Nine months to food security

A recipe book of modern gardening solutions

By Damian Hinkson

Copyright © 2014 by Damian HinksonAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted

in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case

of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

2

CONTENTS

Introduction..........................................................................................................................................................4

Month 1.................................................................................................................................................................6

Why?.................................................................................................................................................................6

Who?.................................................................................................................................................................7

What..................................................................................................................................................................7

Month 2.................................................................................................................................................................8

Lactic acid bacteria- (LAB)..................................................................................................................................8

How to use?.......................................................................................................................................................9

Month 3...............................................................................................................................................................10

Composting.....................................................................................................................................................10

Month 4...............................................................................................................................................................14

Building a Worm Farm.....................................................................................................................................14

Month 5...............................................................................................................................................................16

Container gardening........................................................................................................................................16

Month 6...............................................................................................................................................................19

Aerated compost tea (ACT).............................................................................................................................19

Month 7...............................................................................................................................................................20

Fermented Plant / seed extracts.....................................................................................................................20

Month 8...............................................................................................................................................................24

Water harvesting.............................................................................................................................................24

Month 9...............................................................................................................................................................26

Aquaponics (AP)..............................................................................................................................................26

3

INTRODUCTION

Despite what the experts will have you believing. There is no mystery to achieving domestic food security. It is a simply step by step process that requires no extra special scientific knowledge on your part. To a scientist the word organic means having a carbon molecule attached to it. From a domestic food production view, organic has the more exact meaning of maintaining a healthy soil capable of encouraging long term growth of edible plants without the use of store bought chemicals.

The stuff you sweep out your house is called dust but when microscopic life is added it becomes black and pleasant smelling and we call it soil. It takes nine months of care to raise a microscopic "herd" from nothing to a size capable of decomposing your daily waste and processing it into something useful..

This book provides the right mix of scientific procedures in basic cooking type recipes along with the cook times to convey these nine months of care in a very convent format. It improves upon your practical understanding of how to raise, stabilize, maintain and utilize a certain size micro herd to its maximum potential before flowing into the next stage. These lessons are designed for household use only and not to distract from daily activities.

4

In the end you will have achieved production of

5

MONTH 1

WHY?

No one pays plants to grow, but they grow and produce our food for free, this is because of the earth's ecosystem where one animal’s garbage is a next animal’s food, yet, somewhere along the line humans attached a monetary cost and now food is as high as a 1/4 of some household’s expenditure. If you think your paying too much for food.... Next time you walk into a supermarket take a good look around and enjoy the experience, after all, you are paying for it, the light bill, tile floor, the manager’s mortgage; all of it is coming out your pocket even though it may appear that all you are buying is food. Very little of your money is actually used to pay the farmers that grow your food; certainly none of the money goes to the plants. The majority of it is for the convenience of delivering the food to you.

If you had to run down a yard fowl every time you wanted eggs for breakfast or pluck a chicken every time you ate a snack box, I am sure most of us would be “feather-thin” vegetarians. For convenience we go to the supermarket but how reliable is the supermarket? It isn’t. Here is why. It takes days for supermarket shelves to be emptied when there is a hurricane warning. Days are how long it would take for us to start feeling the effect if the supply of food was halted. For whatever reason, then what? I hope you have a backup plan, I got my kitchen garden. I have a fear that may not be enough because if I am the only one with food growing my food will be stolen. Therefore my mission is to give everyone the tools to feed themselves as easily and with the little maintenance which I do.

You don't have to upset your hectic lifestyle to grow a little bit of okras, but I want you to be conscious and aware of what is going on in the world and to show resilience, after all a stitch in time saves nine. The supermarket is not always the most cost effective solution to our needs. Allow me illustrate why. The world’s populations are growing at an exponential rate but our brains tend to see things within a linear context. To illustrate exponential growth, if I gave you 1 cent and it doubled each day most people think it would take years before it reaches a million but in reality it takes 30 days.

Our brains are programmed to think linear like rain fall, but exponential is a different thing. China has a one child policy to try and curb this exponential growth of people, it is that serious. Yet that policy is nowhere else in the world, as more people are born, the demand for food goes up and with it the prices skyrocket. Don’t sit around and think that politics will help you get cheaper food; they want you to buy more so they can tax more. In the same way we get together and pay all the supermarkets bills without noticing how the little 10c mark up on the okras makes it happen, we start growing the same okras at home for free and help get rid of our mortgages faster.

