hydro strawberries, sort of

I just started an outdoor hydroponic project to try growing a few strawberries. Just started it 2 weeks ago, so I don't how it will turn out. If anybody is interested, I've taken a few photos. Here's one

Here's another

And another

again

still more

not done yet

almost finished

and one more

Everything except for the fertilizer is a one-time purchase. The pipes I use are actually 7' plastic privacy fence posts. Found them at Lowe's for $17 each. The end caps are about $3 each. The growing medium is pure perlite. Got it at Home Depot -- $11 for 4 cubic feet. Each fence post, BTW, holds 1.4 cubic feet of perlite.
Each fence post already has 3 rectangular holes in it, on one side only. I drilled 4 more holes with a 3.5" hole cutting attachment that fits on my electric drill. I spray painted the top and south-facing sides of each post with silver spray paint. That provides more reflected sunlight and also keeps down the algae growth inside the post.
The water reservoir is a 30 gallon rubbermaid trashcan buried about 18" deep. That keeps the water cool even in August. I use a drip irrigation setup with a small pump -- a Rio 600 I got at pet smart. It is powerful enough to lift a water column 48" thru a 1/2" hose. Don't recall how much I paid for the pump. I bought it several years ago. I attached a small timer, made by Intermatic. Bought it at home depot several years ago. It has 48 different settings. Each setting runs for 30 minutes. I believe it costs $6-$10.
The 1/2" hose runs up to a "splitter" that has 6 different tiny 1/8" faucets. Each faucet can be set to allow exactly as much water as I need for each post. As the roots of the plants grow and the season gets hotter, I can turn the faucets on a little more, as needed.
One of the pictures shows the inside of the trash can. I've got the pump suspended at the top of the trash can by using a small water bottle to keep it floating at the surface. The water bottle and the pump are wrapped up in a piece of cheese cloth and held in place with safety pins.
As for fertilizer, I'm using a water soluable fertilizer that probably doesn't have all the micro-nutrients I need. Waiting to receive a supply of strawberry fert from Vertigro.
The plants are bare root from runners I got from one plant last summer. I let the drip irrigation run in the top end of each post, and run out the other end. The high end of each post is about 1.5" higher than the lower end. Each post is 5" x 5" and is 7 feet long.
Since the end caps do not fit snugly on the posts, I used 2-3 layers of plastic garbage bag at the hi end and 3-4 layers of cheese cloth at the lower end. The caps fit snugly and the cheese cloth allows excess water to leak out at the lower end.

Wow, very cool setup. Keep us updated on how they do, I see flowers already!
-Kim

I forgot to mention that I used some scrap lumber to build a couple of "goal posts" that are about waist high. A couple of sawhorses would be simpler. The good thing is that I don't have to kill my back or my knees trying to find strawberries at ground level. Plus, there should be fewer bug and disease problems with them way up off the ground. What I found when I tried a similar project a few years ago was that birds really liked being able to eat my strawberries while they could keep an eye on everything around them. But the wicked little buggers would only take a bite out of one and then go to the next one. So, now I have some bird netting. That outa fix'em.

So, how did the overall hydroponic strawberries go? I'm planning on growing some this year in a vertical hydroponic system. What cultivar was the plant that you used to propagate? Were you able to control the birds?