Green Acre Aquaponics

I've grown papaya grown from seeds we got out of a papaya we liked.

I've also grown rosell which was really great until the squirles stole all the produce from it and then it froze.  I'll know to net it next year.

I've also grown bananas

I was going to say

don't tell anyone.. but I used the seeds from a papaya I ate

I will go take a picture of the fruit I have on right now. this is about a 7 month old plant.. the best thing that I grew last summer. transplanted it into a container. Now I have 3 more in my grow-bed now.. one flowered two days ago

fun times

another favorite of mine is the date palm,,

I have 30 in a grow bed, but over 200 in containers. I have planned a greening of the desert project .. I have lots of different trees growing in my beds from seeds.

Pineapples do not do well in my beds. Sunflowers was another great item last summer. just passing it on. OH.. I gave 3 banana pups to aquaponic grower for his bed. 

will date palms grow in Central Florida?  I would be willing to try it.

good question

some of mine like the ground moist or they start to turn brown

some of mine like the ground to be wet then dry like sand

they must be all females.... Oh you can not tell if male or female for a couple of years.. be patient.. love my papaya.. but need the shade and strength of the medijool date palm.

I'm hoping to get a banana tree for my dome when it's up and running.  It will be quite the site seeing a banana tree growing in the middle of winter here! 

Dave, how long has it taken you to get your papaya to begin to produce fruit, from the time you panted the seed?  What about your date palms?  What do you do, just buy some dates and plant them?? 

the papaya fruit you see is on a 7 month old tree.

Banana trees are hearty.. take the Tucson heat with a little stress and take the cold but don't let them freeze

I've read that in FL if you plant papaya in a pot in Sept and bring it in during cold spells that you can plant it out in spring and get fruit by Nov.

The Papaya I had in the system actually took a couple years before it fruited well and then if froze back last yer and didn't come back.

Also what is "rosell"?  I am trying to gow some lemon grass and ginger root.  I also have some "dragon fruit" (I bought) growing in dirt.  I am thinking I may try moving them into growing in media.

The rosell is a hibiscus relative that the calix of the flowers are red and fleshy and have a sour taste that make a good tea or jam.

I have not found the right conditions for dragon fruit

Maybe Tucson is too hot and too cold

TCLynx,

See my papaya are just too young for me to know how good the fruit will be

I am super interested in trying some teas

I had a bok choi that did super. I still have it growing seeds.. the bees love the flowers should be great to attract bees. it took our freeze and is still kicking out seeds and flowers

Dave Story and I have had the pleasure of exchanging personal e-mails.  Dave has grown some "exotic" plants & trees, that peaked my interest. So here is the result.  The other day I purchased my first papaya, with a view of cultivating the seed.  I then hit the local health food store, where I purchased a pound of Medjool dates and a pound of black mission figs.  Today I planted 7 of the seeds from tose dates and 24 sections of dates with a view to raising fig trees.  I found a friend of mine had a pomergranate tree who offered to give me some cuttings.  A year ago I purchased 4 dragon fruit that I will be looking to aquaponicly propagate.  As my goal is to create a viable commercial aquaponics farm.  This will open the opportunity to extend the product line beyond the normal varitety of vegtables. 

Love the "exotic" ideas.  But what if I could just move some southern fruit northward?

Anyone try growing Pawpaws?  I saw Murray H grow them in Austrailia.  Here in Wisconsin, I can grow the trees but they don't set fruit.  They spoil so quickly they need to get to market quickly. 

Interested in your experience.

my impression is

pawpaws and are the USA version of papaya. a little hardier than papaya. 

Well in Oz they call papaya PawPaw.

In the USA the PawPaw is a completely different plant and grows in temperate climates.

To grow papaya in Wisconsin, you will need to start them in the summer in a big enough pot to keep them happy till after frost and you will have to bring them into a protected environment for the winter they don't do well with frosts or freezing temperatures through they occasionally survive cold snaps in FL, they wouldn't in Wisconsin.  Come warm weather you plant them out and maybe you can get fruit before cold or maybe not.  If you have an aquaponics system in a heated greenhouse you might manage.

On dragon fruit.  I bought mine (4 plants) in 2010 and they got hit hard with frost. Most froze to the root line. I replant one to a container that is doing well and may be producing an actual fruit.  Two others are in the ground  and other one is gone.  Then a friend gave me a large one in  a container.  I have managed to propagate 3 more plants from cutting from that plant and I am ready to try 2 or 3 more.  I am looking to move those 3 new plants into my aquaponics grow bed. 

I hope you document and photograph

Good idea Dave.  Today I planted the 3 drogon fruit I propigated plus 2 more cuttings into one of my grow beds.  Also I planted 3 lemon grass from the Philippine food store the last week in Dec. 2011 in my grow bed.  I checked them this morning and I have 6 inches of roots coming out of the net pot.  I have to do some research, but I may have to start dividing them.  I also planted a ginger root in a net pot this morning.  My wife bought a couple kiwi so now I have to do some research on growing kiwi. This is starting to get interesting. 

cool

thanks for the update.

