What are my peppers lacking?

[urbanfarmer]

Oh dear, I may have misunderstood. Is there an easy way to harvest the worms? I like BSF because they crawl into a container for you to collect. Worms, however, do not share this fatal convenience.

[rfeiller]

when i first started working with composting worms in 1975, at that time, earthworms were being ground up and eaten in this country as a hamburger substitute. and yes the work goes on. this planet cannot support the amount of livestock needed to feed the uncontrolled population. a lot of work is also being done with insects, such as locust and numerous other species. for the amount of land it takes to raise one steer enough vegies can be raised to feed 400 people. national geographic reported a few years back it takes 1875 gal of water to produce one pound of steak. things have to change and change quickly.

by the way a major cosmetic manufacturer for years included earthworms in their facial creme.

[rfeiller]

yes UF there are numerous worm harvesting pieces of equipment out there. the earth worm by the way is a lot cleaner then your tilapia. they have the ability to destroy even many types of pathogens check it out.
hell no, i won't eat any of those things i am a vegen.

[urbanfarmer]

There is a lot of truth to what you say. I always cringe at those statistics, though, because they're not comparing apples to apples (the land in question is typically not prime farmland and is being compared to prime farmland). A pound of steak takes 10-20 pounds of feed to raise. There are better ways to make use of that 20 pounds of feed.

If a plant in my garden grows too big too fast it reaches a point where it starts to die back some until it shrinks to a more appropriate size. I imagine that if we indeed reach the Earth's carrying capacity, something similar would occur. I am, however, confident this will not happen in my lifetime nor my children's. And, by then we should be populating the stars. If feeding all of our people is still a challenge at that point, we deserve to rejoin the rest of the stardust adrift this universe. We are all stardust after all.

[rfeiller]

the very purpose for aquaponics, vermiponics, bio or veggiponics is for that very reason; to conserve resources and produce food.
numerous countries have already turned to alternative sources, the USA may well be the last in line to adapt; it certainly is in the world being "green".

back to your eel; most folks do not realize that fish do have a fair level of intelligence and can be conditioned or trained to do a lot of different tricks, work mazes, etc. The T. Mozambique is one of the smartest, behavior studies were performed at a university here in CA in the late 60"s for a graduate students doctorate. i was fortunate enough to get one of the pairs from the study in 1970. They did drive me nuts trying to ring bells for food or attention.

[davidstcldfl]

Basil, you might consider using maxicrop. It's fish safe. You could call it a shotgun approach, at adding nutes. It has quite a few. I posted what's in it, just the other day, in some one else's post..
minerals


UF, If your looking for some...I bought azomite, up your way, for less then a dollar a pound..
http://www.greencropnutrition.com/contact.html


I've watched a few videos about Joel Salatin. He has a good way to raise cattle (and the other things he raises) where he keeps his cattle somewhat crowded in his pasture, but he moves them often.

This does a few things, the cattle eat even the less desirable plants, keeping the pasture a lot cleaner. Since he moves them so often, they don't over graze, giving the land a chance to 'do it's thing'. He's just grass feeding, there is no extra grain and cost of,to account for.

Here's a link to one of the videos, if anyone cares to check it out...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrxmgR-v ... jiUxOJZ0Ee

[urbanfarmer]

Thanks buddy!

The maxicorp barely has calcium and no magnesium it looks like. The #1 nutrient Basil1 needs is definitely calcium because the fruits wont even be able to mature.

[Basil1]

So you still think the eggshell mixture is the best way to go? Added a pinch of Epsom salt to each plant, was not sure how much to use so went sparingly.

[urbanfarmer]

How many gallons are in your system?

The magnesium is good because it will help with the calcium deficiency. Adding some calcium is definitely needed at some point; so, I would add some!

[Basil1]

It's a 120 gallon tank.