Water Chestnut crop update

A look at the water chestnut crop for this year.. Third time lucky as the first 2 attempts were dismal failures..
The first went into the bathtub pond & we think the leachate from the bucket was making the fish ill so pulled it out..
The second attempt was with buckets placed into drums full of water.. That wasnt exactly a stunning success either with the soil becoming rather acidic..
Third attempt was the easy "toss them in a box & let them grow" method & it appears to have done the best so far... Funny that ;)
Think they will give us a few to eat & will be setting some aside for next years planting for certain..



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Have a great one All...
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Wicking Beds Barrels for a water wise garden

As it is getting nearer to spring I thought I would post some Wicking clips for anyone interested in making up some new beds.. There will be more posted in the future as I havent filmed a complete clip while making a full size bed, only the barrels..

The whole idea behind the wicking system comes from a gentleman by the name of  Colin Austin...
http://waterright.com.au/wicking-bed-history.html
I came across it while we were in the tail end of a drought here in South East Queensland here in Australia & though it was one of the best ways to go to save water in a fairly large back yard veggie patch..
Wicking Barrels MK II..

The above clip is how we now make the Wicking barrels... They are a big improvement on the original design as the water holding capacity of the reservoir has doubled... As the existing barrels finish their crops they are slowly being swapped over to this design...

Wicking Beds...

I have ever only made clips after the fact with the beds so made up a bit of a sideshow clip to show how we made one of the earlier Wicking beds...

Wicking Bathtub...

This was a relative easy build with a free bath we collected from a member of a  local Free Cycle Group..  I must say the plants we had in there were probably a bit too large for the small reservoir in the bath...I think plants like small cropping herbs, leafy greens would probably do better than 5 foot tall lemongrass... Lesson learnt..

Wicking up IBCs (Intermediate bulk containers)...
These guys are a really easy build that could easily be done in a few hours if you were more organised than I...

Thats about it for now...
Have a great one all...
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How we grow Kang Kong Chinese water spinach Ipomoea aquatica

Kang kong is a short vining, water loving plant that is used in many different Asian cuisines.. It is related to sweet potato & Morning glory with flowers very similar to both.. Mainly grown in boggy areas & have become a pest weed in some water systems where it has been introduced..Should be very easy to grow this plant in the heat we get here & cant wait to get our first large harvest..



 We are growing it as a leafy green to be included in salads & our fruit n veg "Smoothies" as well as for stir fries & Asian curries..

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Have a great one all...

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Aquaponic update Water quality Algae bloom testing Buffering pH Happy Fish

Time for a bit of an update on the water quality issues the system was having last week..
I think time was all that was needed for the cloudy water to rectify itself & I sort of stressed myself out for nothing as it wasnt an algae bloom like I thought.. At least I got to learn a few more things about system management & in particular how to test for an algal bloom.
Would like to thank Paul from Earthan group again for taking time out of his busy schedule to give me a call & a hand in working out what was going on.. They can also be found on Face Book..





Will finish off the buffering filter over the next week or so & shall show you what I come up with..

For more regular updates about the patch come visit on our Bits Out the Back Face Book page..
Have a great one All...
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Augmented Water Hacking An Instructable

For anyone reading this blog who is not familiar with the positive meaning of the word hacking, it can be used to mean improving on an existing item, whether thats a computer program or a real-world piece of hardware, like a water flow meter system.

Tonight I saw an Instructables project called Augmented Water. Im not sure why they called it augmented, although it might be intended to mean the water faucet has something extra added to it (in this case to encourage using less water). This project adds to a water faucet an extension
consisting mainly of a flowmeter, an Arduino and a strip of LEDs (light emitting diodes).

The concept is to visually let the person who opens the faucet know when theyve used a certain amount of water, with the expectation that the LEDs lighting up or changing color will prompt the person to close the faucet more quickly than if they didnt realize how much water they were using. According to the Instructables article, the code is written to turn the LEDs red after one liter is used.

In the comments on the project webpage, one reader suggests using "an ATiny85 or an Arduino micro to shrinkify things." The project post author replied by saying, "Id love to see an energy harvesting mod, e.g. inside an LED shower head."

So what Im proposing is that between now and the next meeting of the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group (on June 26), the group members, and other people who read the blog and are interested in the idea, should hack the design shown in this Instructables post and come up with ways to improve it. Design it with a smaller microcontroller, like the one reader suggested. Come up with a different type of lighting that you think would be more effective at conserving water, such as different colors to signal different amounts of water, or an appropriate limit or target for the volumes of water for different uses. Maybe develop an interesting looking 3D-printed housing for the Augmented Water unit. Improve the code in some way. There are lots of ways to hack the concept of an MCU-controlled water flowmeter with LED volume indicators to promote conservation of water.

One hack I think would be cool is along the lines of what the post author suggested. Im not sure what they mean by "an LED shower head," but it would be interesting to modify or create a shower head that had LEDs that generated soothing happy light when it starts running, but after a certain flow the LEDs start giving off a less happy light to encourage you to end your shower shortly. If you dont shut the water off after a second usage level that youve programmed in, the LEDs are changed so they give off downright annoying and unpleasant light. (Now I have to Google to see if someone already sells a shower head like that.)

What are your hacks for this? Who knows -- if you come up with some good ideas, maybe people will want to buy them from you, or you might have an Instructables post written about the hack youve built. Bring both your ideas and any physical models you build to the June 26 meeting or email the ideas or pictures to me (arcatabob [att] gmail [dot] com) if youre not going to be at the meeting.

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