I’ve made mistakes in my gardening years too. But I keep trying to turn it into a success.
For this post we have to go way back to 2009. That’s when I started gardening.
Hydroponics
In 2009, I found out about hydroponics. I started experimenting with it. I had one problem: algae. I had my system outside in my porch outside where it gets sun everyday.
The system wasn’t even 1 month old, when algae started to grow. I though it was because of the medium I used. Of course I didn’t know about how algae comes. I was only 11.
Then I stopped with hydroponics for a while. Because my first system failed.
But after 1 year, I’ve decided to do a research on how the algae comes and how to prevent this. I came in contact with an American guy who helped with this. He said that algae grows when water gets in contact with sun every time.
I bought another system and started growing a tomato in there. The plant wasn’t growing very well and it started to die. I immediately contacted the guy again to ask for help. I then learned that the water temperature has to be between 21.1 and 25.5*C to be able to have oxygen in it.
This became a problem because here in Curacao, it’s not easy to keep a water in that temperature. I then put the system where it doesn’t get sun. But the plant died. I moved the system again and this time, I put it inside.
I planted a few pepper and those did grow well. So I kept growing with hydroponics.
Aquaponics
I started with this system last year. I learned about it on the internet and started doing some experiments with it.
I think you guys all remember my mini aquaponics system I had which I changed every time to add more things to it.
A lot of people told me that my system was too tiny to work. But I didn’t listen to them. Because as I could see for myself, my plants were growing great! So I kept with my mini system for a long time. I still have that system right now.
I didn’t even tested my Ammonia level, nitrite or nitrate. I just let the plants grow. Because they weren’t having trouble growing. So why bother testing the water?
Worms
Back in 2009, I went to a gardening lesson here in Curacao. There we learned about the basics of gardening and about composting. One of the topics were composting with worms. From there I got my first batch of worms. I was very excited about growing them.
I didn’t have a place for them, so I did a lot of things. They were once in a mini plastic bin where I didn’t took very good care of them. The soil dried. And it stayed like that.
When I finally got a place for them, I thought the worms were dead. But I still searched in the soil were I put them. I found a few and I’ve put them in their new home.
I didn’t take care of them in there either. The worms died. I didn’t even know till when I went to look for them. But this didn’t stop me from growing worms.
I ordered one pound of worms from the United States and I started growing them. I then ordered one more pound of them. I had them in a half drum. This time I took really good care of them.
I had them in there for about 7 months when I decided that it was time to harvest the compost.
I was excited to see how many they’ve become.
When I finished, I found less that what I started with. I thought they were reproducing. Because the conditions they needed were right and they had enough food.
I then ordered a worm factory. I separated the mature worms from the immature ones. The immature ones were going in another bin and the mature ones in the worm factory.
Till now, I have my worm factory for 3 weeks and 6 days. I checked for worm cocoons and found about 30 already! I’m very happy with this. Because I can get up to 600 worms from those cocoons!
I transferred the cocoons to the other bin and transferred the mature worms from the other bin to the worm factory. I let them breed in there and keep the juveniles in the other bin.
Now let’s wait to see them grow!
My book
I recently wrote a book to teach people about gardening even if they don’t have a lot of space.
I am now translating this book to English so you guys can be able to read it too!
Now that was a bit of my gardening years. There’s a lot more that happened. But I want to hear from you too. Have anything to share with us? Feel free to comment.
