Hive of activity out back

You would be amazed by the activity in Ricky Somerville's Wanniassa back garden.

In the front garden, dual graft cherry trees, grapefruit, blood orange and chestnut trees shield six bee hives. His ''fridge-style'' hives are homemade from pallets he gets from Petbarn and breaks down into crates that he and his wife, Atsuko Ichikawa-Somerville, paint with camouflage, leaf and bee patterns.

With a demanding job, Somerville says if he could have only one hobby it would be beekeeping and, last year, he won first prize at the Royal Canberra Show for his garden honey and second prize for his honey with comb.

It is, however, his remarkable aquaponics system that we are here to see. Raised in the Hunter Valley, where many of his friends were rural people, Somerville has lived in Wanniassa for the past 13 years. He first heard about aquaponics on television, then joined as a forum member of two websites - one in Western Australia and the other led by Murray Hallam in Brisbane. Members can post questions they have about the process online and Somerville has reached the stage where he can answer members' queries. See youtube.com/user/rickyready/featured.

In the first cycle to get the system going, Somerville kept goldfish so that bacteria would form colonies and live on rocks in the containers that were initially budget rural supplies stock troughs. The fish were fed on duck weed but now he raises azolla in tanks as fish food.

During the past three years, Somerville has sourced equipment from a wide variety of places. He has secondhand intermediate bulk containers (IBCs) that are standardised transport containers for storage of fluids and bulk materials. He likes Coca-Cola Amatil's IBCs because they have only been used for one thing - transporting Coca-Cola syrup.

In his greenhouse, he has six of the containers, cut in half and filled with water. Silver perch live in the tanks. They take a couple of seasons to grow to full size as the fish do not eat until the temperature is above 18C, so they do not feed in winter. For eating, Somerville has smoked some pre-marinated fish using winter prunings from a plum tree.

Expanded clay pellets cover the top of the grow-beds and worms live under that layer. Huge basil plants, zucchini, cucumbers, eggplant, tomatoes, chives and bok choy are flourishing in the greenhouse environment. Marigolds are grown as companion plants to discourage aphids. In winter, the greenhouse stays above 12C so crops thrive. Ichikawa-Somerville helps pick the vegetables and she likes to look at and cook the produce.

Fifty rainbow trout live in the outdoor aquaponic tanks. For every kilogram of pellets fed to the trout, they put on one kilogram of weight. They grow very quickly in the six months over winter but die in hot weather above 25C. In the grow-beds above the trout, large kale plants provide foliage for juicing and healthy smoothies. Purslane creeps around the ground under a fig tree. Vegetable seeds are swapped with Somerville's neighbour, who is helping him get the feeding regime right in his worm farm.

One outdoor tank in the back garden holds yabbies that Somerville collects from the dam of a friend, Angus Peden, who lives on a 1200-hectare sheep and cattle farm near Goulburn. Somerville also keeps three bee hives on land at his mate's place.

The Wanniassa couple keep chooks - Araucana for their green eggs, an Isa Brown for its large brown eggs and Silkies because they are Atsuko's favourites. There is also one rooster that is put in a dark place at night so it does not wake the neighbourhood at dawn.

>> Susan Parsons is a Canberra writer.