Howling Moose Gardens is back!

Just ignore 2013. *stuffs last year behind a curtain*

I've been planting like crazy for the last two-ish months, and have 2500 or so plants (greens, mustard greens, asian greens, lettuces, chards, arugula and such) moved into the large greenhouse troughs (see pic), and another 2500 sprouting in the seedling tables.

Seedlings (at a 2" spacing)

This year, I'm using White Sucker fish, which are native to Minnesota (and much of the upper midwest and east coast), so they should take the cold winters just fine, assuing I can keep the water from freezing.

I got 1000(ish) white sucker fingerlings yesterday:

White sucker fingerling.
The black net pot on the right is a 2 inch pot.

Things are growing well!

Lettuce. The dirty-looking surface is due to
a folier spray of maxicrop, which is red.

Tatsoi, one of my favorite greens.
Plant spacing in the greenhouse is 6 inches,
on a hexagonal pattern.

Things sure have changed, haven't they?

WEI Aquaponics Workshop Sept 15-16th

Will Allen of Growing Power, at WEI

Wanna learn more about aquaponics and meet Will Allen of Growing Power, but can't make it to Milwaukee? Every year WEI (Women's Environmental Institute) hosts an aquaponics (and so much more!) training weekend a bit outside of North Branch, a less than an north of the Twin Cities.

I attended two years ago, and I may be talking briefly this year. We're also working on including a tour of my greenhouse, probably on Sunday afternoon, after everything else is over.

Scholarships available.

This is an awesome weekend! And they're low on registrations this year.

Topics to include:

• Hoophouse Building
• Composting and Vermiculture
• Four Season Growing in Minnesota
• Four Season Aquaponics and Fish Care
• Micro-enterprise Farming
• Passive Solar Greenhouse Building
• Organic Mushroom Growing
• Medicinal and Culinary Herb Farming
• Using a Root Cellar for Food Storage
• Microgreen Production
• The Role of the Chef in the Good Food Revolution
• Beekeeping and Honeymaking
• Small Farm Business Planning
• Organic Garlic Farming 
• & more!

More info! http://bit.ly/OKiq4I 

New video tour of greenhouse

Hi all!

I know I seriously owe a thorough update on what's been happening at the greenhouse. But until I get that written, watch a video!

Includes progress on the mostly-constructed 2nd greenhouse, starting around 3:00, and a quick view of the catfish, at 4:45. Full video is 7:30 long.

I also went out (with my new intern, Jack) to Bossy Acres last Thursday to help harvest, and to pick up some selling and marketing tips.

Holy cabbage, Bossy!

Mushrooms to the rescue

Someone over on the BYAP forums commented on Mycelium Running in my book box.

I love the idea of mushrooms, even though I'm not terribly fond of the taste of most of them. But what excites me the most is that, as the author (Paul Stamets) of this book has proven, mushrooms are really, really good at breaking down petroleum, and therefore may play a critical role in cleaning up our environment.

So, here in the United States (not sure how true this is in the rest of the world), we have a big problem with water polluted by drugs: caffeine, prozac, estrogen etc.  If mushrooms can break down petroleum, could we find (or engineer) one that would break down drug molecules?

For those of us trying to close our personal loops (with grey water systems, etc) drug-busting mushrooms could become a critical part of our home (or business) ecosystems.

Failing that, buy my friend Jeremy's Cherry Tree House Mushrooms at Seward Coop!

Channel Catfish added to the menagerie

Hello all;

I've been continuing on just fine after the SandKAP partnership dissolved. It's nice to be solely in charge again.

My first greenhouse is in full production (although the troughs aren't quite yet full of plants) but growth has been slow because of the lack of fish. I haven't yet had a harvest, but I expect one in the next couple of months!

The second greenhouse is getting close to being finished. Two troughs are complete (except uniseal plumbing and aeration stones, and the other two are well on their way. I still need to put in and plumb the fish tanks (IBCs for now, probably custom built later) and the gravel beds.

Willie (left) and Mike working hard, supervised by Jones.

This greenhouse should be done in a few weeks.

This pic is a bit old, I'll put a new one up soon-ish.