6

WHO?

Sixty years ago we were a food secure nation, the culture allowed for this mainly because time and land were readily available therefore the average person could grow their own food. Currently full time employment and concrete has made conventional backyard farming uneconomical, on a larger scale it is possible to profit from farming but competition from importers, the uncertainty of a market to sell produce, the high cost of labor and agro-chemicals, combined with the lack of applying technology make local farming for profit very difficult.

You don't hear about the slow strangulation of small farmers because our culture does not even look at it as a problem. Education and politics decided we should be a service culture and not depend on the two only natural resources we have, the soil and our people. This is a silent killer and our culture has suffered gravely. If you’re thinking about or even noticed our islands situation you are one of the few who made it through our school system with your problem solving and critical thinking skills intact.

Not enough people are aware of the whole problem so they will tell you, when you start growing food you are fighting a losing battle and that it is way easier to buy your food than to grow it. In fact I have found that the more educated the society becomes there is a belief that it is low class to grow your own food but will admit they have no idea how to grow food crops and have no desire to start. So you have to arm yourself to answer all their questions of doubt. And be the butt of the jokes from the beginning of your quest. Following the plan I have here will ensure small dependable successes. First don't even tell them your plans. Let them ask for the information they want.

WHAT

Your success hinges on how you view this 9 months transitional phase. It really is a hobby and like all hobbies your level of satisfaction depends on the energy you put into it. I will provide you with the steps and the recipes to do very specific jobs with specific amounts of ingredients just like a baker or chef, but unlike a baker or chef there is no time limit to get the job finished. And the ingredients don't have to be exact to achieve results. In my methods there is considerable leeway, I use the Blackman's principal of limiting factors. This states that the lowest performing part in a system is the limit.

What you are doing is changing your system from currently consuming everything from outside to a system that takes some of the energy from outside and generates energy in the household therefore you start relying on yourself more.

7

MONTH 2

LACTIC ACID BACTERIA- (LAB)

Most people are not aware of how easy it is to grow plants without chemicals. You only need to harvest the right microscopic-life and provide the correct work environment for them. The first set of bacteria you will be harvesting have the job of managers in the micro-herd and are used as seed to make the new environment comfortable for other bacteria to grow. These bacteria are used in soil as a jump starter, in water for keeping ponds crystal clear, as a spray to keep down the scent of pets and animals even in drinking water to allow more efficient digestion.

How To extract, store and use:

1. Harvest general bacteria from the air. This is done by providing rice starch as a food source in water and letting all bacteria naturally multiply. (Starch can also be; bread fruit, potato, rice, and macaroni) add 1 table spoon of rice to 1 small pet bottle of water and shake vigorously.

2. Strain this into a bowl and place this in a cool shaded place that gets plenty of air but some place you can keep an eye on it like on top the fridge, in less than 2 weeks. When the starch is used up and you will see a transparent cast floating, leaving a clear liquid under it.

8

3. Separate floating top with a spoon dipping it off and pour the clear liquid into a large pet bottle and add 2 cups of milk, the fresher the type of milk you use the better the final product will be. The lactic acid in the milk will kill the unwanted bacteria leaving only the good “managers” behind. Over the next 1-2 weeks as this is happens you will see the unwanted cheese type substance floating and

the (LAB) in a slightly yellow serum on the bottom

4. Harvest the serum by straining the liquid from one bottle into the next and dispose of the cheese like substance then

5. Add 1cup of sugar to the bottle and shake until all is dissolved, the sugar is a carbohydrate food source that will keep the LAB alive indefinitely at room temp.

HOW TO USE?

You will know it’s done right by the smell of the LAB it smells like grease.

Use 3 table spoons of this to a 5 gall bucket of un-chlorinated as chlorine will kill the LAB water.

9

MONTH 3

COMPOSTING

With time you can produce compost from any material, after all, everything will decompose eventually but here is a program I devised to learn to speed up that process substantially. Composting is the chemical breaking down of raw table scraps into a natural fertilizer for plants. This process is started by smaller micro fungi that is food for the bigger micro bacteria that is eaten by even bigger bacteria. The end result is called compost. Some attention must be paid in maintaining the environment for the micro herd to remain the most active it could.

