What a fantastic day!  Students from PCC delivered two aquaponics systems today!  What an amazing gift!  The systems will allow Alverno students to grow all sorts of plants; larger plants with extensive roots systems, like tomatoes, and smaller salad plants, beets and onions in the shallower beds.

The system contains two fish tanks.  We will think about what kinds of fish we want to have.  We will start with goldfish and then think about Tilapia for later.  

Prof Cat’s wonderful students have a lot of expertise and are kindly willing to share their knowledge and time with us.

Alverno students learned new skills today, like using a power drill!

Azolla!

We are having success growing Azolla (Azolla filiculoides) in our pond nursery and have been transferring it to the villa pond.  The fish seem to love it, so it is a race between them to see if the Azolla will increase over time.  Azolla has a variety of uses in farming, so it seems to be a good choice for our aquaponics project. It is native to California.

These websites have a lot of interesting information about the biology, uses and issues of Azolla:
Natural History Museum, London
Theodore Payne Foundation
UC Weed Science

Fujimigaoka School Visit Students Pitch In

Our visitors from Tokyo joined in adding more floating plants like Azolla and Sensitive Plants (Neptunia aquatica)

Unfixing his earthbound root

More acrobatics required today to surgically remove roots growing into the pond.

Gilding the Lily

Today, students added more lilies to the villa pond, potted many bog plants, and added some floating plants to the pond!  Lots of work and the pond looks great!

Azolla added to pond

Today we added some Azolla, one of the pond plants generously donated by Victoria Chen, to the pond.  She also brought us a beautiful blue lilly with a large variegated leaf, and numerous floating plants, which we will add to the pond tomorrow!

Rainbows sprouting

Our Rainbow mix of California Native Seeds at St. Francis statue is already sprouting!

Butterfly rescued!

Students saved a  Gulf fritillary or passion butterfly (Agraulis vanillae) from drowning in the pond yesterday!

Lillies planted!

It took some acrobatics, but we planted 5 Hardy Lillies in the Villa Pond today!

 

Thank you, Class of 2014!

Thanks to a generous gift from last year’s seniors, we have started purchasing plants for the pond!  We just received -

Water Lilies:
White Hardy
Pink Hardy
Yellow Hardy

Bog Plants:
Yellow Water Iris
Azure Pickerel
California Bull Rush
Japanese Var. Sweet Flag
Golden Var. Sweet Flag
Japanese Arrowhead
Equisetum

Small Aquatics:
Parrot’s Feather 

Pennywort

Oxygenating Grasses:
Assorted

Lillies

Bog Plants

St. Francis' planters go native

St. Francis’ statue by the Villa pond has native plants, thanks to the hard work of several students!  The planters were weeded and planted with native plants like buckwheat, fairy dusters, and sunflowers, and several native seeds as well.  These plants were chosen for their beauty and because they are attractive to pollinators like butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds.