Update on my grow pole garden

I have added automatic watering for my grow poles. I have 40 pots on the grow poles so far and 50 more to be added. This is a photo of the main doing's of the watering system. I started out with a four outlet manifold and to one of the outlets you see in sequence......a back-up preventer valve, a pressure regulator, a filter and a 3/4 to 1/2 inch adapter. The filter is that big lumpy thingy hanging down. I just realized as I took the picture that it needs to be rotated to the top. If not, water will collect in it and on a below freezing night, it will go bust. Water will be able to drain out of it if it is mounted on top. Im thinking I need to install a drain valve at the lowest point in the system so I can drain the whole thing before freezing weather. I havent added a timer yet, just turn on the water for about 2 minutes and shut it off.

If you look close, you can see the water flowing out of the little 1/4 inch line. I dont see any reason to add any drippers to the system at this time. All the grow poles will have four pots on them. The poles with the largest and most water hungry plants growing on them will determine how long I leave the water turned on. Later on this summer I will add adjustable drippers so that I can control the amount of water each individual pole gets but right now it is not a big problem.

I have added quite a few of the little NJ stackers to my garden. Right now I am just using them for seed germination. When the seeds germinate and grow to transplant size, I can just lift that little pot and carry it around to the grow poles where I wont to plant them. I am experimenting with lots of Nemesia, Nemophilia, Osteospermum, convovulus, alyssum and some vegetables like bok choi, chard, brussel sprouts, tomato's etc. Since I cant lay claim to being a professional gardener, especially with this new grow pole type of gardening, everything is still one big experiment.

Isn't it fun? I like your water system but I didn't imagine you might have freezes there this time of year. We still have about 3 weeks to worry with that.
With all you're growing you will have to open a veggie and flower stand or a soup kitchen. LOL

D,
You have a dmail....

No I dont got no Dmail. Did you punch the send buttom?

Not you, J, me, D

OK, D, J. Was just wondering......why she wonts to talk to you rather than me.........I feel hurt......not to mention pain and mental anquish. I probably wont talk to her now........even if she does Dmail me.

J,
you ain't got no dmail.

Dont tell me I dont know how to grow no nicotina. Their seeds got loose in all my grow mix from last year. I must have killed a thousand of them so far but my son talked me into letting this one survive. This thing is a monster........but it smells nice at nighttime.

Sweet peas are starting to get on a roll. More blooms show up every day. These are growing in just two stacked pots.

This is Devota's idea that she devised and patented.......mounting a grow pole in an underpot so excess drips from the grow pole is not wasted. I have four early grow tomatoes and some alyssum plus an empty pot on this pole. Still havent figgered out what to plant in Devota's underpot.

Here is my version of a designer flower pole, petunias, alyssum and dusty miller. OK. OK, so I dont know from nothing about floral designs!!

And here is the vegetable pole......9 brussel sprout plants plus some sweet alyssum to pretty up the pole and stink nice.

Mornin' Jay. What is the name of the viscious little animal at the bottom of the last pic?
Does the Dusty Miller have any problem with all the water?
I wish you would plant some viney kind of things, like sweet peas in Devota's underpot.

I started up to the nursery to buy some viney stuff for the underpot so I would have some instant color there but got rained out.

About the dusty miller in the grow pole. This is my first year to plant that in the grow pole and I just grabbed it for some gray color. It doesn't seem to mind its new home at all. I wish I had kept notes on all the stuff I have grown in grow poles over the last 4 to 5 years but I didnt. Ignorance is bliss......If I dont know that certain plants do not like "wet feet", I can just grab any thing and stick it in there and see how it does. As Gomer Pyle used to say......Surprise, surprise, surprise! It seems like all plants like a nice moist grow mix to grow in......what they dont like is being drowned in water or suffocated for air. I read what garden writers say about some plants not liking wet feet or "preferring dry conditions" and while all that may be true, you have to look at it in the context of what conditions you are growing your plants in. The type of grow mix we are (or should be) using in these grow poles is fast draining and filled with air pockets. Shortly after you flood them with water/fertilizer, the excess moisture drains off and the plants will have a reasonable amount of moisture and air to their roots. If you are using the right watering schedule for the plants in grow poles, they wont have wet feet. And even those that can normally grow in dry conditions if forced to, really show their appreciation for the better conditions you can provide in a grow pole.

After having said all that, let me add some words of caution. You can water too frequently as well as not often enough. My weather conditions this spring has tended to be some morning fog mixed with overcast days and a few days of a sunny 70 degrees. My strawberries in the small original NJ stackers were showing some sign of over-watering (the bronze leaf syndrome) so I am testing each day with a moisture meter and hand watering. Once we get into a steady run of warmer weather, I can go to an automatic watering set up to keep the poles properly watered for average conditions. When weather conditions change, I can grab the moisture meter, check things out, and water accordingly. As with all container type gardening, a moisture meter is an essential tool. But with grow poles, we dont have to bend over or stoop down to use them. :-)

If you are overwatering in a drain through grow pole system like the EZgro poles, it will show up on the plants in the bottom pot first. Being on the bottom, it will be the last pot to drain between waterings. Or better yet you will notice it with a five dollar moisture meter first before plants are effected.

