This is the easiest setup you will ever see. Its a great activity to teach kids about Aquaponics and germinating avocado seeds. Before you transfer your beta fish, as with any aquarium, add some water to the beta's water first so that it become acclimated. There is soil potting soil in the bottom of the tank, so you will not have to change the water as frequently. Please post a comment and check out the video for more Easy Aquaponics.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
How To Grow Avocado Plants and Trees From Seed
Step by Step Video
What You will Need:
Ripe Avocado
A Knife
Water
Potting Soil
Tooth Picks or Chop Sticks
Step 1: Remove the Avocado Seed from the avocado
Step 2: Push the toothpicks or sharpened stop sticks into the seed from three directions. The object is to suspend the seed over water.
Step 3: Put the seed in a container of water. Half of the seed should be exposed to the air.
Step 4: After 5 days, peel the bottom part of the seeds brown covering to expose the bottom of the pit. This will allow the tap root to shoot out easier.
Step 5: After several weeks when the leaves begin to form, gradually add layers of potting poil to the over the course of several days.
Step 6: Monitor the growth for several weeks.
Step 7: When the seedling seems sturdy enough, consider transplanting into a large container of potting soil.
For more tips and recipes, check out the youtube channel. Please post your favorite recipes for avocado.
Here is a great video to graft the tree once it is has matured a bit. This video gives a great explanation about the actual process. This video is an excellent demonstration of how to perform the actual grafting technique. From what I can tell, grafting allows material from a fruiting tree to be placed onto the rootstock. The rootstock is what you've grown from a seed. The benefit is that your grafted tree will produce better quality fruit in a significantly less time. Therefore, getting root stock started is a fairly easy process. Obtaining scion or bud would may take a little creativity, however the benefits appear to be enormous.
The next question is when is the best time of year to perform a graph. From what I can tell, the better times would be when the tree is coming out of its dormante state right after winter. This is the time that the tree will normally do its most growth. That is the time you want to take advantage of to perform a graph.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Part 1: Transplanting Seedlings into a non-cycled system.
This is an experiment to observe if these seedling will survive a transplant into the Food Factory System, before it has cycled. Cycled means that beneficial bacteria has already formed in the growbed, which will help the plants absorb energy form the nutrients rich aquaponic water.
The system is stocked with 30 fingerling pure blue Tilapia. I recently did a 90% water change after cleaning the system at the end of the summer growing season. The plants that I have transplanted are from my back yard garden. These plants had been planted to close together in the soil and therefore never became bid healthy plants. I will be putting the plants into the Food Factory system in about the same growing area. However, because the roots will be bathed in nutrient rich water, my hypothesis is that they will grow to be large and healthy, assuming they survive this transplant.
