The aquaponic plant tank is made from MDF boards assembled with 35 mm (1.4 inch) screws:
I’m drilling a hole for each screw and using a larger drill to bury the head of the screw.
The screws are actually drywall screws and it’s probably not 100% technically correct to use these (whatever that means 
) but it’s seems like a good solution anyway, and I already had a large box of screws collecting dust so I’ll take my chances.
Two and a half months ago I planted a single potato in a pot just for fun:
A month ago small leaves broke the soil and in the last month the potato plant grew like crazy:
Now this is not a normal looking potato plant – the problem is that the pot has been placed indoors without much sunlight. Therefore the plant is stretching for the light and the stem gets too weak to hold its own weight .
I have a couple of other potato tubers with small shoots sticking out of the ends ready to be planted. The best shoot length is about 1 cm (0.4 inch) because if they are allowed to grow longer the shoots will be weak and are likely to break off during planting :
I have these cool racks with shelves that I’m planning on using for germination and raising seedlings. A couple of pots with strawberry plants are already placed on one of the top shelves:
To keep the plants from stretching their stalks to reach more sun I have installed a grow light neon tube. I bought the neon tube more than a year ago because I wanted to raise seedlings in my garage but I never managed to install it. Now I’m finally setting it up:
“The light tailor-made for your plants” (L=1200 mm / Ø=26 mm)
This is the Sylvania Gro-Lux 36 watts grow light in action:
The neon tube casing is just resting on top of the racks with the top shelves removed:
I don’t know how close to the plants the grow light has to be to get the best growth, but I’ll probably have to install some wires in the ceiling to be able to move the light up and down.
Wow. This has been quite a trip. I’ve finally settled down in this new place 50 km south of the old house. Unfortunately it turns out that the new landlord don’t want me digging up his lawn, but it’s understandable since this is a temporary contract that will last until the summer of 2011.
The good thing about this new place is that there’s a relatively big terrace where I can put several containers, and the house has a long south facing wall, which is perfect for tomatoes, cucumbers etc. On top of that, the house might out in the middle of nowhere, but it’s big. Plenty of room for a sweet aquaponics system. My girlfriend is into aquarium fish so I’m excited to find out what the two of us can come up with combining fish and plants in one system. Check out my review if you want a primer on aquaponics.
The cat moved with us too and we brought the chicken coop too. We dumped the coop on the terrace but the coop is empty for now as it was before. I don’t think the landlord would appreciate a large chicken run on his lawn But again, we’ll be moving in half a year anyway, hopefully to a place with some land of our own.
Not having my own land is irritating but I guess it’s the reality for a lot of people as super-farms are developing. If you still want to grow your own food it seems to me that aquaponics is a brilliant answer to this challenge but time will tell if I’m able to get it up and running. As far as self-sufficiency I think you would need you own plot anyway although the efficiency of an aquaponics system supposedly is very high, so I think self-sufficiency is a bit into the future for me, but it sure would be a cool thing to reach. Freedom, independence and power to the people! 
I still have some unpacking to do so I’ll leave you for now. I just wanted to let you know that I still want to grow my own food – how about you?