I have sure been lucky these past few years. Everything just seemed to grow good for me in the grow poles. I was just about convinced that I couldn't over-water my grow poles. But this spring's erratic temperatures and rain, plus trying to grow strawberries for the first time, has taught me to pay a little closer attention to the combination of weather and watering.

Doggone it, Devota, you always set me off on a rant. By the way, the ranch guard dog is named Little Bit. That is one vicious animal.

Here is my strawberries with a moisture meter stuck in them. We had a heavy rain awhile ago and my EZgro poles are mostly reading 2 on the top pots and3 to 4 on the bottom pots.

"you always set me off on a rant." That's my job, Jay. I am the rant provoker.

Good coverage about watering a gro pole too. I hadn't thought about over watering because of the very fact that it drains well. Still, with the spring rain we get, I am more concerned about the rain washing the nutrients out of the coir mix... hmm... I'm guessing that it's a win/win situation.

Jay, is the nature of grow poles such that the bottom one or two pots will always be wetter than the top one or two pots? Does this mean plants requiring less water should be at the top and plants requiring a little more water at the bottom? Or, does it mean that the bottom pots need a growing medium that drains faster than the top pots?

Jerry

Jerry......I do not mean to make it sound like a problem Jerry, just a fact to be aware of during periods of really erratic weather.......like you and I have had lately. This is the only year out of five that I have noticed any effect from it. I think that is because I got an earlier start with the grow poles this year compared to previous years plus this variable early spring cool wet weather. Also....I think the strawberries I am growing for the first time are more particular to wet conditions. None of the other plants in the twelve EZgro poles have shown any symptoms of over or under watering. Maybe I have been lucky but every other year I have just not had any watering problems. I do try to time my watering out so that the poles can thoroughly drain between watering though. Right now, Im not using top watering to the stacks. I just walk around with the moisture meter and a garden hose. Im watering each individual pot with a really gentle spray as needed. Most of the plants are small now. When they get bigger and the weather gets hotter I will probably have to set the automatic top watering system for twice a day. I have had tomato's on a pole that needed watering three times a day so I would let the automatic system hit it twice and I will pass by and give it an extra squirt as it needs it. This grow poling is pretty easy and fun. The plants are right up there where you can go eyeball to eyeball with them, sniff them, poke and punch them and, if you are so inclined (like some people we know) talk to them. No stooping bending and squatting either.

The bottom pot of a stack will always tend to stay wetter for slightly longer than the others because all the water from the top pots is slowly draining through the bottom pot. The stack just naturally tends to dry out from the top down when top watering. This has never been a problem for me as my grow mix, even when the moisture meter reads high, is still draining and providing the plants roots with oxygen.

It would just get too tricky trying to vary the type of grow mix in different pots on a stack and trying to vary what plants go in what pot.

Remember a week or so ago when we had 4 to 5 solid days of rain and cool weather? I think that is what caused my strawberries a little problem. They are fine now. They turned a deep dark green when I hit all my plants with a weak foliar spray of Medina foliar spray mixed in with a little epsom salt. I use a weak solution of fish/kelp spray now and then too. The plants seem to like all that stuff. Since I dont really know what the heck I am doing, I use pretty weak solutions so I dont kill everything with one goofy misstake.:-)

Jay: Those are some huge looking strawberries there. Too much water is no good either, there is some green moldy stuff that destroyed some of my plants from too much water growing in the coir had to dump them earlier. We are getting lots of rain too. Here when it rains, it's a constant all day thing, not like in south Florida, where the heavens just open up and dump all the water they need at once and then shut right back up again, with no warning, we get plenty of warning here in this part of Florida, but it is a constant thing here.
joy

Four solid days of cool rainy weather slowed down all my plants but only the strawberries showed a little stress from too much water. Dont get the idea that it was the coir that caused a problem, Joy. Just think what a sorry soupy mess the strawberries would have been in if planted in the ground where drainage wasn't good.

Jaywhacker: The Lord has been working this one, I got the flu, so am sticking indoors a lot with all this rain, had to run and peek though, the rain is doing everything really well. Got more weeds to pull naturally; but now it actually looks like I might have some grass coming up too.
joy

I have built two new platforms and yesterday, I recieved 50 more EZgro pots. If I use 4 pots per pole, each platform will have 16 pots. With five platforms with 16 pots each, that will make a total of 80 pots on the platforms. With each pot having 4 plant sites, that is growing space for 320 plants. Not bad for the amount of yard space I am using. I could even have the platforms closer together but I like having them about 5 feet apart so I can easily work around them. I have a total of 90 EZgro pots but I have some older, smaller platforms to mount the extra's on.

