Subscribe to our blog.We are very excited. Today we received our first Tilapia for our aquaponics system, 400+ pounds of them! This is a momentous step in our aquaponics project. Hopefully we will get our first crops up and rolling soon. Stay tuned for more updates on our exciting aquaponics project.
Untitled from RhibaFarms on Vimeo.
Our Heirloom Brandywine tomatoes plants are going at full steam right now producing delicious nutrient dense tomatoes. Make sure you get to the Downtown Phoenix Public Market early to get your hands on these lovelies. If you can’t make it out to the market, we will have tomatoes available on Thursday and Friday at our Chandler greenhouse. If you would like to pick up tomatoes on Thursday or Friday, make sure you call us at 480-632-0272 before Thursday to reserve some.
If you have ever visited us at the market or come out to the farm, you have most likely heard one us say that all our products are pesticide free. It’s true that we use no chemical pesticides; however we do employ some methods of pest control. We use what are known as beneficial insects to keep the pests out of the greenhouse.
These insects work all day and all night to keep the pests from destroying your food. While we may only have a handful of human workers here at RhibaFarms, we have thousands of insect ones. The Praying Mantis is one of our hardest workers in the greenhouse and we recently welcomed in hundreds of new inspect employees.
If you would like to know more about our beneficial insects send us an email or check out http://www.beneficialinsects101.com/
We deliver fresh product to the market every week. If the Saturday market doesn’t fit into your schedule and if you can’t make it to our greenhouse in Chandler, the Downtown Phoenix Public Market is your source for fresh wheatgrass and micro-greens. Their hours are: Tuesday thru Friday 11 am to 8 pm.
Also in case you didn’t know, you can purchase wheatgrass and micro-greens direct from our Chandler greenhouse Monday thru Friday 8 am to 5 pm, but make sure to call ahead to insure availability.
In addition to our exciting Aquaponics project, we are diversifying our products in other areas. These are our new Rhode Island Red chickens. Excess product has been one of our most important issues at RhibaFarms, these chickens are one of our solutions. The chickens will be raised on a diet of wheatgrass, micro-greens and double structured water to be supplemented by a traditional natural grain diet when and if needed. We are planning on bringing a better quality egg to the market, produced by the best fed chickens in the valley.
Our chickens are living out at RhibaFarms south near Florence. When they get a little bigger they will move into their new chicken tractor and will serve a third purpose of conditioning the soil in the fields at RhibaFarms south. These 50 chickens are merely chicks now but in about 5 months we will have eggs available.
Agroecology Instructor Rebekah Doyle Guss brought her plant propagation class from Prescott College down to Chandler to visit us on Friday the 26th of February. She found us on the wonderful Local Harvest farm directory. After a personal tour of RhibaFarms, she was convinced to bring her whole class down. This 13 student class is currently conducting their own experiments in micro-green growing as well as experiments with propagation of native plant species. Other projects include the planning of campus gardens and the relocation of a greenhouse on to the campus at Prescott College.
During their time here, they learned about our future aquaponics plans, a bit of RhibaFarms history and general day to day operations from Mark. Roger, our water expert spoke to them about water, more particularly about how city water can be improved for growing. He showed them what 500 PPM of total dissolved solids (tap water) looks like after being separated by a water flocculator. Roger also went over some of the concepts of structured water. Office and internet operations were briefly discussed by Suzi and Brian. We took the class outside behind the greenhouse to see our soon to be running aquaponics tanks and to our experimental raised beds that contain peppers and lettuce. While inside the greenhouse Harold went over our different hydroponics systems and Mark explained some of the basic features of our greenhouse.
We hope the class got some useful information, we know we had a ton of fun. If you have a class or group that is interested in touring RhibaFarms, let us know at info@rhibafarms.com. We can do tours for classes from kindergarten through college.
Thanks to Rebekah and her class for coming out. You can find out more about the many agricultural programs they offer at Prescott College at www.prescott.edu
Our friend Dr. Compton was kind enough to record a short testimonial for us at the Downtown Phoenix Public Market last Saturday. This was also a good test of our new video camera, which we will be using to document the installation of our new aquaponics system! We will have those videos coming soon.
Here is a peak of the new tanks for our aquaponics system. We had them custom built by Proplastic Technology, a local Chandler company. We will be giving more updates as the system starts to come together!
Shown above is the massively huge and massively heavy rearing tank. Soon to be chock full of swimming fish. This thing took some strategic planning to move.
Another one of the many many great uses for our wheatgrass.
Here is a real idea for those empty half-finished towers in downtown Tempe. Instead of only being intrusive on the skyline, they could help feed the community. It would be a breath of fresh air to see these buildings turn into something more useful than overpriced condos.
‘Farmscrapers’ sprout from housing site – North Bay Business Journal – Archive.
