Aquaponics - Retired strawberry towers

I finally gave up and decided the risk of running my poorly constructed strawberry towers, was greater then the strawberry return.

I pulled everything out and found homes for it, either in the compost heap, as many of the plants had died due to being dry so often in their lives, or in the case of things that were still ticking along in spite of my treatment, into the lettuce holes on the other side.

I'm not sure if I'll try to fix the towers, or retire them to the rafters of my shed as spider homes.

Aquaponics - disaster, strawberry towers, and narrowness

Normally I tend to dive right in to aquaponics disasters, but this time I thought I'd narrowly avoid one instead.

I decided to do a post on my two spinach plants I have growing in my strawberry towers.

That's them from the front...

and from the side.

I look at them every day, but what I don't see is the root system.

It turns out the root system has been growing down into the drain hole of the strawberry tower it lives in.

The result was the water was restricted from leaving the tower, and was getting ready to overflow at any minute.

Seen here is a meniscus forming on the lip of the hole for the plant. This is looking into the bottom  hole, down toward the drain.

Seconds to spare.

No doubt a lot of water was still getting through the drain, but it did look ripe for disaster.

The roots looked like this when I removed the plant. It's difficult to see in the picture, but they reach the ground. This means they were not just blocking the tube, but were probably growing in the large PVC drain half way to the fish tank.

Definitely something to look out for, and another mark in the "cons" column against my system design.

My only real course of action was to prune the roots. They were so long that even if I only used the top holes of the strawberry towers, they would still reach the bottom, and thus, the drain.




















120 things in 20 years, the disaster that never was - Aquaponics - disaster, strawberry towers, and narrowness

Aquaponics - Strawberry towers and NFT tubes.

Success! Mrs 120ThingsIn20Years and I finished renovating the growhouse.

It looks like this.

Sorry for the poor quality photo. It got dark whilst I was having a rest that turned into a sleep.

Rests can do that.

The new NFT tubes addition looks like this, and is mainly comprised of half a dozen holes with beans at the back so I can climb them up the wall, half a dozen holes with coz lettuce in the centre, and half a dozen of baby spinach. There are a few other things sprinkled in between, and where ever they would fit.

The strawberry plants have all been transplanted.

Those that were in my original little test system should have transplanted without stress because they were already in my modular transplanting pots, but it took me so long to finish the redesign that they spent a little time walking around on dry land.

Not happy plants.

The ones I ripped from the main grow bed and transplanted with bare roots, seem to be just fine.

The original system is a wreck. I did a lot of damage moving it around and getting in behind it to tie down the growhouse structure to a fence.

The end result is a bit sad looking, but it will bounce back.

Along the right side, I planted peas that will climb the wall next to strawberry towers, (to right of frame) and the cascading plant at the front left is the oregano I rediscovered in the centre of the overgrown bit under the tomato. Actually there are two tomato plants in that lump, and I damaged the third too close to the roots to save it, so it's now worm food.

Someone from a university is coming to peek at the system tomorrow. I hope he didn't want it to look pretty. Oops. He's looking at lots of local systems, so no doubt he will be used to seeing systems in a state of constant rebuild.

The plants in the back left corner are some flat leaf parsley, and the base of a store bought bunch of celery that I thought I'd plant. It had no roots and no leaves, but It's doing quite well.

Aquaponics can do that.


Not just Aquaponics - Strawberry towers and NFT tubes - http://120thingsin20years.blogspot.com/


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Aquaponics - Strawberry towers Mk 237 part three

OK now I'm really tired.

Big day.

And on top of my big day I did lots of cutting a drilling.

And I made this.

It seems to work.

I was cutting and drilling other stuff.









Sleepy now.

Aquaponics - Strawberry towers MK 237 part 2

I'm getting there.

It's taking forever, but I'm getting there.

Stage two sees me with a stack of finished end caps with their various pipe work siliconed into place.

The ones with the two pipes are to be the horizontal NFT pipes.

I built an overflow pipe into my first NFT test pipe, and it's saved the day a few times.

I arranged the normal flow so it exits under water so I cant hear it, and the overflow so it splashes as a warning that the tube is blocked,

Never use a ruler when you can use a laser, and a ruler. My mum gave me this laser straight line tool, and It's a pretty handy thing to have. If your mum hasn't given you one of these, you can place your pipe next to a door frame or something else you think might be straight, and draw a line down the length of your pipe by holding your pen flat against the frame.

