Dear Diary

My favourite saying is, "I'm a writer. I research stuff for fun." Well, I'm going to have myself a lot of fun, sometime real soon now.

Why?

Because we're going to start ourselves on some aquaponics.

Aquaponics solves the problems of hydroponics (delivering nutrients into the system) and aquaculture (fish farming) has the similar problem of getting excess nutrients out of the system. Marry the two together and you get a self-sustaining system that has very little in the way of tweaking.

And, as an added bonus, we will be absolutely certain that the fish we eat and the veggies we enjoy will be completely organic, fresher than what you could get in the shops, and better for us overall.

We're looking at farming Jade Perch, which is not only an Australian native fish, but also omnivorous, hard to kill, and the best fish in the world for getting Omega 3. It's so good at making Omega 3 that people are actually looking at breeding a variant that has less oils in it because people aren't used to how oily it is.

Fuck that noise. We're doing the original fish for all the original benefits. And cooking it in its own grease.

We're also looking at doing companion planting for the garden portion of the thing.

The more I look at it, the more I like the Chift-pist¹ system. And I have a plan to get something out of the sump tank by growing Kangkoy in it because (a) I have a gift with spinach for some reason (b) this might be a leafy green with the name 'spinach' in it that I might not react to and (c) you can't kill it with a hammer.

...and speaking of unkillable plants from the grave, I need to cut back the mint, which is threatening to choke out everything else. Which means I will have a metric ton of mint to shift. Again.

I should look up some Mint Sauce recipes before I cut and get a ton of mint and nowhere to put it. Which solves the obligatory homemade gift for everyone problem.

The rosemary stuff was a fail. The folks I gave it to would rather have it prettying up their shelves than using it on their food. And depending on how much mint sauce I generate, I might be giving out more edible decorations. At least its softer than my bulletproof gingerbread.