Another forum member came up with the idea of mounting a grow pole above a container so the fertilizer/water dripping from the pole would not be wasted. I copied it using a large nursery container.

The grow pole has 4 early girl tomato's and some alyssum flowers. The "underpot" has trailing petuna's and purple alyssums. The other two pots have an early girl tomato each plus some more alyssums.

This message was edited Mar 29, 2009 8:20 PM

Jay: You have been abusy beaver and it looks so beautiful too. Wow, you are ready for a famine in the land aren't you?
joy

Love those flowery underpots Jay.

Devota, if someone misspells "underpots", we are both in trouble.

I got 50 more EZgro pots in and have mounted 30 of them on the platforms. The garden expandeth forthwith.

I'm a bit jealous there, Jay. All those stacks. What will you ever put in all of them?

The 100 plant stacked pot platform. 36 strawberries pumping strawberries from the little Nancy Jane stacked containers (terracotta) in the middle of this platform. 64 plants growing on the 4 poles. I could add two more pots per pole for another 32 plants.........but why get greedy. On this platform is a mixture of brussel sprouts, alyssum, freesia, petunia, dusty miller and dianthus......plus the strawberries of course. Oh......forgot....I stuck some extra little phlox plants in with the freesia.

Here is a view from the opposite corner of my fenced in area. I have five each 4 pot NJ stackers sitting on that one platform. Im just using them as a place to direct seed some flower plants for now. Once I transplant all that stuff out of them, I have to decide where to put them and how to mount them. I have a 3/8 inch wooden dowel running doen thru them right now. The bottom pot locks onto the big saucer on the bottom and the dowell helps lock the pots together. I guess I could screw that saucer to the platform and call that permanent. We have had some terrific gusty winds today and so far they have not blown over.

Here is an update on that sunflower growing out of the top of one of my grow poles. It was probably planted by some bird. You can almost see sunflowers growing day by day. The sunflowers I planted in containers last year did not grow to the height advertised and I expect this one to top out at about 3 to 4 feet. It is already starting to form a bud on top.

Devota........I have lots of seed planted in the NJ stackers, plus some 4 inch pots. The cool rainy weather a couple of weeks ago sure slowed them down but I am starting to get some germination and growth now that we are getting some sunshine. I will probably run out of plant sites if I dont get hit with some kind of health problem to slow me down. Dont forget, I have 80 more plant sites on the verti-gro stackers in the big dog pen on the other side of my lot. Yesterday, I transplanted 12 African Daisies (Osteospermum) into the EZgro's plus some alyssum. I have about 30 more almost ready to transplant. Im using the Alyssum to fill almost half the plant sites. I like the smell. If I need those sites for something later, the alyssum can just be jerked out and stuck in some nursery pot with something else. I have lots of vegetable seed I could plant but probably wont. Im not much on vegetable farming unless it involves harvesting frozen vege's from the grocery market freezers. I may try some vegetables just to see what they will do though.

I overwintered some biennials like sweet williams and gallardia you see in the photo. Sweet william is beginning to bloom and smells nice.

My objective is to get almost completely away from nursery container gardening and have everything, including seed starting, in the grow poles. I ain't getting any younger and these larger nursery containers are heavy to work with. I can sit 1 and 2 gallon containers on the grow pole platforms and grow some stuff in those though.

You d man.

Jaywhacker: You got help with all those? I thought I was getting carried away, almost have no back yard left now. LOL
joy

Joy.......Your back yard seems much bigger than mine. My privacy fence only fenced in a 60x60 ft square area. And it is beginning to fill up but my plan is to get rid of the nursery containers and do all my gardening on the grow poles. Tomorrow I am going to plant lots of seed in grow poles. I can easily plant abut 5 seed per plant site. On a twenty site pole, that will be enough plants to fill up 5 grow poles providing all seeds germinate and I transplant them. The grow poles are great seed starters after the weather warms up.

Jaywhacker: Yep, you are expanding upwards and I'm just expanding outwards, hardly no yard left now in the back. Hmmmm. I still love those tables and the 4 posts attatched to them, they look so nice.
joy

Jay, It's looking good.

Pretty soon your place is going to look like Ken Froboese's Hill Country African Violets & Nursery in Boerne, Texas.

Jerry

That sounds interesting, Jerry. I will have to take time to drive over there and see that place.

Jay, your gardens and pots and stackers are unbelievable. I cant wait to be part of the stacker craze. Keep the photos and descriptions and instructions coming, I love them!

chris