Show your verticals

Sorry, I am still a little confused. Very typical of me, but once I understand every little detail about something, I become a very dedicated believer.

Jay, Congrats on your "first strawberry", the whole set-up looks amazing. The NJ stacker you have in the pic, looks like it has either 3 or 4 compartments, not 6.
I have looked for detailed info on the site but couldnt find 12" NJ stacker.
I have a pretty good size garden, but hubby is worried about strawberries getting into his lawn. That is the reason for my interest in the stackers.
I also have visions of future bigger and better things for the stackers.

Did you guys start out with just a couple of stackers and then add to your collection, or did you jump right in with both feet?

chris

Hi Chris, I have two poles and I have two different kinds of strawberries on each pole. I actually have 28 plants in one stacker, [24 in the 24 pots of my EZGro] and 4 more in a pot I put under to catch the drippings from the nutrient water. I call it my underpot. giggles The plants are healthy and beautiful.
I'm a poor girl so I may not have anymore verticals this year. Waaaa.

Devota, At $150 a stack, I wouldn't consider you a poor Girl.LOL

Jerry

I didn't pay that, Jerry. I followed the example of my fearless leader, Jay, and ordered just the pots. 6 of them with shipping was about 65 dollars so I actually have 135.00 in both stacks plus a couple of dollars for "Jay's almost patented" electric conduit pole idea. D

Chris,

I think most of us "stackeroos" started slowly. It's a expensive habit (but worth it)

Chris, Sure they might seem expensive to start with but they can be used for years and if you have coir as your mix it can also be used for years. So that is just an initial outlay but if you divide it by several years you're way ahead. I have to go slowly on account of budget but I will be getting more later on. I want to try the big NJ stackers at instagarden next. One of the neat things, Chris, about stackers is: since I am growing ever bearing strawberries, I can take the stacks down come winter and settle them into a protected place in the ground with mulch over them and next year pop them right back up there on their poles. Isn't that cool?

PLUS...most of these systems have at least a 2 year warrenty. Show me a garden bed that can do that?

I have it narrowed down to the NJ stacker and the veggie producer.
A little more thought of where its going then I am ready.
I will probably order some coco stuff with the stackers.
It mentions in the coco info that you can use it as a top dressing around garden beds.
Has anyone done this? I use black mulch but this might be a nice alternative.

Thanks for all the info and patience everyone.
chris

Not to worry with us being patient, Chris. We love to share all this good stuff cause we enjoy it too.

Ya'll that was something my friend brought up to me, that I have spent so much on gardening this past year, I told him though, well next year, ain't got to buy nothin cept maybe some seeds. Didn't tell him about the self watering raised garden I've on my wish list or the self watering NJ stackers. LOL

Bob: Can the 5 gallon and lay flat bags be reused next year?

joy

Cris.....check with instagarden on this but I think the coir they sell for containers is just too nice to use in ground beds. It is for making patty cakes and sniffing and smelling and playing around with and using in containers. I think there is a courser coir for ground beds.

I got into this stacked container gardening over a period of 4 to 5 years, Cris. A dollar here and a dollar there and pretty soon you have almost as many as you wont to play with........almost.

Jay, how many planting spots does your NJ stacker have per stacker?
I will check on the coco coir for beds. Courser does sound better for outside.

The EZ grow has a 4 compartment stacker for $6 each. I would rather have 6 compartments though. They dont sell a 6 compartment.

The veggie producer has 6 compartments but is $17 each.
I absolutely understand that these are a longterm investment, and I dont mind that. I also dont mind spending extra for quality, But I am the cheapest person around so I need to make sure that I get the best for the least money. I cant stand it when I see something I bought, for less money somewhere else.

Bob, do you have an educated guess on how many coco blocks I would need to fill 10 veggie producers?

joy,

yes

Chris, Ace Hardware carries the rougher hewn coco coir lawn mulch for on ground use....This is the brand, and they sell it by the single blocks.

http://www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2646350&cp=&sr=1&kw=mulch&origkw=mulch&parentPage=search&searchId=40893582514



This message was edited Mar 28, 2009 6:49 PM

Chris,

1 5KG block of coir fills almost 5 Veggie Producers. I have a 3 pot set of EZGro's and they are about equal to the 12 inch NJ Stacking Planters. NJ has 3 compartments vs EZGro has 4. NJ's compartments are bigger than EZGro's. EZGro is straight thru watering vs NJ's is a self watering planter with a resivoir and overflow.

