Re building my grow pole garden

Most of my grow poles have been dismantled and reassembled as you can see from this picture. This is not a labor heavy operation. Just lift each pot of the pole, dump its contents in a wheelbarrow, throw plant and root material in the compost pile, put the grow mix back in the pot and moved the pots to their new poles. I hated to kill the calundula's that were still growing on one pole because the honey bees were still visiting it but I do need to revamp my garden and make use of the new platforms I have built. I still have some work to do before I can get into some serious seed starting. If you look back thru my previous post's, you can see what the garden was.........and what it is becoming.

Here you see the platforms from the other end. I dismantled two poles of sweet peas, Killed them suckers with malice aforethought and buried their remains in the compost pile. I hated to but I still got two sweet pea poles left(one you see in this picture) plus a bunch more to climb the fence. The platform in the foreground will be revamped to look like the others and raised to the same height. The pole mounts on that platform were built out of 1/2 inch fence boards and were not strong enough to stand up to some of these hill country winds. The little terracota pots are the small version of stack-a-pots vertical system. They are scattered around now but were normally stacked 3 high. I unstacked them and transplanted or dumped what was growing in them except for some sweet williams that you see here. Those little pots can be stacked 8 high if you wont to do so.

Sweet pea blooming right here in the middle of the winter in the Texas central hill country. Boy it stinks purty........specially when the sun hits it!

I havent done much seed starting yet but I did throw some bok choy seeds in that little 2 gallon black pot you see here and yesterday I pricked them out and planted in the 1 gallon pots. Maybe they will make it thru any late frosts.

Jaywaker, you need to spend a month up here with 2 or 3 feet of snow and ice on the ground knowing that it is going to be months before you can plant anything and then you will learn to appreciate that nice Texas weather you have down there.

Kick it up girl/fella!!!

So that's why you weren't posting yesterday. Beautiful set up with the EZGro's. They will be so easy to maintain. Did you see my pics of my Stack & Grow? I can see a use for it for flowers and herbs. And lettuce or so on the top 2 shelves and something pretty big in the center as long as it doesn't shade everything around it.

BocaBob

Hi Ya Boca Bob anf Jay! Looks like the three of us have a lot in common. Hope that vicodin did you some good last night Bob so you got some good sleep? Jay I love your carpentry- real professional and I also live in a mobile home and would not mind having tables like yours for my gro bags and EBs. The construction will soon be finished as far as my part of the property is concerned and I can get back to some serious gardening. Recieved in the mail yesterday a pair of Rosemania garden gloves that go almost up to the elbows to prevent further thorn cuts on my arms from my beautiful roses and scratches from some of my tomato vines. My arms scar scar so easily! Seems the older I get the more delicate I become?? LOL
Bob -- Will you be back to work soon? You still owe me a cup of that delicious Offerdahl's coffee but will have to forgo the cheese danish as the doctor was not pleased with my triglyciride count. My fault -- still love jelly donuts and cheese danish once in awhile but it shows in my blood count but not my weight -- thank goodness.
Again Jay, BEAUTIFUL TABLES! Wish you lived closer!!

Jnette..........yes, I do appreciate our weather here. I was a member of a "mobile training team" during my military years and we moved constantly. I have lived in sixteen different states.........some of them more than once. I was stationed at five different bases here in Texas, my home state, and years ago I knew this central texas hill country was where I wonted to retire to. But I can remember such days as arriving in Manchester, New Hampshire in the middle of a 16 inch snow storm. I dont mean to be cruel...:-)....but here is a picture I just shot of my backyard thermometer and the dichronda still growing in the live oak tree.

Thanks Tplant.........I built those tables solid and it was a one and a half man job to move them. Im the half-man as I have had back problems lo these many years. Im trying to get all my garden activities raised to the level that I dont have to do much bending and stooping. I think this will be the year I start phasing out all my containers that sit on the ground and go vertical all the way. And just think.......if my ground wasnt solid rock......I wouldn't even have to build tables and platforms to mount my verticals on. I think vertical systems is the way to go for those of us with physical or age problems (or both).

