are funny things.  We’re surrounded by them- whether it’s the food that we eat, the lawn that we walk across, or the cactus on our desk at work, but most of us don’t really know how they work, or what they need.

Misunderstanding Plant Nutrients in Aquaponics

Unfortunately, this misunderstanding of the needs of plants is also common among aquaponic growers.

This leads to mis-diagnoses of disease, deficiency and pest symptoms and can frustrate many aquaponic growers to the point of quitting (hang in there!).

So, this post is meant to begin a series talking about:

1. Nutrients;
2. What they do in the plant;
3. How you supply them;
4. And, how you know when they’re deficient.  

This is a very big subject, so there will be many many posts on this subject over time- hopefully they will be useful to you, the aquaponic grower in a way that few other resources are.

Why Plant Nutrients Matter [in Aquaponics]

To begin, plant nutrients are elements that are necessary for plant growth and reproduction- essentially, without certain elements, plants cannot grow, cannot flower, fend of pests, photosynthesize sugars, or engage in any of the important things plants must do to stay alive and produce offspring.

The interesting thing is that oftentimes, even if all of the other nutrients are there but one is missing, the plant simply cannot grow.

So, it is important to understand going into this subject that nutrients are limiting, and there are few puzzles as frustrating for a grower as suffering from a single “most limiting nutrient.”

What Plant Nutrients matter, anyway?

There are 16 plant nutrients- three of them are non mineral, and thirteen are mineral. The three non-mineral nutrients are pretty obvious and are not really supplemented by growers except in the form of water (and in some cases) carbon dioxide.

These non-mineral nutrients are:

• Oxygen, O
• Hydrogen, H
• Carbon, C

Carbon

Like everything on earth, plants are carbon based life and a majority of the plant structure is composed of carbon chains (with hydrogen attached) and water.

Water

Water is relatively cheap in nature, so plants use water to support themselves.  Instead of making very thick, tough cells that can stand on their own, many plants build rigid cell walls and then pump their cells full of water, like a balloon to build structure.

Plants are great at maximizing growth with the least expensive resources.  Not only is water (Hydrogen and Oxygen) a useful building tool on it’s own, but plants have the amazing ability to break water apart, scrapping the oxygen, and using the hydrogen for all sorts of things, including hydro-carbon chains.  Basically, water is used as a molecule, but is also broken by the plant to use for spare parts.

Mineral Nutrients

When we think of plant nutrients, we usually think of mineral nutrients- these are what are commonly supplemented by growers in the form of a fertilizer, manure, compost, or other organic nutrient addition.  Many of them are also available or unavailable in the soil, depending on where you live and what kind of soil you have.

By and large, mineral nutrients can be a bit fussy, and just because they’re present in your system doesn’t mean they’re available.

Lots of different things influence whether mineral nutrients are available, but the most important thing is pH.  Some minerals are only available at higher pH values, but more are only available at low pH values.  This can make the lives of aquaponic growers pretty difficult at times.

When a nutrient is present in your system, but not available, usually that mineral is what we called “precipitated out of solution.”

Basically this means that instead of being dissolved in the water in the system, the nutrient becomes a solid and usually settles on the bottom of the tank, or attaches to a piece of gravel, or other surface in your system.

This means that while the nutrient is technically there, it’s not available for the plant to take up.

The best example of this is iron.  Iron is often present in aquaponic systems, however, because of system pH and dissolved oxygen, it typically isn’t very available to the plants.  Instead, it often exists as a solid precipitate in the system.

So, it’s important to know what nutrients are necessary for your plants, and how to make them available in your system.

Mineral Plant nutrients are divided into three groups- Primary Plant Nutrients, Secondary Plant Nutrients, and Micronutrients.

The Primary Plant Nutrients are:

Nitrogen, N
Phosphorus, P
Potassium, K

These are the most consumed nutrients, and are the three concentration numbers on fertilizer labels: N – P – K

The Secondary Plant Nutrients are:

Calcium, Ca
Magnesium, Mg
Sulfur, S

These are most commonly supplemented in aquaponic systems that use pH raising nutrient supplements to moderate pH- primarily Ca and Mg in the form of agricultural lime, a hydroxide composed of Ca and Mg.

