Vertical "self contained" gardens.

Jaywhacker, I got my EzGro vertical pots just like you said. Now another question about the drip system : Do I put a dripper in each pot or just at the top and let it filter down? Devota

Devota........the main thing is to not hit the top pot, or any of the pots, with a strong blast of water. The spray stakes like Bob uses are ideal if you already have the 1/4 inch irrigation lines run. If not, cut a 3/4 inch hole in a small pot (it is called a diffuser pot) and slide it down over the conduit to sit on top of the grow mix in the top pot and then you can water with a water hose without danger of blasting the grow mix out of the pot. And yes just let the water/ferts flow down from pot to pot untill you get a few drips out the bottom pot. If you are hand watering, you can also just set your watering attachment to a slow gentle shower to flow into the diffuser pot........or gently spray all pots. Here is a pic of a diffuser pot on top of a pole of mesclun mix.

Jay, thanks, that is good info. How does the diffuser pot keep from losing all it's water right away, [or is that the plan?] How will I know if it is getting enough or not enough? I guess I could answer that myself, if it is too dry or if the leaves turn yellow, right? sorry but I need help.

..........and here is a picture of the four pole verti-gro system I have set up in a deer proof dog pen. It has a 32 gallon tank for fert/water with a timer and pond pump and distribution line running along the top of the poles. I dropped two 1/4 inch lines to the diffuser pots with drip emitters. The drip emitters are adjustable (2 to 4 gals per hour as I remember). Between the adjustable timer and two adjustable emitters per pole, irrigation was infinitely adjustable. As summer progresses and plants get bigger and weather gets hotter or windier or both, you have to adjust irrigation accordingly. Tomatoes hanging down out of that top pot can really suck up some water. Some poles will require more than others so if you put all of them on the same timer, you need other ways of adjusting irrigation. A couple of years ago, I went nuts over sweet smelling stock flowers. I had 20 of those suckers in one 5 pot pole. They got so big and was sucking so much more water than the other poles that I finally took one emitter off and just let one 1/4 line run full bore to keep up with their demand for water. I hope this gives you some ideas of how you can adapt to pole growing. It is really a fun and productive system once you get experience with it. I like to succession plant poles with salad doings like radish and mesclun mixes. That stuff just grows like mad in this system. Some mesclun mixes you can grow right on thru the summer if you mount the pole in a shady area. I havent tried it yet but I am toying with the idea of setting up a mist cooling system up in the vicinty of the poles to combat the summer heat in this area. I already have a lawn chair so I can go sit on the downwind side of the misting system.:)

Jay,

Devota.....I forgot to mention that the diffuser pot has lots of holes in the bottom and you wont it to pass the water on to the grow poles as fast as possible. Its only purpose is to diffuse the flow of water so you dont have a strong blast of water hitting the top pot. You judge the amount of water you need by checking to see how much you need before water starts dripping out of the bottom pot. You wont just enough water so that the bottom pot starts to drip some........then you know your pots are watered top to bottom. When the poles are first planted, it wont take too much water but depending what the plants are, as they grow larger and as summer heat and wind builds up, you will begin to need more water. It is easy. This past summer, I hand watered all my poles. My basic system was to poke a watering wand into the diffusser pot and slowly count to twenty on the five pot poles. One 3 pot pole, I only counted to fifteen. Put what you think is the right amount in each pole and then move on. It takes a few minutes for the water to flow from top to bottom of the pots.


By the time I got to the eighth pole, I could look back at the first pole I watered and see if it was startiing to drip out the bottom pot. If not I would go back and give an extra squirt to the poles that were not dripping. Personally, I like manually watering so that I can make a visual inspection of the plants and adjust water to the wind and weather conditions. It is a judgement thing and you will quickly learn to judge water requirements.

