Well it's finally warmed up enough in Wisconsin to see some growth on my veggie stackers. I use these as "salad" stackers and they're right outside my kitchen door. One is planted with all onion sets, the other has radishes, green onions, various lettuce mixes, parsley and 2 kinds of thyme.
Goldfinch, that looks great! Here are my stackers, from yesterday:
Both are beautiful !!!!!!
They look neat, the way you mounted them......and above the level of lots of bugs and higher than rabbit munching height. If my figgering is right, you have 72 planting sites on those two poles........right outside your kitchen door......and they are only taking up about 4 square feet of yard space. Now that is the way to garden!! You dont have to bow to anybody's gardening system. Yep, thats what I call gardening on the up and up
Jeannie, nice set up. Are you stackers mounted on bases with wheels?
Yup Jay, had to get them up and away from the wabbits - they just have no respect for my hard work! One nice thing about having the stackers on the pails is that they're really easy to turn, which I do once a day.
Yes, they are on bases with wheels.
Here's our beans in stackers...
Another view of the stacks...
Looking good Qinx! It's fun to see what everybodys planted in their stackers.
Here's Strawberries in our Stacker...
Is that a hydroponic set up with the tank on the bottom?
yes.. im using the tub as a reservoir, recirculating the stacker with 12vdc pump, powered off a couple of batteries, that are charged via 60watts of solar power.
It's been working pretty good so far.
Thats a great idea and the strawberries are looking wonderful.
Here is an update on my tomato pole.
The plan was to plant two determinate tomato plants in the top pot of a four pot stack. I screwed things up. I thought I was planting "early girl bush" tomato's but instead, planted the early girl indeterminate type. So it grew and grew as you can tell from the photo and is still growing. The wind blowed it over twice and knocked off 6 little green tomato's. I tied it to the fence to prevent that from happening again. I also quit trimming it and am just training the trailing limbs to lay along the top of the fence.
There are two plants there and as you can see from the size of their stalks, they are pretty healthy. We have had 6 tomato's off of it so far, 5 good ones and one with a touch of blossom end rot. I count 15 more green tomato's on the vines at present and looks like some of the flowers have succeded in making some more. As hot as it is, I dont see how they can still be setting tomato's. They get about 4 hours of direct sun daily plus dappled shade from the trees.
On the same 4 pot pole are some basil, vinca, and gem type marigold. By now, I am sure that tomato roots have proceeded from pot to pot down thru each pots drain holes. Each pot holds 21/2 gallons of grow mix and the four of them add up to 10 gallons of grow mix available to the tomato roots.
I have 3 more of the same type tomato's growing in 10 and 5 gallon nursery pots. So far, the ones on the grow pole seem to be doing about the same as the ones in the nursery pots. Time will tell.
Concerning the tomato pole........I am not knowledgeable enough to talk about the nutrient needs of tomato plants or any other type of plants. I stay confused on the subject most of the time. These plants have had occassional shots of soluable miracle gro. I hit all my grow poles with that stuff about once a week using one of those end of hose mixers. I also threw a small handfull of time release fertilizer pellets into the little diffuser pot on top of the stack. Each time I water, the water flows over those pellets. How much fertilizer is coming out of those pellets?? I dont have any idea. I can pick up a pellet and squeeze it and it pops open with a little squirt of water. What is with that?? I have no idea. :-) I do think the pellets would have been more likely to have done their thing if I had buried them in the grow mix.
The hydroponic type fertilizer that I buy from EZgro comes in two parts.........One part is Calcium Nitrate and the other part is all the other fertilizer type stuff.. I figger the calcium nitrate is good stuff for tomato's. I dont know why........maybe I read it somewhere. Anyway, I hit the tomato's with some of the EZgro formula about once a week. I have had three tomato's out of about 20 from the pole and nursery container plants with blossom end rot so far. Sump'n is working pretty good.
I have some locally made stuff called Medina that I use occassionally both as a foliar spray and soluable fertilizer. I have some left over liquid kelp type stuff that I might mix in there also. And always a touch of Epsom Salts mixed in with whatever other concoction Im mixing up.
I dont fertilize with every watering........most of the time it is just water a couple times a day in all the poles. I know that is flushing out what soluable fertilizer's I might apply occasionally. But what the heck.......it is working.
I will eventually get everything hooked up so that I am applying a weak fertilizer in with each watering and I am sure that will do much better. Although........what I am doing now is working good. If I could only remember what it was I have been doing from one week to the next. :-) But like I always say, what's the advantage of growing old if you cant claim a faded memory now and then.
I'm sure people that see your tomato from the other side of the fence think its a tomato tree! I'm surprised it can keep growing that tall. With the wind we get here I think a tomato plant would get torn right out of the top of a stacker.
My stackers are mounted on 3/4 inch electrical conduit for a center pole. I have added four sixteen inch extensions to to the top of the stacker pole and tied the two tomato plants to them. But the base of the stacker pole is set in a 10 (maybe 12) gallon nursery pot which wasn't a wide enough base to prevent this central Texas wind from blowing it down a couple of times so now it is tied to a fence post. My fall garden will definitely NOT have indeterminate tomato's growing from the top pot of any stackers unless I train them to drape down. It has been a good experiment though to show some new stacker users what can be grown in the stackers. Seeing is believing.
This message was edited Jul 1, 2009 1:11 AM
Jaywhacker: I want that huge green tomato way up there at the top, can you reach it for me? LOL
joy
Were do you get the pots to do this? This is such a neat idea.
Here is one source: http://davesgarden.com/products/market/view/6419/
I love those!!! Where can I find them? they would be great for me scence I am limited on space
goldfinch4 - show us a current picture of your stackers
jeannie63- ditto
Qinx- ditto
This message was edited Jul 24, 2009 8:36 PM
Just finished this stack of strawberries. The stacks are filled with 80/20 Coir/Perlite and Vermiculite.
The top pot is the bottom portion of a plastic bucket that came filled with sheet rock mud. It is spray painted with Krylon Fusion in a pastel yellow color. The plan is to fill the it with runners from some of the original berry plants. The pot helps the top stack from drying so fast from the direct overhead sun.
This is my second stack. I set up the first one this past Spring. It's taken me a while to adapt to growing in stacks, but I am about to get it. If only I could remember to rotate it every day....