I got 1000 channel catfish today (from Osage Catfishery). I chose Osage because they sell to the Minnesota DNR. I piggybacked on the yearly DNR order, so my cats came up on the same trucks as the DNR fish. Saved a TON in shipping!

Just arrived! Master test kit for scale.

Sorry no scale. They're 2-3" long.

Acclimating the catfish to the new system.

I put the catfish in a trough right now because I don't have a tank ready. I have a screen I can use to corral them to make them easier to net back out.

With the addition of the cats, I now have (in the order of purchase): Yellow Perch (about 100), Tilapia (about 250), Mosquito fish (about 80) and channel catfish (about 1000).

This will probably be still too few fish for one greenhouse. While I love using the IBCs for fish tanks, I think I'm going to build my own tanks, so I can make them bigger so I can hold more fish for each GH. (The IBCs are plumbed so I can easily add more into the system, but there's limited physical space to put them).

Also, I like adding fish slowly, so I don't max out the system. I'd much rather have a slow startup than a massive fish kill.

I have also started bringing on interns (it's a non-paying gig for now).

For those interns, I'm taking all of my gardening/AP/Sustainable Ag-type books to the greenhouse to start a lending library.  Not a bad start! (All bought back when I had a paycheck! Click pic to embiggen, if you're into reading book spines...)

Lending Library

The Moose is back!

Hi all!

I am very sad to report that my business partner and I have decided to dissolve the Swanberg and Khan Aquaponics partnership. Therefore, I will be taking back sole control of this aquaponics business, and I will return it to its original name, Howling Moose Gardens.

This split was amicable, and I wish my old partner the best of luck, and I hope he continues in the AP business.

It will take a while for me to migrate the webpage and blog back to the Howling Moose Gardens namespace.

Thank you very much for your patience with this!

-Karen Swanberg

It's moving day

Hello all!
I know it's been ages since I've posted. Things have been afoot! Among them, Howling Moose Gardens has become Swanberg and Khan Aquaponics (SandKAP)!

This means a new webpage (http://www.sandkap.com), and a new blog, http://sandkap.blogspot.com/.

So, head on over to SandKAP for future updates!


I'll keep this blog around for archival purposes, but future postings will be elsewhere.
Thank you for your patronage.

Sincerely,
Karen Swanberg
2/29/2012

Winter is coming

A long overdue update!

My trout order is on hold. The fish supplier tested positive for a specific bacteria last year, and they need a clean test before the DNR (Minnesota Dept. of Natural Resources) will let them sell to me.
The tests have been taken, but the results aren't back from the lab yet.

Which is kind of a bummer, because my tilapia died last night and today. Two died overnight, and I took out the remaining four today:

On the other hand, I'm still working on getting my aeration system up and running:

So until the aeration is up, I couldn't take the trout anyway.

The biggest problem I'm having with the aeration system is how to keep the PVC pipe sunk in the troughs. I'm using 2" pipe, because the runs are so long. Filled with air, those things are seriously buoyant! Currently, I'm using sandbags filled with my gravel. Any other ideas? I don't want to strap them down, because I don't want to add more holes to the liner, and I want the pipes to run underwater so I don't have to insulate them, and because I don't want the rafts to rub against the air lines.

Since my last update, I've also built my first seedling table.
The location:

It's just made of 2x4s and plywood, and it's insulated:

I'll get a pic of it populated by seedlings soon.

I've also prepped the other side of the greenhouse for the other two troughs. Hopefully, I'll build one on Monday, when I have a friend coming out to help:

With the end of Daylight Savings up here in the northern Hemisphere, I've started having to work in the dark:

And a couple more friends:

This is Geyser, a stray female 3-week old kitty I found at the greenhouse. I took her to the St. Paul humane society on Lexington. I named her Geyser, because she erupts (hisses, spits) on a regular schedule. Poor girl, she's had a tough life already.

2nd video tour, more work days

Sorry it's been a bit since my last post. Busy busy!
Second video tour:

I'm also starting up work days again, now that the soil growing season is coming to an end. I need lots of help!