It isn’t necessary to supplement sulfur in most systems, but it is commonly supplemented in neutral or high pH system if growers use Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) or potassium sulfate.

The micronutrients are:

• Copper, Cu
• Zinc, Zn
• Boron, B
• Molybdenum, Mo
• Iron, Fe
• Manganese, Mn
• Chloride, Cl

Of these micronutrients, Iron is most common in aquaponic systems.

Copper is commonly included at high enough levels in the feed. 

Zinc is common in fish feed as well as the galvanized steel components that inevitably make their way into our systems (despite our best efforts to exclude them!).

Boron is required at low enough levels that the levels existing in most system are sufficient (Although I have been known to drop a pinch of borax soap in my system every 9 or 10 months).

Molybdenum is also required at low levels, to the extent that all of the Molybdenum a plant needs for it’s entire life can often be found in the seed that it germinated from. (It’s only after growing some plants for several generations in a Molybdenum free environment that the deficiency occurs!)

Manganese is seldom deficient, and chloride commonly enters the system in the fish feed, and in the form of salts.

All of these are necessary for plants to grow and be healthy, and so, over the course of the next year, we’ll dig in and talk about each of these important plant nutrients in detail- including how to manage them in your system, adding them to the system, recognizing deficiencies.

The post Plant Nutrients in Aquaponic Systems appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 9/6/2013

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

This Week at Bright Agrotech’s Vertical and Urban Farm

This week we launched the first of MANY videos in our new series on understanding plant nutrients in aquaponics. You can find the first video here or read more about it below. 

This is such a big topic for mastering and being successful not only in aquaponics, but hydroponics and traditional farming or gardening.

On Wednesday, Dr. Nate wrote a very detailed article kicking off this subject of plant nutrients to help our readers begin to wrap their heads around this complicated topic. Again, you can find more on that below!

This Thursday we had another great harvest for our Community Supported Agriculture program. It’s week nine in our current cycle and we’re cranking right along.

Hopefully you all had a great short week after the Labor Day weekend. Be sure to have a great weekend as well!

PLANT NUTRIENTS IN AQUAPONIC SYSTEMS

On Wednesday, Dr. Nate published a detailed post kicking off our new series on Plant Nutrients in Aquaponics. Here’s an excerpt:

Plants are one of the primary components of aquaponic systems, and, if you’re a commercial producer, they’re the most important part of your system economically.

Plants are funny things.  We’re surrounded by them- whether it’s the food that we eat, the lawn that we walk across, or the cactus on our desk at work, but most of us don’t really know how they work, or what they need.

MISUNDERSTANDING PLANT NUTRIENTS IN AQUAPONICS

Unfortunately, this misunderstanding of the needs of plants is also common among aquaponic growers.

This leads to mis-diagnoses of disease, deficiency and pest symptoms and can frustrate many aquaponic growers to the point of quitting (hang in there!).

SO, THIS POST IS MEANT TO BEGIN A SERIES TALKING ABOUT:

1. Nutrients;
2. What they do in the plant;
3. How you supply them;
4. And, how you know when they’re deficient.

This is a very big subject, so there will be many many posts on this subject over time- hopefully they will be useful to you, the aquaponic grower in a way that few other resources are.

Week 9 of the Laramie, Wyoming CSA Cycle

Not too bad of a CSA harvest this week – a little light on the greens (mostly just a mix of kale varieties).

The majority of our basket weight came from hearty crops like zucchini, eight-ball and yellow squash, as well as beets, onions and a cabbage for our half share customers.

We had some pretty impressive squash though (see photo on right)!

As far as herbs go, we harvested a whole lot of sweet basil and filled our CSA customer’s bags with 2-3 ounces each!

We’ll be giving another greenhouse tour in the coming weeks so if you’re in the CSA be sure to get signed up for that.

The post Vertical Farm Photos – Friday 9/6/2013 appeared first on Vertical Food Blog.

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