Now I have to go back and read the NJ's self watering part. I skipped over it thinking that it was a water set-up. I am only interested in buying the stackers so I wasnt paying attention to that. Evidentally it must be in the design of the pot. Be back in a few.

Bob, would you have a preference between the veggie producer and the NJ? Mainly for strawberries.
Eventually for snap peas also.

This message was edited Mar 28, 2009 8:11 PM

If I had not started out years ago with EZgro, I would really like the veggy producers too. EZgro pots measure about 13 inches wide and about 6 inches deep. The Veggy producer is about 21 inches wide and I think about 8 inches deep. That extra width and depth probably makes the VP more versatile as to what and how much you can grow. Plus, being wider, it should stack and stand better. The VP's look like they are made from the same hard plastic (or maybe fiberglass) as the EZgro's and I dont think I will ever wear out these EZgro's. They are tough and a long term investment as you mentioned.

All the NJ stackers have 3 plant sites per pot. I have 36 strawberry plants in 4 of their three pot stacks.

It may have cost me a little extra but I bought 5 gallon grow bags rather than the big blocks of coir. That way, I can use a grow bag to grow in or just take the coir out of it and put it in my stackers. I didnt check to see what the difference in price was. It is just handy to have the grow bags available to quickly hydrate and use whichever way I wont to use them.

Ooops, I didn't think the post above made it

chris,

1 5KG block almost fills 5 Veggie producers

I have one set of EZGro's. They are about equal to the 12 inch NJ Planters

This message was edited Mar 28, 2009 8:21 PM

Jaywhacker: Did your blocks of coir come in a white bag with a handle on it? I was careful when I opened up the last of them, and did it from the top and guess what, with a hole puncher, you can then punch holes in the bottom of the bag and have another grow bag, not a 5 gallon one mind you, but a grow bag just the same. LOL My mind went to wondering in the wee hours of the morning again when I ran out of containers to put things in. Only got 2 blocks of coir left though and one starter block of coir. Can you believe I have used 10 blocks of coir already?
joy

Jay: I'm stunned. I have six stackers (NJ) and I put one strawberry plant in each compartment. Are you saying that I could have put 3 in one compartment and it wouldn't be too crowed?

They have been in there about 3 weeks. I'm not happy with the soil that is in there, but when I bought the strawberries I got a better price if I bought w/o the pots, and I had the stackers with me so I just put them right in with the soil from the berry grower. I want to replant them with better soil and now I want to replant them even more for the space. Does anyone have feelings as to whether this is a good idea or not?

2 busy.........This is my first year growing strawberries. I have them in the small 12 inch diameter NJ stackers. I dont think I will put more than one strawberry per site now. I might try that later though in slightly larger pots just to see if it will work. A set of stacked containers with the right grow mix and properly water/fertilized is a real plant producing machine and I was just trying to inform new users that they can plant more intensively than they might think.

I would definitely recommend some coir for your stackers. They are designed to work with a fast draining grow mix to eliminate water logging. I have some coir grow mix that I have been re-using for about 4 years now and it shows no sign of compacting or having any problems yet. It is easy to remove a pot from the stack to harvest whatever is growing in it, remove the old roots, and put the coir back in the pot. I have seen some advertisements saying the coir can be reused for 5 to 10 years and my experience so far seems to bear this out. Instagarden is having great success with straight coir. It can be mixed with some perlite too but that doesnt seem necessary. I definitely do not add any of those "organic" fertilizers to mine. Lots of that stuff can de-compose, get slimy, and close off the air pores in your grow mix. I like being able to keep the basic coir grow mix as pure as possible so I can re-use it as long as possible. The savings in money can really mount up over time. After this years growing season, I may flush my grow mix with a diluted mixture of water/hydrogen Peroxide. Hydroponic growers do that to kill any pathogens in their old grow mix so they can re-use it so I don't see why I cant pour that mixture down through the stack, then flush with water, and maybe leave the grow mix right in the stacked pots through the winter months. That would save some work and solve the storage problem. A coir mix that dry's out can be blown out of the pots by this central Texas wind though so I will just wrap the pole with something to prevent that. Maybe old pieces of bed sheets of different colors. That should impress the neighbors. :-) Or better yet.....old bed sheets with flower designs on them.hehe Or maybe one of these enterprising coco-NUTS on this forum will go in business making and selling grow pole covers for winter storage. But the best idea yet, is to always keep something planted in the post. Lots of stuff will grow through the winter in most climates, pansy's for instance and sweet pea flowers and some kinds of vegetables.

