Aquarium Pump Lo’i.

I have been keeping my sickly taro in my aquarium water filter to recover for several weeks now. It has worked out perfectly, but that window is losing its direct light, so I grabbed a spare and took it down into the pit greenhouse to test it on my pair of test bucket-lo’i. The taro already in the bucket lo’i have been doing very well – one variety never went dormant and the other is coming back from dormancy pretty vigorously. They are also now in the sun as the shade from the southern wall is receding. The taro in the fish-filter are still growing fine, but they’re starting to reach a little harder for that light, so it’s time to find an alternative location for my Taro ICU.

Freshly placed filter with Haokea keiki in it.

I plopped the filter on there, filled it up with water and turned it on. Within moments I had a good flow. My poor skeeter-fish in there wasn’t sure what to make of this new intrusion, but it wasn’t long before they were back at the surface hunting for food. I didn’t have the taro I am keeping in the other fish filter out there yet, so I rummaged thru my pots of taro looking for weak taro keiki – ones that are having trouble getting started. I found a pair of Ula Ula Kumu and one of my Haokea that suited the task pretty well. They all had little corms on them and would probably have come out fine after some period of struggle, but I am going to dig all these up anyway and put them into a barrelponics system so it’s no harm.

Ula ula Kumu on left, Haokea on right.

They’re now propped up in the fish filter and looking pretty good. I’ll know in a week or so how they do but given my experience with some keiki that were in much worse shape, I’m confident that these guys will take off vigorously. This is the same basic idea that is behind barrelponics – using fish water pumped thru a tank to feed plants. I’m only missing the pea-gravel that barrelponics uses in this instance, and for me the water is kept much higher because the taro I have in there are wetland taro.

Pi’iali’i keiki putting out new leaf.

Incidentally, the upland grown Piialii that I grew for a couple of years and finally decided to plop in the mud of one of my bucket-lo’i is waking up just fine and putting out it’s first wetland grown leaf. The one I have in ICU is also putting out a new leaf. A very happy future awaits these Pi’iali’i – they’re one of my favorite taros.

Once I get a third filter this afternoon, I’ll move the rest of the taro down there to benefit from more direct sunlight. A pair of them could probably be planted in a pot of topsoil mud and plunged into one of my bucket-lo’i tho – they’ve gotten pretty big already thanks to the fish water. I expect this to serve as an example of the potential that the barrelponics lo’i system will perform and am looking forward to seeing a mass of taro growing in 30 containers here later this spring. I’ll keep ya’ll posted on the progress.

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I’ve planned out the rack for the taro bucket-lo’i system. The 2′ wide buckets will sit three-abreast in rows about 20 buckets long, all 2′ above the floor on a frame so that I can run the plumbing underneath and have a crawl-space to maintain it – that way I can maximize the floor-space for this system. With the drain system coming out the sides I’d have to space the containers with enough room for the plumbing, wasting valuable space. I’ll get creative with split ADS pipe inside the buckets to control the drainage appropriately, and will have a water-depth regulator comprised of a few sections of vertical PVC on the inner drain pipe – remove a section and the level of the water lowers. Add the section back, and it gets deeper until it drains into it. This’ll come in handy when I plant young keiki into the sandy mud and want to keep the water only an inch or so deep until the taro takes and starts growing enough to increase the depth. And… it’ll be handy if I ever convert the tank to an upland barrelponics system – remove the vertical PVC pipe altogether so the water level goes all the way down to the horizontal section that drains out the bottom.

And the 8′ front-to-back 12′ wide and 4′ high (and deep) catfish tank will have a 4-6′ wide cover over it running the full 12′ width of the greenhouse and tank so I can put plants up there too. Sun-lovers like my pineapples and lemongrass will reside up there, plus other plants like plumeria and ti too. A little ladder will be built into the wall of the tank so I can get up their easily. Having plants up there will also increase the insect action in the area of the tank – with more insects falling into the water below to feed the catfish. It’ll also be kinda neat sitting up on the plant-shelf with feet dangling into the water while I toss in grasshopper, crickets and mealworms to the hungry catfish…

As I implement these plans, I’ll be sure to photo-document the process and finished product and put together an article about the project.

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Kai Kea and Pi'iali'i keiki freshly planted in bucket-lo'i.

