Aquaponics: Fence mounted veritcle system.

This past week I help my brother build a new aquaponics system and I'll be writing about it shortly. Here is a teaser picture for now:

Messy!!

Salad Table Update: Week 1.5

It's been about a week and a half since the seeds were laid out in the Salad Table but it's been a little slow coming. The first sign of sprouting seeds came on day 4 as the little roots started popping out. Now most are still under1 inch tall. I think it's been a little on the slow side because of the cold fronts coming in, but the plants are still alive!

Since my Salad Table was going to have three different spots, I thought it'd be interesting to test three different soil amendments. Check out the lineup, all coming from The Home Depot:

Cow manure	Texas Native Compost (recycled wood chips)	"Triple Power Compost" ... whatever that means

I will be sure to document which one does best.

The freezing weather has slowed the plants down a bit, but this is Texas and it will be warm soon!

Weekend Experiment: Growing My Own Salad

As you may know, I've been experimenting with the Primal diet, which will have its own post soon. Naturally, this has caused me to eat a lot more salads than previously. I definitely didn't eat as many green leafy things as I should have eaten .... going out to eat? Why would I pay for a salad when I could have a burger and fries for the same price? ..... making something at home? Eh, salads take too long to prepare.

But that changed.

Now I love salads.
----Specifically spring mix greens with:

• Carrots, bell peppers, tomatoes
• Mushrooms, broccoli
• Antioxidant rich berries and grapes
• Walnuts and sliced almonds
• Leftover cubed meat that I grilled the night before
• Definitely some real 12 year traditional balsamic vinegar 
•  And ground chipotle peppers 'course!

So naturally, I want to grow my own salad greens so that I can pick fresh salads daily!


I've seen these Salad Tables ^TM in action before, and they seem like a great idea. It's basically a small soil garden raised on stilts. You don't need much soil to grow salad greens, so raising it to 3+ feet allows you to easily harvest on a daily basis without back breaking labor.




The University of Maryland has great instructions for building your own Salad Table. I decided to follow these instructions with a few modifications. Something very distinctive about their design is that it has a wire mesh bottom to allow adequate drainage. This is probably fine for them, but around these parts, it is very dry. I don't want to water my lettuce twice a day to keep it alive, so I opted for a ply-wood bottom. In addition, I'm making the height of the soil a little taller with 1"x6" boards instead of 2"x4"s.

Take a look

Got the frame done.

Securing plywood bottom

Yay bottom is done!

Now for the legs.. Just a 2x4 with a wedge screwed in to hold the table up

Making sure to get everything square so the table sits straight

Table legs installed and finishing up!

Added some handles.

Buttons wants to know what is going on.

And finally, soil, rows, and seeds planted!!

In about a week I'll update on how the whole system is doing. I'll also post details of the soils used and seeds spread.