The 3 basic factors of building a good composting program,

Texture of the compost Moisture level Carbon to Nitrogen (C:N) ratio

By using six separate 5gall compost bins and trial and error you will learn to maintain the ideal environment in the quickest time posable.

10

Setting up the compost binsFind a small out of the way area usually a well cover. Take (6) five gallon buckets, ½ fill them with potting mix. This ensures you start with the correct texture to provide a home for the micro-herd.

Add 2 table spoons of LAB to a large PET bottle and moisten each bucket, cover with a net bag to keep out critters and provide air exchange.

You are encouraging the second wave of aerobic(oxygen loving) bacteria to the bin by adding food, the Bacteria utilize the chemicals carbon as a source of energy (to keep on eating) and nitrogen to build protein in their bodies (so they can grow and reproduce)

How to use the bins

Now that the bins are set up it is time to start to feed them. To add the same amount of food each time use a large pet bottle with the funnel part cut off as a measuring cup, line this with a small plastic bag and, place this next to the sink that you can conveniently put kitchen scraps into it. When full remove the bag and that is one dose for a bucket, add table scraps to the 1st bin turning each time with a sword or stick until most the table scraps are buried away from flies. After the first bin has the right smell move on the next bin until all the bins are active.

What to smell for

Your compost pile will give off 3 basic types of smells as you turn it weekly; earthy, sour or finally a stink smell. Earthy means the micro life is ok. The sour smell means your right at the edge of where you want to be. (An earthy slightly sour smell is what you’re looking for like a

11

burp). A stink smell like a sewer means too much nitrogen and the anaerobic (Harmful) bacteria are taking over your bin.

12

Carbon and Nitrogen are two chemicals that bacteria quickly consume when together in the correct ratio; we naturally “use” this ratio when we eat our food. Fish with chips, bread with cheese, and macaroni with corn beef all have balanced carbon: nitrogen (C:N) ratios. Good news is our micro herd likes the same C:N ratio of food that we do. So adding only table scraps to the bin will, most of the time produce the right C:N ratio.

Now slowly (a handful daily) add carbon until the mixture returns to smelling earthy and has a lose texture. Then repeat the cycle by adding more nitrogen until it gets slightly sour then add carbon till it has corrected itself. By repeating this cycle with the six bins you will instinctively know when to feed carbon to your micro herd.

How to test the moisture level The incoming food scraps will have lots of moisture in them. If the bin has in too much water this suffocates the micro life causing the compost bin to go anaerobic, smell bad and work very slowly. To test the moisture level squeeze a hand full of compost you should get 2-4 drops of water to fall out. Too much water will also wash away some of your nutrients from the bin. If you have too much water, add drier material from the other compost bins or leave the wet bin(s) uncovered until the water to evaporate. Remember to use gloves to keep your hands clean and protect your hands from nature. If ants are present this means that your pile is too dry.

13

How should it feel?

The test for texture is the same as the water test but when you release your fist you want the compost to stay in a ball but to break away easily as you poke it. If it stays as a ball with more than one poke add sand to make it crumble faster and if it crumbles to quickly add more table scraps.

14

MONTH 4

BUILDING A WORM FARM

A worm bin needs to be over 30 gal to attract and keep enough worms to decompose the small but steady stream of table scraps. It is the same as composting but the additional worms and lacewings quickly grind up the table scraps before they can attract pest, this is like putting your raw table scraps in the blender first.

How to set up the worm bin

Use the active compost from the previous month’s five gallon bucket system and add layers of cardboard and powered oats, 3 inches apart then table scraps as the last layer you can add top soil, as needed for filling the pot. Finally water with LAB and start to add your table scraps directly to the worm bin.

15

Care of worm binThis is a small, intensive worm bin intended for household use so every 8 weeks stir it up to ensure it evens out and add more cardboard or paper for the carbon and to provide new breeding sites for the worms.

A blue drum commonly used as garbage cans cut in half the short side works well. It needs to be shallow as worms only really work the top 10 inches of media. And it needs a cover to keep out rodents.

Worms smell food in dirt like sharks smell blood in water and once food is present they will appear. To attract them is not hard but to keep and breed them takes time.

16

MONTH 5

CONTAINER GARDENING

Planting in containers gives much more control over the plants root zone allowing you to get maximum growth from your inputs.

