Awareness

Food is sacred!

We have forgotten

That it is our body's way of connecting with this Earth

Eat & be Eaten

Recycling organic food wastes

• Aerate & irrigate the soil•feed Plants & soil with there castings• Encourage Beneficial Balance of bacteria & fungi in the soil.• Worms Castings are mineral rich piles of excretaContaining masticated digested decayed organic matter

• Buffered with calcium and mixed with soil particles •Neutral 7 pH • Will not burn the most sensitive of rootlets.•Mixed with sand, peat moss or less fertile soil• Sieve, use as mulch, in potting mix.

Pesticides weedicide

poisons chemical fertilisers are bad news for worms.

Use less harmful alternatives for all situations.

Companion planting, pH adjustment, mulching, legume & green manure crops, chisel ploughing, sheet composting, slashing, strip cropping, strip grazing for root shock, ploughing by pigs, Garlic or rhubarb leaf sprays.

Encourage useful insects - lady birds, mantis, leopard slugs, cannibal snails.

Vermicomposting

Organic Worm Food?

Feed it to the worms? This is good food!

Vermiponics

A semi closed organic food system

Integrating Composting, Vermiculture

Hydroponics & Aquaponics

Using Organic and Permaculture Principles

Inputs -

chicken coop waste

organic green grocer

clean garden waste

urine soaked charcoal

Vermiposting

Worms

Worm Juice Hydroponic

s

Aquaponic

Composting

Green waste return

Liquid solid

Worm castings Soil conditioners, potting mix

Container grow beds

Non biological Wastes eg. Plastics packaging, things that don’t compost

Light

CO2 O2

Liquid

Settling

storag

e

Liquid

storage

Water

Reforming woody products

heat used for cooking, heating water

Aim

Small scale non commercial reticulating food systemIntegrating Composting, Vermiculture, Aquaponics.

Foods scrap and clean organic wastes to be composted and Vermiposted to generate nutrients for hydroponic horticulture.

Vermiponics Aquaponics as energy translator utilising biological processes to produce human nutrients (food).

Contain bio-acumlate recycle nitrogen and other nutrients so as not to pollute local environment.

Understand and use water effectively in compact horticultural biosystems

Answer questions concerning our individual part in the Carbon & Nitrogen cycle

Assumptions

• Worms produce nitrogen rich liquid and solid products suitable for growing plants, are a rich protein source.

• Fish eat worms and also produce nitrogen.• Plants use nitrogen.• I Eat fish plants and (worms sometimes).• Hydroponic gravel beds act as bio-filters collecting particles and nutrients.• What type of fish?• Commercial home size aquaponic systems take about the space of a double garage and are claimed to feeda family of four.

Parameters

Can these separate systems be worked into an integrated system to grow organic food and recycle organic foodwastes with minimal commercial inputs?

How efficient is such a system?What space is needed, horizontal vertical?Hydroponic area?Fish tank size, volume?Planting containers?Volume and surface area of casting in Vermicomposter?

Questions

What is The Relationships between plant growth, volume, tank size, species and mass of fish, size of hydroponic gravel beds, working medium, nutrient salt concentrations?

What plants will grow in worm liquor ph 8.1 , TDS 1460 ?

What is worm liquors NPK and mineral balance? (I assume it is equivalent to what goes in)

What gains and or losses occur?

What nasties can be bio-accumulated ,amplified or breed?

Inputs

Organic waste from organic shop about one or two garbage cans a week

Scraps from home table

Selected composts, clean garden clippings, chipper shreds

Urine soaked biochar

Chicken coop waste

Light from the sun

Water from the roof top

Methodology

Composting - chook house waste, weed seed free garden pruning, urine activated charcoal, processed through compost added to Vermiposter & or processed into potting mix.

Vermicomposting - food waste, soft clean plant products, composts, animal manures, tagasaste.

Liquor and Castings collected cleaned processed for -

Hydroponic & Container grow system.

Using the above techniques and salvaged recycled equipment.