Sign up for days to work

2nd trough almost online

With a lot of help from Fer, I almost have my second trough online:

Fer and Jones supervising

Getting the corners in

Nasty, nasty corners, takes two different styles!

Filling with water!

There's also a time-lapsed video of building it. Not the best such video ever made, but it's my first, so whatever:

There was some drama as I tried to get the uniseals into the liner (these allow pipes to be put through the liner, rather than going over the edge), which is explained on the BYAP forum thread Uniseal Problems. My solution? K-Y jelly. If it's good enough for Aliens, it's good enough for me!

Uniseal in place.

I also have a new friend (enemy? Is she plotting to eat all my produce?)

How many cabbages can a woodchuck steal, if a woodchuck can get into my troughs?

The whole picture archive is available here, and there's more detail on my BYAP thread.
My apologies for how rushed this post is, but I need to sleep!

More trough work, and planting!

It's been a few days since I last posted, because after my last post (which is duplicated over on Backyard Aquaponics) there was quite the discussion on the strength of the trough walls, and whether they would hold.

I'm using a modified design of a proven system (The Friendly's, in Hawai'i), and I've mostly made it stronger, so I wasn't worried, until I posted over at BYAP. =)

As I'm not an engineer, I started to doubt my ideas, but someone explained how this works, and now I'm moving forward.

Overview of the Friendly troughs

Friendly demo showing the liner and how strong it is.

I've filled the first trough part way and started planting.

I insulated and clad the fish tank for this greenhouse.


















I've filled one of the 100 gallon stock tanks with washed gravel. I started to plumb from the fish tank to the gravel beds, but I haven't finished, and I didn't take pics.

I hope to finish up the plumbing on the growbeds and the first trough in the next few days, so I'll have a working system ready for fish soon. Then I'll plumb in the next troughs as I finish them.

Then, duplicate the system in greenhouse #2!

So far, I've planted:

• Tatsoi
• Mizuna
• Nastutiums
• Caraflex cabbage
• Cucumbers, lemon
• cucumbers, Armenian
• Romaine (cos) lettuce
• Arugula
• many fancy non-cos lettuces
• pakchoi
• vitamin greens
• Basil - Aroma 2, Sweet Dani, and Amethyst
• Savoy-leafed spinach
• spaghetti squash
• stevia
• watercress
• Cilantro

Building the troughs!

I am very sorry to have been out of touch. I got a terrible case of food poisoning a few weeks ago which took me out of circulation for a week. The Dept. of Health interviewed me to find the source (no word yet).

Lots of progress!

I've lately been working on the troughs. The first one is nearly complete. The plumbing hasn't been added, but that shouldn't take long. I did it alone, except for the final bit of adding the liner.

First, I laid down the base:

I have the base up on 2x4s to allow me to clamp. I removed the extras as soon as the base was built.
The cross-bars are to prevent the bottom from bowing out under the weight of the water.

Then, I constructed sections of the sides. The vertical bars are 16" (40.6cm), because the plywood and insulation is 4' wide, so 16" is 1/3 of that:

Constructing these sections separately was a mistake. The length of the 2x4s changes in the heat and humidity, so attaching them was problematic. Next time, I'll bring in the precut pieces of 2x4 and construct the troughs in place.

And then I attached the side sections.


And attached, and attached...


I then added insulation and plywood to the sides. Each piece of ply and insulation has been ripped into thirds lengthwise.


and added insulation along the bottom. This was also a mistake.

Having the insulation above the crossbars simply leads to a lot of broken insulation, and I'm unable to walk along the bottom of the trough. I will put the cross-bars above the insulation on the next trough.

The liner is 12' (3.7m) wide and 100' (30.5m) long, from Valiant Industries, and comes on a roll.

This took two people.



Clamped the end to help lay out the whole thing:


All laid out:

(My friend Fer walking away from the camera)

Folding the corners (holy hell that was hard!):


Putting in a few inches of water to get the liner to settle before the final staple job:


This is how I left it last night before we left, with a few rafts inside to give any animals a place to rest if they fall in.


I'll add some braces and finish filling it tomorrow, and check for leaks.