When planting in containers view the container as a battery that stores all the energy the plant needs to grow from seed to harvest, by mixing the correct ingredients in the container beforehand you can provide all the energy the plants need and only haveing to add water.

Plants grow quicker and healthier this way. Some natural ingredients have short term benefits (day-weeks) while some have long term (month’s-years). To use this energy plants have developed relationships with micro fungi that attach to the roots and stretch farther through the soil to bring food for the plant, the plant in turn extruded sugars through the roots to feed the fungi.

The job of the farmer is to maintain the bacteria and fungi activity so high that the conditions in the pot self regulate and old plant roots are quickly consumed while the live roots are kept at optimal.

17

Setting up the gardenUse the 5 gall for the compost bins now drill holes 2in from the bottom

Get the ingredients and mix together on an old shower curtain

Put in 5gall and soak with LAB, leave in cool dark place for a week

buy seedlings and plant, source plants from supermarket or add seed and cover with net bag

18

Maintenance of plants in containersMost critical thing you can do is to water your plants, the leaves will droop and wilt when water is lacking but chlorine in tap water will kill your micro life so leave the water in a bucket over night to let the chlorine evaporate before use. During a plant's life cycle, the plants need correct ratios and levels of nutrients to grow, bloom and yield. When planting the same type of crop continually in the same container the plants will use up some types of nutrients more quickly than others.

Once this happens the leaves will go from green to yellow to brown. You can tell witch nutrient is deficient by how the plant is affected, plants transport nutrients from the roots to the rest of the plant, and each nutrient does a different job in the plant so for every nutrient missing there is a corresponding place in the plant that suffers and turns yellow.

This is more a problem when dealing with syntactic chemicals and medium less growing systems. In an organic regimen like in this book you will not come across many deficiencies and if you do it is a good idea to check your diet as the sources are your table scraps.

Like how we need starch, protein and carbohydrates as main food, plants need Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphorous. They are the tree main or mobile nutrients for growth. All synthetic fertilizer have a (NPK) number label on it, Nitrogen (N) for green growth, phosphorous (P) for roots and potassium (K) for fruits, so a 3-2-1 number means for more green growth and a 1-2-3 number would mean more fruiting a 1-1-1 would mean balance.

When looking at sick plants first check to see if old or new leaves are affected because Plant-mobile nutrients are like cash and are capable of being moved through the plant. When a plant is deficient of these elements, the stores of nutrient that is already within the plant will be transported to where it is needed most - the young tissues. So symptoms of mobile elements are observed on the older leaves first. Example, if nitrogen is deficient in a plant, older leaves turn yellowish first while the newer leaves remain relatively green while some nutrients are like gift cards - which can only be spent in specific places.

19

MONTH 6

AERATED COMPOST TEA (ACT)

Tea takes the benefits of the solid (soil like) compost and “super charges” it. This is done by putting the compost in water to extract the micro life, once placed in the water they are constantly moving around and eat more food at a faster rate; this causes them to multiply to levels they can’t achieve in solid compost. It’s like milking a cow the old fashion way, if a drop of manure gets in to that bucket of milk it instantly becomes a bucket of manure. This is how we usually use compost because of that multiplying effect a quick spray application of a bucket of compost tea is the equivalent of top dressing with 10 heavy buckets of compost.

Making Basic tea:To 4 gal of water add

1 cup compost

3 table spoons of brown sugar, (as a carbohydrate/food source) and

1 tea spoon of oat meal (as a food source for microscopic fungi)

Use 2 air pumps to add bubbles to the mixture for 3-5 days or until it foams and the smell changes from like that of compost to a sweet earthy scent.

Dilute the concentrated mixture by using 1 gal of the tea to 4 gals of water.

Spray/water the plants and surrounding soil every 4 weeks.

This is a very basic tea and it is worth your time to look up different types on the internet

20

21

MONTH 7

FERMENTED PLANT / SEED EXTRACTS

Seed enzyme extraction:

Seeds contain all the food for the young plant to grow, and enzymes that tell the new plants how to grow we can harvest and use them on other plants. These are a good all around tonics for healthy plants and increased pest protection. It is best to uses these fresh and in a spray form or watering can to coat the whole plant’s area. These have a shelf life of 12 weeks.