And here is the strawberry plants planted in the little stack-a-pots system. I only stacked them three high because we have windy weather here quite frequently. Stackapots have larger units as well as "self watering" units. These smaller units are real handy and dont let the size fool you, you can grow some pretty large plants in them. They come with a chain in case you wont to hang them somewhere or they can be stobbed down to the ground or pole mounted, etc.

Where do you buy these Jay?

Jeanette

Jnette..........Here is one site you can check out http://www.instagarden.com/. I think this new site is more attuned to the needs of us container gardeners.

The larger white pots are the EZgro design and my favorite. Very solid pots that look and feel like they should last forever. The ones you see here are four years old. Their website is www.theezgro.com. check out their photo gallery for all kind of things that grow in them......including huge cabbage's. I grew large pot marigolds and tomatoes on the same pole this past year.

Jaywhacker: Great looking garden and I wish I had some $$ left to buy some of those vertical things but can't til next year, I am pinching right now to keep money for what I already got ordered. If you get tomato plants, eggplant plants and pepper plants from companies such as Burpees and Shumways when do they usually get shipped if you are in zone 8B? I'm afraid to really put anything outside here until March the earliest, I'm sure we got a few more freezes ahead of us here, did you know the city I live in is listed as the coldest city in Florida, just my luck I guess. LOL
joy

Garden slowly taking shape. The one gallon pots all have had bok choi transplanted to them and placed on the platform. In case of frost, I can drape a 12X16 ft spun cloth cover over them.

Im doing a little "winter sowing" under these water jug greenhouses. They are held in place with a stob poked in the center of the 2 gallon pots. I plant seeds pretty heavy in the pot and then prick out when they are ready to transplant. Im slowly getting a production line set up. Today I planted flowers for later transplanting to the vertical growing system. I planted Tidy Tips, Baby blue eyes, Birds eye and Convolvulos.

Jay, how do you prepare bok choi for the table? I've never grown it.

Jerry

Boy, I never thought this old bas........upsss......bachelor would be giving out cooking instructions. The best way is steamed or stirfried. The leafs cook much faster than the stalks so you start out with the stalks and wait untill you think they are about cooked then throw in the leaves. Of course,.........all I know is what I read in a cookbook.hehe They are not bad raw in a salad either. I have ordered some more seed for the little toy bok choi's that only grow about 5 inches tall and mature about 30 days from transplant. Maybe Bob can pass on some recipes as to how his wife prepares all that good stuff he is growing.

Jaywhacker: I'm impressed the garden looks so nice and neat too. The tables are excellent too.
joy

I saw one of those guys on the food channel cut it in half vertically and put it on the grill. Oh, he oiled it a little too. But, when he took it off the leaves did look kind of black. LOL

I hear it is a soup ingredient. Like chopped cabbage. A chicken based soup.

Jeanette

Well, I guess you could say that things are stacking up on me.:-) Or maybe I should say things are looking up. I transplanted all the sweet williams out of the little terracota stackapots and two stacks are in strawberries and two are filled with coir and ready for.............something. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

The second platform is now filled with one gallon pots. Some more strawberries, two daffodils, 12 freesia's, etc. Im just experimenting with some stuff I have never grown before. I planted seed in one of the poles of knee hi and cupid sweetpeas. Knee hi is about 36 inches high and cupid is only 10 inch high. That shoud make for an interesting post.

And here is another little mini-greenhouse structure for bottom watering seedlings.

Wow Jay, your set up is great! When can you drive to East Texas and build some for me ;)

Jay, post your mini-greenhouse picture over on the GH forum. It's the best idea I've see for a Texan who wants to have a small garden up to a half acre and needs to start some seeds early. It will be great for this time of year when indoor started seedlings need to come outdoors but there is still danger of frost and even maybe a freeze or two.

I will definitely have one of them for my garden come next year this time.

Is the black plastic flexible 1/2" water pipe?