Are you planing on mounting all 6 of your pots on one pole? I am thinking of converting all my systems to only 3 pots per pole. It makes it easier to jerk them off and replant as necessary. If you mount a couple of pots about 5 to 6 feet high, you can plant tomatoes in the top pot and let them hang down.........no stakiing or trellising. I would recommend just two tomato plants to the top pot (maybe only one) with maybe small marigolds in the other two corners of the pot to dress up the pole.

I know you are planning on planting strawberries in your pots so you wont have to worry about replanting for quite awhile but if you get more pots to plant in various plants and plan on some succession planting, you would wont to plant one pot in plants that mature and require harvesting or replacement at the same time. Hope this helps.........Jay.

Thanks again, Jay. I know I am going to love this system. I am going to grow day neutral strawberries in this one. Hopefully be able to keep them in a mulch trough next winter.
By the way...that is a good looking system. Did you make it?

Devota.........if it gets made around here.....I'm the dude that made it.

Jerry.........my system is all 115 VAC. Let us know what you fiind out about a sun powered system. Sounds interesting.

I have a "emergency" back up solar system on my porch roof. It consists of 3 solar panels, all the goodies like charge controller, etc., and 4 solar batteries for back up electricity. My wife made me buy and install it for the hurricanes around here. She doesn't like the noise of the generator. This type system would be nice for powering the pump.

BocaBob

Getting Green one step at a time

Thanks Bob. I will start looking into this type system as I think I might prefer it to individual DC pumps. Your system is something I had not considered. Glad you mentioned it.

Jerry

You guys are quite the crew, can I get you to come fix some things for me around here? LOL
joy112854

Jaywhacker

In the first pic way back up at the beginning of this thread, what brand name is the terracotta pots in the center of the pic?

BocaBob

Bob........those are stackapots.....the original ones. I think they still make them but also have an upgraded version that is 30% larger. Those can be stacked up to about 8 high. They also come with a chain for hanging them. I direct sowed sweet william and rudibeca and pot marigold in those. Thats the pot marigold you see blooming as they have all thru the winter. All of my vertical pole systems make great seed and cutting propagating systems. I sow various kinds of seed kind of thick in each plant site and then prick them out for transplanting. If you figger twenty plant sites per pole planted only 5 seeds per site, thats 100 plants.......and you only have to water one site, the top pot. And if you have automatic watering........just plant the seeds and dont fool with them untill transplant time. All the lower pots get good even moisture as the water flows down thru them. It apparently is just the right moisture for seed germination because I got excellent germination. And talk about propagating cuttings.....wow....stick about five cuttings per site........pass by about 4 to 5 times a day and mist them with a hose attachment and they develope roots fast. I havent done it yet but I am planning on enclosing one pole in a mini greenhouse and running a permanent mist system in there for proper humidity for propagation. If you are just starting seeds in a pole you can just wrap the thing in plastic with some holes cut for ventilation. Sorry I got all carried away but I am really enthusiastic about vertical growing systems and all their possibilities.

By the way......I received a stack and grow vertical system today. It has twenty very small plant sites but you have to water each individual site. Bummer. I will post some pictures and comments on that system later but can say now that the stackapots and EZgro's are much superior.

I thought from the pictures that the stack and grow had very small growing sites and know you confirm it. They are sending me one to evaluate. Bob

This message was edited Feb 4, 2009 1:58 PM

EZgro is my favorite. The basic stackapots I like also but didnt try any untill this last year. If I had started out with the stackapots, they could easily have been my favorites though. Stack-a-pots is a forward looking company that keeps improving their products and adding new products. They were quick to jump into the self-watering craze with their new self-watering design.

Birdie
Which stack company are you talking about, If it is ezgro I would be interested.
Devota
Ezgro has had a problem on its web site, the shipping charges were all wrong glad
to see they are a little more reasonable than they show on their site.

Annie I am having trouble getting caught up with everybody as my mother board
shorted out 2 weeks ago and I just got back on line 2 days ago.