The slightly higher cost of stacked containers and coir grow mix can be easily offset by the savings in later years. The pots are not going to wear out and if you treat the grow mix like you should you can keep re-using that for a long time. What we are doing with these stacked containers is basically a hydroponic gardening system. Instagarden has perfected it and can provide the example for us to follow in making maximum use of our stacked pot systems. A little experimenting around by the rest of us as we go along should get interesting.........Jay

This message was edited Mar 29, 2009 7:04 PM

I went out and took a picture of her. I have this stack and a matching on hanging on an old swingset since they look so nice.

I will check into the price of the coir. I am under the impression that you have to use a special fertilizer for that medium, is this the case. Budget is a concern right now, (I'm a Florida teacher and that's not a good position to be in) so I have to be very careful with ongoing cost this year.

I do love these, they are very pretty as well as functional.

Opps, I forgot the picture.

I just harvested these Walla Walla onions from the top pot of this four pot grow pole. No way they would have been able to grow to maturity in that pot without being too growded so I harvest them as green onions. They were about the size of a pencil when I stuck them in the pot about a month ago. They were sharing the pot with some sweet peas that you see draped around there and a sunflower that some bird planted for me. That sunflower is coming on strong and the sweet pea is starting to bloom.

The second pot down was harvested about a week ago.......15 radish's marble size and bigger.

The third pot down has Swiss Chard growing in 3 of the 4 sites. The forth chard bolted to seed two weeks ago and I pulled it and threw it in the compost pile. I harvested enough chard leaves today for a one person meal from the three chard's. In about a week, I can harvest them again. Chard can keep growing right on into the summer and be continuously harvested.

The fourth pot down had bok choi in it but they bolted to seed about two weeks ago and were discarded. If they had not bolted, I had planned to harvest the outer leaves on a continuous basis just like I am doing the chard.

Im making this long winded gabby post to point out how productive a grow pole can be with proper planning. I have so much going on that I do things haphazardly but suppose I had immediately stuck more seed in the pots as I discarded the bolted plants. They could be coming on strong right now. And I am going to poke some kind of seed in that top pot where I just pulled the onions. No use wasting that grow space. Or suppose I had a little plant nursery set up with seedlings scheduled to replace what is harvested from the pole for faster production.

Even with my haphazardous way of doing things, this one little grow pole aint doing bad........especially seeing as how gardening season hasn't even started yet. :-)

Whoops! picture wont post........sorry bout that.

2busy.........That "special" fertilizer, usually called hydroponic fertilizer, is nothing more than another type of soluable fertilizer. It is really a good fertilizer and is considered to be more complete than some others. Instagarden uses something similar to that at half strength on his plants. I have used a similar fertilizer with great results and plan on using it again once I get my automatic watering system set up like I wont it. But for this last year and at present I am just using Miracle Gro all-purpose soluable fertilizer applied with one of those hose end mixers about once a week. Plus every few days I mix up a weak mixture of fish and kelp liquid ferts with a little bit of epson salts and walk around foliar spraying all my plants. I probably don't know what I am doing but so far haven't killed anything and everything is growing gangbusters.

I have also used slow release pellets in the pots mixed weakly with the grow mix so I didnt burn anything. I figured constant watering thru the pots would use that stuff up pretty fast so I combined it with Miracle Gro soluable fertilize if the plants looked like they "might" need something. I experimant a lot.

Back to your original question........no special fertilizer is necessary, Miracle Gro will work......but some special fertilizers work a lot better. Again, I refer to the way instagarden is doing it. It is hard to argue with success.