Jerry

This message was edited Feb 11, 2009 8:13 PM

Karen.....if I showed up over that way with carpenter tools I have all kinds of relatives in Athens and Palestine that would be hollering, "Hey, me first".

Will do that Jerry and yes, that is just plain cheap black flexible water pipe (hose??). It is handy for lots of things. It sure was windy here this morning. Hope your tomato's didnt get blowed away. About those hay bales.........are you planning on doing some strawbale gardening? Are you throwing plastic over them and making a makeshift greenhouse?

This evening I boxed in the little maters with the straw bales and covered the box with the tarp that had been used to cover the straw bales since last Fall. Didn't want the deer to get the maters tonight. Still got a little work on the fence (a couple days) before it's deer proof.

Plan to try straw bale gardening this year along with traditional dirt row gardening, cinder block raised bed gardening, and the BocaBob 5 gallon grow bag thang.

Next year I will know what works best for my style of gardening and for my level of motivation.

Jerry

Does anyone know where the EZgro may be found with cheaper shiiping. Seems that the shipping is half of the product cost, $37 on a $60 order.

wtcreaux: I know what you mean there, what are they feeding the ponies in the pony express today? NY Strips or what? Postage is terrible, I think they should cut the employees wages a bit so that the consumers can live with the postage, and it's going up again can you believe it?
joy

Wtcreaux: I like this product too. I heard BocaBob may carry this product soon. If so I think we could get a better deal. Devota

Devota -- Just talking to BocaBob and he has them! Don't know how much but I'd like them for strawberries for my grandson although they can be used for anything. Boy I'm glad he joined DG. He has some great products and for those of you that have limited space this is perfect for us because I am one of you. He has some terrific stuff that can and will benefit all of us just like the earthbox people, Jungle Growth Container Mix, Gardeners Supply, Tomato Growers Supply, Johnny's, Dr Carolyn's book which is my tomato bible and so many other companies.
Anyway from what I've seen they stack neatly and you can grow most anything in them in small spaces. Same principles of the EBs only straight up. They are self watering but have to be manually fertilized. Oh well! Guess we have to do some work but I do love to watch my garden from my now dusty Adirondack chair which will soon be clean as the paving from the school construction site is underway. I miss sitting out there but have to be real careful about dust with my bronchitis and that is another reason I like the coir as there isn't any dust. Can't wait to get back in there again. I probably will be his first customer as he is closer to me. Only thirty miles or so. Will order strawberry plants today.

Tplant, not if I get there first. TeeHee

Also Tplant, with the 6 I already have I am going to use a drip system that is already fertilized much like Bob has set up soooo I see not much work for me and I can grow 24 strawberry plants in a little over 1 square foot.

Tplant and Devota........on fertilizing the stacking type of planters........You can fertilize them just like any other container. I started using them with the hydroponic ferts mixed into the irrigating water. That really works great and the plants really show it.........as proof of that, just look at Bob's pictures on the forum. One thing was really noticable about the plants and that was that they didnt need to grow large root systems to grow lush and strong.

I had a new privacy fence completed last July. I moved eight of my EZgro poles over there, away from my automatic watering system. I tried an experiment using granular time release fertilizer in the pots supplemented by a shot of miracle grow all purpose soluable fertilizer at occasional intervals. I bought the little miracle grow attachment that screws onto the end of your water hose. You buy the bottles of soluable fertilizer that just screws into the attachment. Fertilize is automatically metered at the right amount as you water the plants. I would just run this into the top of each stack untill I had added enough fert/water so that it was dripping out the bottom pot of the stack. Instructions I think said to use the soluable miracle grow about every 7 days. I didnt really count the days exactly but tried to remember to do that about once a week. This worked fine for all the flowers growing on the poles but one thing I did notice about the plants is that they grew much bigger root systems on this type of fertilizing program compared to less roots for the so called hydroponic fertilize. It is kink of like they were searching and reaching for something that fertilizer systems wasnt giving them. I am still using this system and hand watering all the grow pole systems you see in my photo's. Eventually, I will automate the water/fertilizer injection system.