Water the working nutrient solutions to be collected and reticulated however possible

Biochar

Reforming woody products unsuitable for composting or Vermiposting to produce Biochar may be a way to fix CO2. into a long lasting soil conditioner.

Activated with urine & added to compost streamcatalyses composting & heat production.

Charcoals large surface area used to capture and hold nutrients.

Charcoals process used to sequence carbon into soils

Use to capture contain & Introduce Nitrogen into system

Pyrolisys is exothermic, clean if done correctly, could be carbon negative, heat can be used for energy production, cooking heating water etc

Components

These have been scavenged where possible

reservoir - 600lt split 1000lt polycarbonate liquid transport container, only one half in use.

Growing trays surface area - 5.7 sqmLarge grow tray - upturned fibreglass umbrellaStainless steel kitchen sinksBathtubs for vermipost media based growingCommercial hydroponic trayBainmarie for water plantsThe supporting media is a mix of gravel, charcoal, hydroponic clay beads

Fine suspended particle filter - hessian sacks rolled with charcoal in 20lt stainless steel ice cream container, works300lt worm collection settling drums250lt poly bag overflow container

Two pumps – filter pump, reticulation pump, float valve Air pumps, timers, Ph meter , TDS conductivity meter, simple soil test kit for NPK.

Composting

ReformingVermiposter

HydroponicBio filter

Aquaponic

Frogs move in

First Results at a guess

System plugged in and first plants were added September 2008At four months - Slow healthy growthOverall plant growth score 6Success with management.

Added worm liquor at about 20-50 lt a week, Total Dissolved Salts have slowly increased to about 1180 ppm and stabilized.Heavy downpours dilute and scatter nutrients.

Attempted to adjust pH to about 6.88

Nutrient deficiencies - plants as indicators respond quickly -from hours to a couple of days.

- Phosphate in castings- Potassium in liquor- Nitrogen low in liquor and castings probably in the living biomass - Nitrogen Released slowly or on demand, leaks ?- Deficiencies of Magnesium & iron

Overall nutrient low - adequate for slow plant growth.

pH creeps upwards towards 8.5Collected rain water 8.0 – 8.5Worm liquor 8.5

- System needs buffering somehow- Worms like pH up, hydroponics pH down.- With buffering pH stabilises around 7.1 – 7.4 - Potassium sulphate, Magnesium sulphate, Phosphoric acid, Citric acid, Acetic acid, Iron chelate, - used on a trial and error basis to buffer ph and balance nutrient deficiencies

Phosphate, Calcium, Iron & Sulphur salts principate as sludge? Occasional stirring allows sediments to be collected in bio-filter trays hopefully allowing plant root interactions to release them for growth

Fish –

No fish have been added to the system as yet

There is a need to understand each component of the system before adding another level of complexity

fish will probably keep sediments in suspension

May help in accumulation and management of Nitrogen

Conclusion

This experiment is teaching me the complexity such a simple system can have.I'm Gaining a better understanding of the nutrients in the elemental cycle of life,and a better appreciation of the quest ahead in managing the ecosystems of this planet. geo engineering ,you gota be kidding.

There is little real knowledge on using the energy from the sun, biological processes, nutrient recycling to produce food simply. It is easy to chuck on a heap of fertilizer use pesticides to solve problems. We have been eating three times a day and most of us are totally ignorant of the complexities of producing food. It must be possible to produce food on a local basis without large nutrient input other than initial adjustments.This is important to us all now because of the problems with C02 N and other cycles.Soils buffers the nutrients to the extent it is easy over fertilise and not utilize them effectively, eg permanent.

Using Composting Vermiculture Aquaculture to recycle organic waste while producing food could possibly be a solution in intense non soil based agricultural systems.

Aquaponic SystemIt was pictures like this that inspired

http://www.ourvitalearth.com/vermi-converter.htm

“What permaculture designers are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet.We don´t know what will be the details of a truly sustainable future,

but we need options,

we need people experimenting all types of forms and permaculture designers are one of the crucial groups who are doing this."

Dr David Suzuki

http://ausearth.blogspot.com/

“ Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible."

Miguel De Unamuno -