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I didn’t have much outdoor space for growing food this year but I spotted these two self-seeded young trees and got the idea of using them as bean trellises:

It’s a bit difficult the see the bean plants climbing up the stems, but you can tell that there’s a bean plant in there somewhere because the leaves are light green instead of dark green. The bean plant growing on the tree to the left is even harder to spot since this is a purple bean plant variety.

I planted each bean plant in their own clay pot below the trees:

If I hadn’t used the young trees as bean trellises for runner beans they would probably have been cut down, because they were self-seeded. It turns out that as these trees grew taller they actually shielded my small container garden pretty well from the wind, which is important, or else your tomato plants and cucumber plants might easily be ripped apart during a storm.

A close-up picture of one of the stems clearly shows that there’s a bean plant growing on the stem:

And as usual – the bean plant is growing counter-clockwise around the stem or trellis. And no, it’s not related to your geographical location, i.e. if you’re living on the northern or southern hemisphere.

Small green beans have started to form and more flowers are developing so soon I’ll be able to harvest something for the kitchen!

I took a break from my aquaponics project as I was getting discouraged by seeing the previous batch of seedlings dying a slow death on top of my aquaponics plant tank. It seemed like I had missed some important point in the process of growing aquaponic plants, so I actually drained the whole plant tank, cleaned it, and installed a traditional filter in the fish tank / aquarium to keep the pet fish happy. That’s how fed up I was with my aquaponics problems.

… But I soon got too annoyed with the empty plant tank and my unreached goal of bringing this beast into production mode, so I went outside an started cutting side branches off my large tomato plants that I’m growing in self-watering containers beneath the south facing wall of the house. I learned from the ebook “How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes” that cuttings from a mature plant will easily grow into new plants if you stick the cuttings into the soil. Fortunately it works with aquaponic coconut fibers too:

The cuttings grew into tall plants, actually a bit taller than I have room for beneath the ceiling. The maximum grow height available in this system is small since the fish tank must be placed beneath the plant tank, and the fish tank in this case is an ordinary aquarium which you what to place on an aquarium table to be able to enjoy the fish without having to lay down on the floor

A quick look at the new tomato plants gives you the impression that they are healthy, and the stems and leaves have a healthy color:

But if you take a closer look at some of the largest tomato plants you’ll find that some of the leaves have wilted:

(WARNING: Oldest aquaponic joke coming up: “I’m sure I gave them enough water…” Ha. Ha.)

I have to find out what’s causing this, and even the small developing tomato flower stems are affected by this too. The leaves turn dry and crispy and turn into dust if you squeeze them.

I wouldn’t say that the submerged roots look particularly healthy:

Rasmus noticed the same brown stuff on the roots of my previous batch of aquaponic plants and recommended adding air bubbles directly to the plant tank. I think it helped back then but I forgot to reinstall the air pump after I cleaned up the plant tank.

Lots of challenges still with this relatively new aquaponics home system in the corner of my living room. And I’m still having wet dreams about adding automatic electronic measurement of pH and conductivity.