Fertilizing these stacking container systems then is not much different from any other type of container growing systems. Please dont let the words, "hydroponic fertilizer" cause any confusion. It is just another type of soluable fertilizer but seems to have more of what plants need than some more commonly recognized soluable fertilizers. I dont know the science of all this........I am just commenting on the results I have seen. Im an experimenter and a gardening hobbist, not an expert so take what I say with a grain of granular fertilizer.

There is good news for all gardeners who insist on growing ORGANICALLY. You can grow in these stacked container grow poles and be 100% ORGANIC. This needs to be emphasized to all our ORGANIC minded forum members who insist on growing organically. Coconut coir is fully approved for organics. So with coir as a grow mix all you need then is an organic fertilizer and......BINGO......you are an organic grow pole gardener. Earth worm castings is one such fertilizer and there are others that Im not familiar with.

Vertigro.......www.vertigro.com......was one of the first of the stacking container companies and its originator, Tim Carpenter, has been studying and improving fertilizer's for his sytems for many years. If you go to their website and link over to some of his "technical papers," he discusses the use of organic fertilizers in verticle growing systems. If you go to the "products" section, you can see that you can buy organic fertilizer from verti-gro. There are numerous other sources of organic fertilizer out there also.

And thats my opinion........probably.............and Im sticking with it.........for now...........:-)

Im editing this to correct my misstake. Tim Carpenters info on organic fertilizers to be used with vertical systems was not under "technical papers" but was under "articles". Im attaching it:

http://vertigro.com/pdf/articles/Organicfertilizerexplained.pdf

This message was edited Feb 12, 2009 10:18 PM

Love that set up. No wasted space..

Jerry: That is such a nice way you have it layed out there. I love the tables, might I ask about how much it cost to make just one of those beauts? And what are the dimenions of the tables?
joy

Joy..........In your part of the country you would probably need to use pressure treated lumber for sure. It is much drier her and lumber doesnt rot much here so I dont have to use treated.........although I admit that I should. That is 2x6 lumber for the frame and cheap cedar fence boards for the top. I was surprised that my rough estimates of cost's comes out to between $35 to $40.

However.........Im cheap, remember? Home Depot has a lumber discord bin with prices discounted for peices of lumber, most of it about 4 foot long. The lumber has some defects but you can pick and choose thru them and get pretty good stuff. I paid fifty one cents each for 2x6's 4 foot long for those frame pieces and the top is fence boards that are 1/2X6 inch 6 foot long. At the discounted lumber prices I spent about $5 for the frame and$12 for the top plus nails and screws. My cost is about $22.

As I explained above, I am now putting granular slow release fertilizer into each pot and then intermittently watering with miracle gro soluable fertilizerl. You can buy the little gizmo in the picture which precisely meters fertilizer as you hand water each pole. four of these bottles of fertilizer is about $9.00. I have been using one a week.

Jerry: That is the stuff I got, I have two of the sprayers one in the back yard and one in the front and I got 4 bottles of spray stuff with mine too. Two bottles were bloom buster and the other was fertilzer or food. I was using it on my flowers as it is great to just push the button to feed and water them that way when they need it. Never thought about using it on the veggies. I had thought about prying off the top after I used the bottles and mixing up my own stuff and pouring it in there. LOL Have you done that yet? I thought with a pair of plyers I could pull that little thing off the top, refill it myself with my own fertilizer and put the top back on.
joy

Two great minds on the same track, Joy. I actually did that and guess what. I dont know why but it wont work. They have it rigged somehow so you can do that. Besides, shame on you for even thinking about that.!!

Jaywhacker..Those tables are very impressive..I have another project now ya stinker..Love the idea of the plastic water pipes..I have the spot all picked out for them..Protected from north winds..Thanks for sharing !!!

I built my first EB..More time than money ..The rest of the ones I make will go quicker ..I hope.. Here is pic

Tubby