Kiwi.. I have had the seeds start, but the heat here did them in eventually. 

fun to learn by experimenting

Re: Dragon Fruit: Dave, you mention that you put yours in a grow bed; have you tried it in DWC? 

No I haven't  this was a spur of the moment dicision.  I had 3 that had rooted from cuttings sitting in a container of water. And I cut 3 new cuttings. I got hit hard by a freeze on Jan. 3rd.  Have been starting a bunch of new seedlings and cleaning out dead plants from my floats.  I have also cut back a number of the frozen plants and have had about 10% to 15% come back with new growth. Tommorow I hope to start two cuttings from pomergrantes.

Dave, perhaps you should start a thread some where for discussion about propagating exotic plants for aquaponics?

Here in Hudson, FL, it got down to 28 degrees over night last night and the night before it was 34.  Saturday I hit Harbor Freight and bought some large tarps. I had a 4 x 15ft canvas drop cloth new in the package. I put a drop cord with a 75 watt bulb and a reflector light with a 40 watt bulb in my grow trouth and stapled the drop cloth tight over the grow bed and doubled it back over.  I did similar with the new tarps I bought.  That was Saturday.  Today I pulled out all the staples let the sun shine back in.  Everything survived good as new and I had lots of young tender tomato and pepper plants about 4 to 5 weeks old. 

Dave,

That's great that you didn't lose any of your young peppers and tomatoes!

Green Acre's latest blog - The Farm Revolution - Perfect and Possible?  http://www.greenacreorganics.biz/wordpress/

Wow, its actually been quite some time since I have had some time to really check in here or give an update, but things have been fast and furious at the farm.  Between being in our premium growing season and working on system and farm expansions, its been a little hectic to say the least.  

It didn't really occur to me how much we have grown(the farm, not food! lol) since starting out nearly two years ago, but as I was working on one of my presentations for the World Aquaculture Society's Aquaculture America event in Vegas this week,(woohoo! Vegas baby!)  I actually surprised myself.  One of my presentations is a case study about Green Acre and when I prepared the slide that reflected our initial farm specs compared to our new specs, I said wow!  This is the information from the slide:  

We appreciate all of you that have joined our Green Acre group and become our friends here.    

Very nice, I need to get out there to visit again sometime.

What kind of verticals are you installing?

Congratulations Gina!  Very exciting to hear someone doing well!!!!  I wish you the best.

You rock, sista!  All your hard, hard work is really paying off.

Thanks guys!  TC, you are welcome anytime friend!  You should come by in April during the course and say hi to Murray and Sylvia.  

Hopefully I can stop by for a visit then.  I love listening to Murray, the way he tells things is so enjoyable.

But schedule could be crazy in April since (knock on wood) we will hopefully be closing on the new "farm" the end of March.

Please post some pictures soon of the new media bed and towers and all the new stuff!!!!

Whew!  We have had a lot going on!  Thanks to all the community members that joined us at our tour this morning!  There were several that either were Aquaponic Gardening Community members and also Aquaponic Association members.    Pretty cool to get to meet some of you that otherwise would just be a picture and a name.  I didn't get a full count yet, but pretty sure we were somewhere around 40 guests today.  We were expecting nearly 70 but less came due to the holiday.  That's ok, we had a great time with out them!  Thanks to community member Wes for all the filming.  I can't wait to see how it came out.  

Another big announcement we have to share is that we just sold out our Green Acre Aquaponic Training - The Complete Course this morning with two weeks yet to go.  If you missed getting to come to this spring training, stay tuned for dates about our upcoming fall training.  We are working out the details for our new training center location and an announcement is coming soon!

Our visit the other night with Dr's James Rakocy and Wilson Lennard was absolutely incredible.  Its a mind blowing thrill to have two of the leaders in our industry that you also idolize, tell you that you've got it going on!    We have been on cloud nine since.  Waaahoooo!

We will be posting pics as soon as we can take a breather.  That will likely be sometime in May!  Lol.  Until then y'all, keep it Green Acre green!    

I experienced a real stroke of luck last week.  I have a friend, Viet Nam vet, divorced, who belongs to a singles group. In the course of events he was telling this woman about my aquaponics adventure.  Seem she had tried her hand at farming a few years back and owned 2.5 acers in the Brooksville, FL area. She had a 25 x 32 ft "hoop" type green house that had been torn up in a hurricane a few years back she was still being taxed on. My friend asked if she wanted to get rid of it. She said would be happy to see it go. Last Tuesday I drove up and took a look at it.  There was no way I could get it in my truch as 1/2 of one of the rafters was 19ft long. So I had to pull my trailer hitch off my van and install it on my pick up and hook up my utility traile. Between the trailer and the truck the 18 sections of rafter 19 feet long loaded and tied down.  Their was one complete rafter still erected that we took down and removed. 