First you have to collect the seed soak in water overnight to soften the seed coat ensuring all the seed Germinate at the same time,

Drain off the water because seed’s coats have chemicals on them that delay germination until the seed till the following season, these normally take a while for the weather to remove, but we remove them over night with a soak.

Leave seed in the bottle uncovered, make sure they stay damp and they get some sunlight.

Soak the seedlings in un-chlorinated /rain water for 3 days.

Strain and keep the liquid

To use dilute 3 tables spoons seed extraction with a gallon of water.

22

.

In the mango season, dump lots of mangos in your worm bin they will eventually all start to germinate around the same time, this has provided me with the best seed extraction so far, works well on old, difficult seed to germinate. Unhulled barley and coconut water at 3table spoons per 5 gall are other excellent sources.

23

Fermented Plant extraction:Different plants have different chemicals in them. Many are useful but you need to know which plants do what and how to extract the helpful qualities. Below are just a few of the many plants found locally and the uses of the extracts.

To make the extract simply ¼ full a 5gal bucket with the leaves and fill with uncoordinated water add a teaspoon of LAB and put on the lid they should be enough sugars in the plant material to cause fermentation this should take 3 weeks. It smells bad.

The neem tree is excellent at pest resistance and the neem extract gets absorbed into the plants for long lasting protection.

Sea weed is a tonic ideal for adding micro nutrients.

Stinging nettle is for quick growth of your plants from the hnigh nitrogen content.

24

Tea spoons of Aloe and claman cherry are excellent natural surfactants when mix into a tea or spray they act like dish washing liquid and spread and stick on to the plants surface allowing the tea more time to get absorbed into the plant.

25

MONTH 8

WATER HARVESTING

Barbados is made from limestone this means our local gravel can’t be used as a media because it is acid and reacts badly with the fish waste this also means they are no large natural bodies of fresh surface water to harvest from.

Our choices are either rain collection or tap water that has chlorine injected, this kills all bacteria weather good or bad and is damaging to your micro heard.

Water quality is of utmost importance. Rain water harvesting as easy as having a drum placed under a roof to catch the run of with netting across the top to keep out mosquitoes.

Water chemistry

When using water for organic farming the biggest requirement is that it must be chlorine free. To be absolutely certain that your system continues to work properly the water needs to be chemically examined, observation can guide you. But cheap water quality test kits are available from pet store normally used for aquarium maintenance.

26

Water parameters to monitor

Dissolved oxygen,

Ammonia Nitrate and Nitrite

PH,

Water hardness or kH

Dissolved oxygen

If the amount of oxygen present in the water becomes too low, the living things in the water will die from suffocation. First signs are fish at the surface gasping for air and the plants looking withered. The amount of oxygen present in the water is increased by constantly moving the water or by injecting the air directly with a bubbler/air stone and air pump.

Ammonia Nitrate and Nitrite

The three of these are the same thing in different forms

PH,

Water hardness or kH

This is a measurement of the amount of dissolved substances present in the water They are two types of hardness;

Permanent hardness measures the ions such as nitrates, sulphates, and chlorides etc, that are not removed by boiling. Most of these are not involved with buffering but can affect pH values.

Temporary hardness is so called because it can be lowered and removed by boiling the water. Derived mainly from carbonate and bicarbonate ions and directly reflects the buffering capacity of the water.

Buffering is a result of water hardness it is the ability of the water to absorb and hold on to certain chemicals. High buffering capacity will mean you have to put large amounts of the substance in before it can be used in the system.

27

MONTH 9

AQUAPONICS (AP)

After you master all the pervious lessons you can seamlessly put all them together with aquaponics, it creates a wonderful balanced eco-system where plants, bacteria, fungi, worms and fish work together in a cycle that turns your raw table scraps into nutrient dense food with minimal labour. These are 3 systems that utilize the same principal of growing from small and adding on as you get more experience.

In 2002, I became the first person to build an Aquaponics system in Barbados, because I saw the real and serious need for Aquaponics to be implemented in our culture. Using this technology, we can produce our perishables from home with the effort of raising fish as pets. Aquaponics has only recently become affordable for a house hold because of advances in cheap plastic containers and energy efficient water pumps. I just wonder if they used to feed such large families from low productive, backyard kitchen gardens, what size families would they have with the high production of an Aquaponics system.