In this blog, I will focus on catfish as my food-fish of choice. Texas has laws regarding tilapia sadly, but I love catfish anyway so it’s no big loss. Also, and currently, I’ll use Gambusia as well, and maybe even Koi. But, for food, catfish will be my fish of choice. They get big fast, eat anything, and readily take to an aquaculture system. They’re also tolerant of cold water too, even tho mine will be in a tank in the greenhouse. They’re also easy to dress and fillet too. And as importantly, the fish fella drives thru here every Spring selling catfish fingerlings and they’re not all that expensive.

Same bucket lo’i this late winter - Kai Kea slowly waking up, Pi’iali’i quite happy.

I have been wanting to install a lo’i of sorts for my taro for a long time. Up topside this won’t work, unfortunately – in the heat of summer it would dry out extraordinarily rapidly. Plus, any exposed water is fair game for the critters. My solution is to contain the lo’i – in this case, within a bucket. This I can place in a location where the heat is not so extreme and is well protected from critters. For instance – I’ll keep them in my pit greenhouse where it is cooler and contained, as well as warmer in the winter. It’s not quite the acres of lo’i that Hawaii enjoys, but it’s my own humble piece of paradise.

I got my initial inspiration for bucket lo’i from a Hawaiian resident named Ray Grogan. One would think that the still water of a bucket would stagnate and cause the taro problems, but it was worth a try anyway. I took some Kai Kea and some Pi’iali’i and stuck them 3 gallon buckets of topsoil (I mixed in a few greens with the soil – works great for my lotus) and plunged that into a couple of 25 gallon containers. I tossed in some Gambusia fish to control the skeeters around here as well as provide some nitrogen for the plants and held my breath.

Keiki growing in small bucket-lo’i.

As I suspected, they did better than their upland counterparts. Much better. In fact, while the Kai Kea did go dormant over the winter – the Pi’iali’i kept on growing all winter long, while it’s upland partners declined and moped along with the rest of my upland taro. During the growing season, both varieties towered over their upland counterparts and produced way more lau and larger corms. The water indeed made for a happier environment for this taro – so I’d have to say that little test was a success. In fact, I went ahead and dug up my moping upland Pi’iali’i a week ago and stuffed it in the mud next to the very happy Pi’iali’i. It already is shooting up a new leaf! I put the other one inside in my aquarium pump as a backup – and it too, enjoying the constant flow of water, is also putting out new growth. Incidentally, I use topsoil rather than potting mix because the taro or anything planted in immersed potting mix – assuming you can get it to settle to the bottom and not float – will rot. The only thing I mixed in with the topsoil was a few fist-fulls of weed-greens – a good boost of nitrogen but not so much organic matter that it would rot whatever’s growing in it. I learned that the hard way, so hopefully this is a lesson ya’ll won’t have to suffer thru.

Aquarium Pump Lo’i.

I recently got some diminutive taro keiki and planted one in a bucket of topsoil plunged in water, and was going to prepare soil to plant the others upland. I put them in the aquarium pump to keep hydrate then promptly got distracted. It wasn’t a couple of days that I noticed new growth on one, the other was dormant but a few more days and the dormant corm also broke out a new keiki and now I have two keiki growing rapidly and taking over the aquarium pump. That would be my mini-lo’i. Since then, every ill taro that I found I put in there. A Kumu eleele corm was rotting out on me, for instance, so I dug it out, broke off the rotten part and stuck the thumb-tip sized nub in the aquarium pump so that it was just partially immersed. Currently, it has three distinct keiki shooting out of it and one little one fixing to emerge! Hardly rotting anymore. I went and found other corms that were cratering on me and stuffed them in there too – and each one is showing new growth now. That says a lot about fish water. Even the upland style corms are doing well – they’re not fully immersed so they’re not fully wetland – just enough to keep them wet. That’s enough. And… my fish are no doubt very happy to be getting rid of all that excess nitrates.

Close-up of Aquarium Lo’i.

So, now, inspired by Barrelponics, I’m combining Ray Grogan’s bucket lo’i into an actively circulated system that will take water from a fish tank and circulate it thru my containers where the taro will be in several inches of flowing water. The upland style taro will not be fully immersed as the wetland taro – tho their containers will be capable of it should I change my mind later – and they’ll be grown in a pea-gravel system based on Barrelponics with water flowing thru the pea-gravel, nourishing the taro. And that’s the plan.

I’ll follow up on this project as it develops thru this Spring. You’ve seen the very humblest beginnings of the idea, and will watch as it unfolds bit by bit until there’s a full lo’i system and happy and very large taro. I look forward to the journey, and as much, to the end result of this project.

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• Bookmark on Delicious
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