Doing a little research in "FARMTEK' catalog I manage to locat what appears to be a similar item.  Rafter were spaced 4 ft apart. By spacing them 5 ft apart and installing two more sets of horizontal support bars I believe I can lengthen the green house to 40 ft. This will give me a 1,000 sq.ft green house. So for a days labor for the two of us and a "gratuity" I gave the woman. i am about to start building my own green house.

Amazing what people are willing to part with.

Cool about the greenhouse find! Good luck -

Dave you are GREAT

Dave,

that's quit a find. You just saved yourself several thousand and that's doing the work yourself.

I just finished the shell of my 22x30 hoop house. It turned into a larger project than I thought. I am looking forward to getting everything completed inside as I imagine you are.

This is where I am at so far... coming along slowly.

Good luck to you

Hi everyone!  Green Acre has been getting some local and national attention!  Check out the news article in today's Tampa Bay Times, in the blog by Tampa Food Warrior and Real Time Farms blogger Elizabeth Murray and in the Examiner.  

Great article Gina congrats way to go.

I am so happy for you Gina!!!!!  Congratulations on the good pub!!!!

Fun article!

Its been a terribly long time since blogging and I am glad to say I have finally resurrected Green Acre's blog this week.  Stay tuned for weekly blog posts from Green Acre AP!  Today's blog - Why Experience Matters  http://greenacreaquaponics.com/?p=616

Howdy!  Wow its been a long time since updating about GAA.  Its just because sooo much has been going on!  Between managing the farm, the AA, our educational program and new projects, the time just flies by.  Here's a recap since my last post in July.  Yikes!

In June of last year, I spent a couple wonderful weeks in Denver helping build the commercial system at the GrowHaus with JD Sawyer of Colorado Aquaponics.  What an incredible experience it was.  From unique challenges in the build like a concrete slab that pitched nearly a foot across the length of the greenhouse, to raccoons and crazy heat it made it a memorable time.  But perhaps the best part was getting to spend day after day working with a tremendous group of people, from JD and Tawnya, to Sean, Rick, Terri, Avery and more.  Good times.

After that, it was time to concentrate on the AA conference and then our Fall sessions in Denver.  Meanwhile, the farm was just chugging along.  While I spent much of the summer and fall on the road, Tonya managed the farm and dealt with close calls with hurricanes, tons of summer rains and lettuce blights.  Needless to say, we were glad when hurricane season and the summer ended.

In September and October I was back in Colorado. First it was for the AA conference and then for our Colorado classes held at the new Colorado Aquaponics farm at the Growhaus.  Both were a great success and another 80 something farmprenuers joined the Farm Revolution.  After that it was time to return home for a good while and concentrate on the farm.  Ed, Tonya's brother joined us in October and has been an incredible help on the farm. Since then we have added on a new vertical install, added a 256sqft wicking bed, and built a rocket mass heater that heats our main greenhouse.  Just recently during our Florida farming class, our students just helped to add onto our existing vertical system.  What's next?  More verticals, me thinks!

Another big change was the decision to finally transition to Koi as our primary fish stock.  After the third winter of sluggish cold Tilapia, we brought in nearly 1000 Koi, 961 to be exact and our Tilapia are going to be the guest of honor at our first ever Farm to Fork Dinner event.  This event will be May 5th, where we have partnered up with one of our restaurant clients and proceeds will benefit a local food bank called Hungry in Hernando.  We are expecting a great turnout and are lining up entertainment and sponsors. If you would like to join us for this great event, details are coming soon!

What else? Well there's the AA's Tour de Tanks that we are getting fired up for next month too.  We are proud to offer tours of our farm and help the AA's mission of promoting aquaponics.  We want to help everyone get their aquaponic on!  

Also, just last week we supplied over 1000 heads of freeze damaged lettuce to Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo and helped feed nearly a dozen Manatees sickened by the latest Red Tide outbreak to affect Florida coastlines.  Unfortunately this event has killed more Manatees then any previous Tides and numbers continue to climb.  Read our blog coming out later about how Green Acre's greens will help some ailing, gentle Manatees.

Whew!  I think that's about it. The farm is rocking and we are looking at expanding in a new and exciting way. We'll let you know about that as soon as we can!  We can't wait...  Keep it green y'all.

Gina 

It has been a while, since I posted anything.  Today we just installed our 16th 4x8 DWC grow trough for a total of 512 sq.ft. of grow area. I have given up on coconut fiber as a grow media and I am now using nothing but lava rock.  I now start all my seeds on damp/wet paper towels in plastic "take out containers" from Cracker Barrel. They work great and I'm getting almost 100% germination.

Thanks to the "Suncoast co-op" for marking my products, I am starting to build a coustmer base. Not getting rich but finially starting to produce some income.

Problems.. tomatoes and peppers have been disapointing.  120 day grow time to maturity, is too much time wasted for poor maturity. I am now looking to plant only items with 75 day or less grow time. This would permit 4 crops per year. Lettuce is my big money maker at this time.  However I have been propagating Fig trees and Dragon fruit and looking to start growing papaya, for resale.

I would like to hear from others as to sucessfull products for them.

Gina and others, whereas this group is about