Here is a stack and grow vertical system. It has 20 small plant sites, 3 inch depth and 6 inch diameter each. The center of the stack is an open plant area about 12 by 12 inches square and it can be adjusted to be from 3 inches deep to 12 inches deep. More pictures follow to show how that works. There is a drip pan on the bottom and it comes with casters so it can be rolled around a patio or porch to take advantage of the sun or rolled in and out of the house. For my purposes, I built a raised bed for it to sit on and left the rollers off.

While this is a vertical growing system, the designers did not take advantage of a flow through system where you water the top of the stack and water/ferts flow down thru all the pots. On this stack and grow system, you have to water all 20 plant sites individually. It still looks like a handy little roll around system good for strawberry's, herbs, smaller flowers and maybe even houseplants.

Here is the base and three trays filled with good old coca/perlite mix and the remaining trey unfilled so you can see that it has a bottom in the center section. The center section of the trays depth can vary depending on where you put the tray with the bottom........giving you a choice of depths......3 inch.....6 inch........9 inch or 12 inch.

OOPS! Here is a better picture of the tray with the bottom.

Here is 3 trays stacked with the open center. As you can see from the first picture I posted, I put the tray with the center bottom on top so I would only have a 3 inch deep planting area in the center. I think I will use this system for starting seed for now and maybe for rooting cuttings later on. As you can see, it will be very easy to make a mini green house on the pedestal I built for seed starting or a misting system for cuttings.

Cute for little stuff, but you can't grow this (just picked it) in it. This grew in a 5 gallon grow bag

BocaBob

I clicked to enlarge and I I swear I could smell that cabbage!!

That is one beautiful cabbage. Dont know whether you can grow them that large in an EZgro pole or not.........but the gallery of pictures on the EZgro site has a picture of some healty looking cabbage's.

Awh Devota, your too kind

So what time did you say dinner was again?

:)

My wife just said it is the most tender , sweetest cabbage she has ever had in her Irish life.

Bob I would enter that one in the biggest cabbage contest if I were you, that is one nice looking cabbage there, you making sauerkraut or coleslaw; probably enough cabbage for both with that one head of cabbage there. LOL
joy

deleted to protect the inocent!!^_^ (me)
sorry!! I entered something here in error, without checking 1st with admin

This message was edited Feb 7, 2009 5:28 PM

That is a good deal, Birdy. I can visualize some interesting uses for that little unit........like planting it in salad doings, strawberries, herbs, etc and rolling it into the dining room come eating time and telling your guests to "Pick-ur-own".:-) I suggest you inquire carefully about freight if you are ordering direct from the company. The one time I ordered from them, the freight was outrageous so I canceled. They called me and when I told them the freight was just too high, they offered to somehow lower the freight bill. I recently ordered just the one unit I pictured and described in the post's above from one of their distributors who is located in the same vicinity as the company and the freight was $13 for one unit. Let us know how you like the unit.

Thank goodness the coupon doesn't expire before March, I'm all spent out for now. LOL Yeah, freight costs need to be known here for sure. The one thing I liked about Bob's stuff is the freight didn't cost as much as the item ordered, one reason why I order a lot when I do order, it saves money in the long run with a bigger order as you usually save on S and H. I had to get pond baskets on line as in town they were just outrageous, yet the S and H came to more than the total of a few pond baskets, so to remedy that I ordered 40 pond baskets, don't laugh, I intend on using each and every one of them, for making HEBs with lookout world here I come.
joy

Birdie I am pretty sure Bob is fixing to carry the Stack and Grow units on his site, as well as maybe another couple of brands...

Bob?? Am I missing something? I bought these a couple of years ago, and havn't used them yet due to my numerous dissabiolities. I just happened upon this thread & thought,"hey, why don't I request a discount for DG?'
Well, I have learned that I was incorrect is inquiring.........so ..........I have deleted the info...sorry!!

Are you talking about "BocaBob? Does he have a business? late learner here & didn't mean to step on any toes!!

This message was edited Feb 7, 2009 5:29 PM

You bet Birdie, it is indeed BocaBob.

Cool!! Thanks--always want 2 keep it in the family!!