วีดีโอ

Honestly, I wasn't sure they hadn't. There was very low visibility for the first month or so as the plants were establishing and algae was doing most of the heavy lifting with regards to filtration. I'm certainly not seeing as many of the larger bloodworm-esque critters, and I'm not sure if there's still an active population of those. Mostly, I know the fish will eat snail eggs, so the size of the snail population is one of my barometers for the overall health of the ecosystem. Another is the behavior of the fish: aggression or weird swimming patterns are a sign that something is off. Finally, I look around for small things swimming around or climbing on the glass. A lot of things are too small to tell what they are without magnification, but you can tell that it's something alive by how it moves through the water. And they have lots of cover from the plants and other aquascaping, so the odds that the fish will get everything is pretty low. And there's no rule against adding more stuff if it's needed. You can add actual critters like mosquito larva as a temporary food source, or add rotting leaves from a body of water to introduce new life. But mostly, you want to add fish slowly so that you don't create a huge swing in resource needs at any level of the food web, and then watch how things adapt and respond before changing anything else. It's pretty Zen at the end of the day.

They got upgraded to a large trough-style feeder with a similar roll bar once they could go outside. Could definitely make something similar from sturdier materials, but the one I had was standard feed/farm store fare.

Glad for it! Thanks for watching!

Hey! Just got Internet access back, so getting things caught up. This layout was mostly successful... We had a very long, cold, wet spring and all the squash ended up rotting in the ground. Did the separate plantings and bring matured by the time we got frost. And the deer ended up hitting the beans really hard, and they never quite recovered. But the corn did great in spite of it all and produced an awesome harvest. I think the major downside, since I wasn't able to get a steady supply of wood chips or other mulch out here, is that keeping weeds under control with this design was a bit challenging. But if you could mulch it heavily, it'd work great. This year I switched to a Hopi style of growing corn in clumps of 10+ plants on a much wider spacing, and I liked that a lot more for my purposes. Better pollination, better wind resistance, and seems to be a bit better protected from the wildlife, especially with squash being allowed to sprawl in between (as long as your varieties aren't aggressive climbers, which a few of mine were.) I, personally, wouldn't do the checkerboard design again given my context... which is lots of space but few resources. If you have limited space and a good supply of mulch, though, it'd be a great option.

@@stonedapefarmer Since you have lots of space, here's how I'd recommend a squash patch setup with minimal fertility on bad soil. It's a method I saw on David the Good, based on Steve Solomon's method and how indigenous people used to grow. Dig a hole 1-2ft deep, put in manure, fish guts, food scraps, etc, at the bottom, then fill it back up with the original dirt, making a slight mound. If your season is long enough direct sow the squash when it's warm and dry. If not transplant seedlings. The roots will find the food, which is very high fertility, but can still sprawl around it if it's too hot/rich. The result is you don't have to feed them all summer, just keep them watered and mulched well. If you space them far enough away then the dry farming thing kicks in to some degree. For weeds, just cover the space between the plants with plastic mulch and let the vines crowl over it. They'll appreciate the extra heat from the black plastic, and by next year most of the weeds should be gone if you want to pull the plastic to store or use elsewhere. Protect the seedlings when they're young, from slugs, rabbits, deer, etc, with a simple cover of some kind. If you cover with clear plastic or a jug, make sure it has holes for ventilation so they don't cook on a sunny day. Prevent squash vine borer from killing it by wrapping some flexible athletic wrap (super cheap) from the dirt up the base stem about 6-8". It'll prevent the squash vine borer from getting into the stem and killing the plant, but can stretch as the plant grows so won't cause any issues.

Thanks! Everyone totally should! 😁

Western Oregon. Hot, dry growing season (though plenty of winter rainfall.) Around 90-120 days of drought in an average growing season. Our worst year was 180 days without rain. That sucked. 😅

Glad it was useful!

Glad you found it helpful! 😁

@@stonedapefarmer yessir! 🤠

Thanks so much for the kind words, and I'm glad you enjoyed. If you ever find that magic wand... 😂