I have been playing around with the stacked containers now for about 4 to 5 years. It has opened up my mind and blowed holes in my old dirt farmer thinking. I thought I would share some thoughts here with the new forum members who are starting to use stackers for the first time.
Plants can grow faster and lusher in the stackers. You are supplying them with a place they can grip with their roots and a steady flow of water and nutrients and a grow-mix that doesnt starve them for oxygen Once you determine your watering schedule and fertilizing requirements, you will be providing your plants with ideal growing conditions. Is it "fool-proof? Not from this fool it aint.:-) But you can learn fast by observing your plants and learning the symptoms of over/under watering and over/under fertilizing. Your plants react almost immediately to the water soluable fertilizers and give you an indication of what is needed. It aint rocket science but does require some attention to detail.
Stacked containers are a little more expensive than other type of containers and to make full use of their capabilities requires some planning and ensures that you get your money's worth. You can greatly increase their output with proper planning. For you vegetable gardeners, you need to have new plants ready for transplanting after you harvest a crop from your stackers. Seems like many vegetables are small rooted and you can gently remove the old plant, root and all, and slap a new plant in its place. For instance, early spring crops like lettuce can be replaced with plants more suitable for higher summer temperatures. As you harvest your summer crops, you need to be able to immediately replace them with early winter and winter crops. In a reasonably mild climate, there is no reason your stackers cant produce all year.
You can increase productivity by intensive planting. Dont think small just because the size of the stacked pot is small. Learn to think like the people who stuff a whole bunch of plants into hanging baskets and combination planters. For vegetable growers, think about harvesting some type of vegetables as "Babies". Lots of vegetables have been specially bred to be small and harvested early. An example would be those little toy bok choi.......you might plant about three to a site. When they start to look crowded, jerk one out to eat. A little later remove the second one and leave the final one to grow to full maturity. Whenever you see a small space available, poke a radish seed in it. You will be harvesting it about 30 days later as a reasonable sized radish anyway and it wont interfere with whatever is growing on that site. You can poke small onion sets in open spots also. It goes in at about the size of a pencil but a month or so later, it is big enough to pull as a green onion for salads etc. I have some Walla Walla onions sets plugged into one of my pots and you can be sure it will never be allowed to grow to full size.
When growing transplants to be added to your stacking containers, it is best to start and grow them in the same grow mix you are using in the containers. That way you dont "pollute" your container grow mix with different stuff plus your transplants wont hardly know they have been transplanted. They dont have to make a transition from one type of grow mix to another. You can have all kinds of plants coming on in smaller containers, 4 inch pots, quart pots, one gallon pots, etc. With a small "nursery" area for transplants combined with the fast growth rate of plants in the stacked containers, you can turn out a tremendous amount of produce in a very small area. Just plan ahead and you will get more than your money's worth out of stacked containers.
For people who mostly grow flowers.......like me...you have a wide choice of flowers to choose from at your local nursery. When it is the right time of the year in your area to plant certain flowers, your local nursery will have them. In 6 packs, they will cost you approximately thirty cents a plant for the more common annuals. A four pot pole with 16 plant sites will cost you about $5 bucks. Choose a plant that blooms all summer and into frost and you can have a spectacular column of flowers in your yard or on your patio with the stacked planters at a very reasonble cost and not much labor. Home Depot sells 24 plants in a flat for about $8 bucks. Flowers that bloom prolifically in the spring but slack off in the hot summer can be replaced mid-summer by more appropriate plants. Again.....planning is required. I germinate some of my own flower seed plus buy some from the nurseries. Caution should be exercised by you artistic types. You can go nuts trying to arrange designer growpoles with the flowers matched and color co-ordinated. You may find yourself jerking a flower pot off of one pole to put on another.........no.....wait.....that dont look right there.......maybe over here on this pole with the apricot colored ones....or maybe with the purple verbena..........ARRGGHHHHH!!
I am a firm believer in mixing flowers, vegetables and herbs. I think a mixture discourages some bugs. And a garden should smell good. Basil is good for that. Last year I planted red rubin basil in different grow poles. They not only looked good but you could walk by and slap them and stir up a nice stink in the garden.
Experiment. You will find all kinds of people who will tell you what you CANT grow in a vertical stacker without benefit of knowledge or experience on their part. Here is a picture of what some might say is one of my misstakes, Sweet Pea flowers on a growpole. Planted about last Sept/Oct and wintered over and just now started to flower. I think I planted them too thick........so now I know.........and next year........