The following systems can be replicated and maintained by anyone who has finished the previous lessons. The AP systems can be built from materials found in any hardware store at a reasonable price and many parts are repurposed from the food handling industry.

If you can source off-grid solar power it will make this is a viable way to produce food with a system independent of government and merchant control. Barbadians have to do this job ourselves because AP is a disruptive technology and the bureaucracy will not push it because they want us to buy food to fuel their system with taxes.

28

Maintenance

Maintenance of these well designed aquaponic system will be minimal. cycling the system

If you approach this the wrong way it can take up to 3months to get a system balanced and get the fish waste completely converted to plant nutrients. Below is a graph showing the relative amounts of nitrogen compounds present in the water leading up to the finished cycle. You can test the water using test kits available for aquarium maintenance.

29

DailyWeekly

Title: Home wrecker

Date: 2008-2009

Type: Media bed

Price: $100-$400Purpose: this is entry level system to prove how easy aquaponics is the small size means it is cheap to build and maintain and after moving on to bigger systems Introducing a new fish or plant to your main system can bring along with it diseases and parasites. Once these have a hold on your system they can take a long time to get rid of. Having a small, separate system that you can observe the fish or plants before adding them to the main system will help keep these at bay. You should keep it stocked with live bearers or breeders that are easy to maintain.

TIP: having at least one side of the tank transparent will allow you to easily identify sick fish or parasites very quickly.

Materials: Some 2by4’s Ply wood Pond liner Water tank

30

Title: TAPING

Type: Nutrient Film Technique (NFT)

Date: 2005-2006

Price: $1500-$2000

Purpose: I decided that it was time to test commercial viability. I was on a tight budget and set out to recoup my money in two years. This system was based on my knowledge of hydroponics. And I took a medium less approach. The requirements were made using materials available at any hardware, be low maintenance and because it was not on my land it had to be portable.

Materials: 4 3in pipes 5 3in tees 3 3in elbows Assorted 3/4 PVC fittings 1 length of 3/4 pipe.(What lenth?) 800 gal polyueurthane water storage tank. 55 gal drum 6in blocks 2by4s (What’s that? Please specify)

31

Final set up: 1. The water tank was cut to a height of 4 feet and the pipes were assembled as in the diagram.

2. A stand comprised of 6in blocks and 2by4s supported the pipes and (3in) planting holes were drilled every 15in apart.

3. The pipes outlet drained into a bio-filter comprised of a 55gal drum filled with shade cloth,

4. This was drained into the water tank,

5. The water finally was pumped into the pipes completing the cycle and my first fully dedicated AP system was born.

Data: Stocked with 50 various size Tilapias using 200mg of feed per day.

Results: This system is capable of producing one fish and 20 heads of lettuce every 14 days.

Conclusion: Constant, vigilant water quality monitoring is essential when dealing with medium less aquaponics; test kits can be found in any pet store and are cheap, reliable and easy to use. When placed in direct sunlight the water in the tubes can get very hot and make shade loving plants like broccoli and cabbage impossible to grow. You also have to keep your filter clean because it needs to trap all the solids that are floating in the water. The solids can stick to the plant roots and choke them causing the plants to die. But if you clean the filter completely, you will get rid of all your beneficial bacteria and this will cause your system to be unbalanced.

32

Title: EASY START Date: 2008-2009

Type: Media bed Price: $100-$400

Purpose: The system should easily provide meaningful benefits of aquaponics to a household. It must be easy to maintain and child and pet safe. This system caught the attention of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and they decided to fund my ideas.

Materials: Some 2by4’s Ply wood Pond liner Water tank

Final setup:

An open top box (what’s an open top box?) was made and lined with pond liner. The first system was made out of wood with my original fish tank. It was put on legs just high enough to be over the fish tank this provides shade and protection for the fish the bed was filled with husk from a previous production system. That husk was cut by hand and proves to be a better draining medium than shredded coconut husk. Water was pumped from fish tank to the grow bed where it is drained into the fish tank.

Data: 30 various size fish using 150mg of feed per day Results: 14 beefsteak tomatoes a week Conclusion: When the pond liner caught a leak I had to pull down the whole system to fix it. If it was a small leak I would leave it because the bio film will clog it up eventually. To bring the cost down the grow beds were made out of the same thing material as the fish tanks.