Well, that's good. I have Miracle Gro on hand. I was looking at his website and I think I'll get some in a week or so. I have two other sets of stackers, do you know which size I would need for those? The one pound or the 5 pound.

thanks for all the help. I absolutely love this site and all of the help we get.

Now, I'm a vertical convert.

Jay,

I'm blushing.
Back to business:
I picked 40 lbs of Vadilla Onions (Granex, if you don't live in Vadilla, GA) yesterday. That's about 1/10 of the onions I have growing. There were 5 per 5 gallon grow bag. The coir let them grow and expand easily. The wife processed them so fast I didn't get a picture. Next pickin I'll grab a shot. Next year I will grow some in the Veggie Producer. 5 stackers x 6 planting spots x 2 onions each spot. That's 60 full size onions in one stack. Gota love that.

Hey Bob do we need a vertical forum here?

Here's a pic I took on the 16th, before I went harvesting

It looks that way !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Devota came up with the idea of mounting vertical stackers above a ground container so that the "drip to waste" from the stackers becomes a "drip to pot" way of making use of the fertilized water. I stole her idea by mounting a grow pole in a large nursery pot. Anybody else comes up with a good idea, rest assured, Im going to steal it!

The pole has 4 Early Girl tomato's and alyssum flowers. Devota'a underpot has trailing petuna and purple alyssum. The other two nursery containers have an Early Girl tomato each plus some more alyssum. Looks like some wasted space there. I think I will transplant some chives in there to sort of make sure all groing space is utilized.

Darkmoon, thanks for the Ace hardware link. I ordered 1 pack (which is a 3 pk).
I will try this out to see how it looks for outside mulch. With free shipping it ended up being $31 for the 3 pk. Pretty reasonable if its nice.

2busy.......dont sell those little 12 inch NJ stackers short. Last year I had some MG peat based mix in some of them and planted some Calundula (pot marigold) in them. I intended to transplant the calundula out of the pots but, like lots of things, I never got around to it. The calundula was supposed to grow 18 inches high and wide and almost did. Then the Texas wind got hold of it. I stepped out of the house one morning and the calundula was laying in one corner of the yard and the pot in another. The plants roots were so firmly griped into that gob of peat mix that none was lost. The peat mix was shaped just exactly like the inside of the little stacker pot so I just picked up the calundula, stuck it back in the pot, watered it, and it kept growing and producing a mass of flowers as long as I kept dead-heading it. This kept happening all through our windy autumn into winter. Each day I would check to see if I needed to "re-pot" the calundula. I guess I should have replanted the calundula in a heavy nursery pot but I was sort of getting a kick out of see it blow around the yard. That peat mix was mostly dried out even with regular watering but the calundula was tough enough to keep living.

This message was edited Mar 29, 2009 7:28 PM

2 busy: Nice strawberries and Bob: beautiful onions there.
joy

Jay, my husband just wondered why I was laughing out loud with no one around. Just the visual of that poor plant being blown around and picked back up and put back in.

thanks for the info. I'm excited to see just what this does.

I hope the mulch works out well for you Chris. If 3 blocks is too many for a future project you can get only 1 block at the Ace store also. Good luck!

Chis I have one caution for you..I wish i could remember where I read it..
Dogs have become ill from chewing & eating Coco mulch.
They liked the chocolate smell & taste

Tubby

Tubs, I agree with you on safety of our pets for sure......but I believe the article we read was a Dave's Garden article on having a "Chocolate Garden". The author had visited one that used Cocoa Tree bark mulch around the area, which smelled like chocolate because it was from the Cocoa tree. That wouldn't be the same as the Coconut mulch, which is derived from coconut shells.

Thanks for the caution, I will check it out some more.
One of the areas I was going to try this in was the "dog area", where he does his business.
It is only about 6x10' but I will look into it some more.
I will check out "chocolate garden" also.

The product you are concerned is manufactured by "Hershey" chocolate husks. They grind up the chocolate coco shells and it makes excellent mulch. I used it in NY. It makes your entire garden smell like chocolate for a few days but my dogs never touched it? It is not fine like coco coir but more chunky and can not be used for anyting else but mulch cover to prevent weeds. If you are a chocolate lover you will love the short lasting fragrance but nothing will grow in it!