Things have progressed some since I quit my day job a little more than a year ago to pursue a business venture in 3D printing. Some of the progress is possibly at the expense of said venture, but a guy needs his distractions.
Outside
Not much with garden this year, as my wife wanted to give it a try, and had even less success with early indoor germination than me. My perennial asparagus is in its second year in the wicking bed, which I finally finished spring 2018. Unfortunately, I did not design the water inlet well, so it pulled too much water pressue from the rest of the zone, and overflowed every watering, leaving the other garden area underwatered. The dill in the hugelculture garden didn't seem to mind, but never got any carrots, peas, or cucumbers to come up. Strawberry patch was pretty sad this year for same reason. Last week, I got around to putting in a pressure regulator on the wicking bed, hopefullly that fixes the watering issues. There is still kale, spinach and zucchini (which I covered during the freeze last week), but I've turned off the sprinkler system for the winter.
There's been some turnover in the tree department, since last I reported here. Currently there are a number of raspberry and blackberry bushes with quite modest yields, probably due to inconsistent watering. The peach tree I planted when we bought the place has had bumper yields two years in a row now, narrowly escaping (in part due possibly to my use of ropelights in the spring) the annual Mother's Day snow strom we seem to get every May. My plum tree died back a few years ago, but came back pretty strong this year from the root stock, so at least I have something to graft onto. Same story with an ornamental cherry tree. However, I've only had success in grafting one apple branch (of dozens tried) onto one of the crab apple trees. No fruit this year, due to the May ice storm, but got about five apples last year. Only one of several paw paws trees I've tried has taken. I've yet to see any fruit from it, although I did get a few blossoms the last two years. Chinese chestnut tree seems to die back ever winter and come back in summer from root stock. Same thing happened to the mulberry tree I planted last year. Of several evergreens I've planted along back fence in an attempt to block the sprayed poisons used by my sui/insecti/fungi/cidal neighbors, only one pine has survived. I think it's likely a watering problem. I just don't get out enough in the winter to pee on the trees back there... . The asian pear tree also provided us a bumper crop this year. Still a couple bowls of asian pears in the kitchen which we had to pick a little early due to the freeze we had last week. Both grape vines fruited moderately. Need more trellis for them to spread more.
Nectarine and sour cherry tree were both wiped out by fireblight this year. Since I've adopted a low sugar diet, I'm thinking about planting a nut tree of some kind, perhaps walnut. Next spring. May give Chinese apricot another try as well after I figure out how to cleanse fireblight.
Was not able to catch a bee swarm this year or last. But at least I've seen some honeybees buzzing the mint and oregano. I have two empty top bar hives.
Inside
I am going to try my hand at indoor BSF again this winter, should get the larvae by the end of this week I hope (don't know if they'll survive the trip otherwise). Meal worms are still going strong, but it's a manual process getting them to the fish tank. The BSF should do better self harvesting if I can keep them fed enough.
I'm also building a duckweed corral to provide a timed release of duckweed to the fish, while preventing them from overgrazing it. The tilapia are getting big on the meal worms and left over rice I throw in once a week or so. They're probably pretty confident in their survival as I remain quite averse to the labor of fish cleaning. It's probably been at least a year since I last ate any. Once my daughter is old enough to wield a fillet knife, they should worry though. There are a couple of tilapia fry in the sump, so I'm sure there's still at least one female in the main FT. There are one or two crawdads in the sump as well, so those fry will need to watch themselves. The last time I discovered fry (about 4 years ago), I managed to grow one out big enough to put into the main FT.
The grow bed still has cabbage, some kale and chives. I tried transplanting 3 of 4 tomato plants to the garden. One survived, but never got any fruit. The one still in the grown bed is looking straggly and also gave no fruit. This is about the 3rd time I've failed with tomatoes, so I think I'll leave any future tomato husbandry to my wife. What I'm excited about is that I have three mangroves sprouting. Hello brine shrimp -ponics (asfter I finish a couple more projects and grow out those mangroves a bit.
Finally fixed my controller system and installed a couple of flow sensors and a camera. The best thing is the bluetooth hose timer that I can now use my smartphone to add water to the fish tank every week. I lose about 5 gal a week due to evaporation/transpiration, and had been filling a 5 gal bucket up to do the top off for the last 5 years. Tried the direct hose thing once. Flooded my basement (thankfully before I finished it) but I learned that lesson. Doing the bucket brigade, I still managed to leave the water running on far too many occasions while filling buckets, but at least that water went down the drain, and not on the floor. The hose timer is controlled with same software as the outdoor sprinkler system, and lets directly into my fishtank for a specified time on whatever schedule I like. It also measures the flow rate. The FT camera is conveniently positioned to observe.
I'm also starting a new closed minihab but playing with lung designs, to vary the internal pressure on a daily basis to precipitate rain and create a tide. Aside from making it rain, this will give a chance to play with mass transfer of run off mineral sediments. I expect there'll be more on this later.