33

Title: PRODUCER

Type: Deep Water Culture (DWC)

Date: 2008-2009

Price: $300

Purpose: After experiencing my first earth quake I built a system that could be set up anywhere with little preparation and begin food production immediately with very little inputs.

Materials:

Pond liner

Weed block fabric

Shade cloth

fishing line

Final setup:

Wire mesh was used as the walls it was lined first with (2) root mat and then with (3) pond liner, this was a medium less system and the (4) filter was made with used pet bottles corks. The water was pumped from the (5) fish tank to the filter witch drained into the (6) plant bed then back to the fish tank. the 3 grow beds were made 3 feet wide 12 feet long and 1 foot deep then filled with hand cut coconut husk The first crop goes to seed. People begin to notice my aquaponics. I feed the fish enough that they could eat in 5mins then the rats would not get a chance to eat the food. The birds and the frogs I keep out with a cheap cover. This was one reliable system it worked with one pump and at a low head so it was very efficient, the media in the beds were not deep enough at first so the top of the husk was always wet and would constantly evaporate water so I put in some more husk to make the bed deep enough so the top layer would act like a mulch and keep in the water. I also started maximizing grow bed space I plant vines and let them run up on taller plants like corn and okra also some herbs repel pest so I plant them on the out skirts and the pumpkins were grown in a bag hung up off

34

of the wet medium otherwise they would rot, The pump was two big so I had to put in a return valve to divert some of the water pressure back into fish tank. For the pond I also used the contours of the land to my advantage

The fish grew really fast because they had lot of room and they were less dense than normal.

One of the beds was set up for growing nft in pots so that you can grow plants that like more drainage than coconut husk can provide to protect the fish pond from pest a cheap covering of

line frame with shade cloth worked nicely. I used root mat at first but be sure not to cover the whole pond as it would trap air and it gets hot

Data: 250 various size fish using 300mg of fish feed a day

Results: 1 fish a week and 20 pounds of various vegetables a week

Conclusion: This was the most cost effective system I ever built. It was designed to be a provider of all my food for a year, and be easy to maintain.

35

Title: Aquaponic machine

Type: Adjustable

Date: 2009-2014

Price: $2000-$3000

Purpose: The system should easily provide meaningful benefits of aquaponics to a household. It must be easy to maintain and child and pet safe. This system is for Barbados in general and designed for people who know nothing about farming but want the benefits. You can be a farmer, have a day job and still be socially active.

Materials:

Some 2by4’s

Ply wood

Please state how you set this system up.

Data: 250 various size fish using 300mg of fish feed a day

Results: 3 pounds of parsley a week from 200 watts of energy from the pumps

Conclusion: This is the closest system to commercial viable and I will continue with this method.

36

Common System Catastrophes and their Recovery Techniques

1. WATER Loss2. POWER Loss3. System out of balance4. Water lost

Water loss can be from many reasons. The most obvious would be a lose pipe or a leak in the system. Less obvious reasons are blockages of pipes from leaves, snail shells and dead fish in the pipe causing water to back up and overflow. Splashing and evaporation are often over looked. When a system looses water you need to first determine the cause of water loss. A good indication is that on dry days the ground around the leak will be moist. Don’t put the pump at the exact bottom of your fish tank or your fish could be left high and dry, bacteria in the grow beds and filter will die soon after drying out so don’t let your media dry out completely.

Power loss

Proper system design or backup systems like solar or battery backups will help you if power fail but don’t overstock your system so that in the event of a power loss the fish will not suffocate quickly. (25 adult tilapias will last up to 3 days in 100 gal fish tank)

Out of balance

Harvesting all the plants at once will cause a buildup of nutrients in the water and it may kill fish so when harvesting plants you should harvest fish or reduce fish feed. If the system is out of balance you can stop feeding for a while Tilapia will go 7 days without eating before weight lost.

Feeding rate/how to feed

The amount of food you feed the fish will determine the amount of waste they make and ultimately the amount of plants you can grow. It is best to let the fish decide the amount of food you feed. You should feed enough that the fish will eat all in fifteen minutes this will ensures that no feed is left back to attract rodents. Feed twice a day for best results.

200mg of 30% protein fish feed per day will be enough for 1 square meter of planted grow beds.

I recommend the use of commercial fish feed only, other feeds may have in oils that need to be soaked out first to avoid build up and suffocating the micro herd.

37