If your hole cutter is anything like my new one, (my old $7 hole cutting set dissolved in a spectacular "it's a good thing I always wear safety glasses" kind of way), it will be impossible to remove the circle of PVC that will be left behind in the cutter. But I have a tip...

A hole cutter has a small drill in the centre, and then a large round bit with a saw edge. Drill through until you have the beginnings of a circle cut into your PVC, then withdraw the cutter a bit and waggle your drill around so that the guide hole is enlarged. You no longer need the guide hole because you now have the larger circle, so it wont matter. It's the guide hole that the circle offcut of plastic seems to get stuck on. After discovering this they all fell out without any help.

Lastly I drilled some holes in my gutter to take the tubes exiting the bottom of my strawberry towers.

My finished, but as yet un-siliconed tower components look like this.

Getting there.

I cut 5 holes in each 900mm long tube. The top hole is 100mm from the top to allow a litle space between the plant and the grow house roof, and the bottom hole is 150mm up from the bottom to keep the roots out of the drain holes.

I'm not sure how the drain bit is going to go, because I have no idea how long the roots are going to be.

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Aquaponics - Strawberry towers MK 237

I settled on settling on a method of building some strawberry towers. People make strawberry towers all the time, so how hard can it be?

I'm going to cut some 900 mm lengths of PVC, cap and tap the bottoms, and grow perfect strawberries for ever.

That's the plan.

And I have to be quick, because some Doctor guy from UniSA (a local university) is coming to take a peak at my little system next week, and while I was between grow houses, we had a bit of a storm here that saw all three of my tomato plants and most of everything other than my strawberries, had to have a bit of a lie down. One of my tomatoes decided to move permanently into the compost bin as a result of the inferior accommodation I was providing.

No hard feelings.

Most people make tall strawberry towers to maximise their grow space, they also make them double sided to maximise their growing space. ie they put strawberry plants on both sided of vertical tubes with strawberry plants. I don't know why people don't use all four sides of their circular tubes, but they don't.

Perhaps it's to prevent overcrowding.

Perhaps it's all about circle's not having sides.

Who know's.

I wont be doing it, I'll be doing something less efficient.

But at the same time, I'll be doing something that I hope will be less likely to leak around the holes. I'll be making semi-vertical strawberry towers.

So...

As with most things I do, I started by drilling some holes in some PVC.

In this case, 90mm end caps.

These will form the base of my little strawberry towers, and the hole will allow the water I feed into the top, to drain back to the fish tank.






You can clean the holes with anything sharpish, like the corner of a metal ruler if you have some kids you can set to the task, or whatever one of these things is called in your part of the world.

Try not to lose the integrity of the nice clean drill cut as it will help the seal if the clean cut made by the drill is left intact. Avoid sticking anything through the hole, and just trim the bur from each edge.

I'm using clear plastic pipe to adapt my 90mm PVC pipe to my black polly pipe plumbing. I thought I'd go with this method again as it makes a pretty good seal.

I was talking to someone from my local hardware store, who mentioned that silicone doesn't stick very well to black poly pipe. I know this from my first attempts at solar hot water heating, but it's nice to have it confirmed.

I cat a diagonal to make it easy to force through the slightly smaller hole in the PVC end cap.

And pull it through under quite a bit of force to make a decent seal. I cant tell you what size the drill bit was, or for that matter what size the pipe is.

I'm guessing the drill was 12mm, and the pipe is also 12mm outside diameter. So perhaps 10 internal diameter.

Either way it shouldn't really matter as this clear stuff stretches a lot if you soak it in hot water for a bit. You can add to the stretch by putting some closed long noes pliers into the tube, and them opening them when you soak it in hot water. With enough force, you can stretch it quite a bit. Dip in cold water to speed up the cooling time, and it will set in the stretched position.

My plan is to try to get away with not gluing the end caps on, because as I'm lazy.

To this end, I cut the tube off at around 8cm long, and pulled the hose down so that, when the tower is standing, the pipe will be low enough to drain water out before the cap seal comes into question.

I hope.

The outside side looks like this.

At this point, you should shine a torch into the inside side of the tube.

It looks really interesting.

See.

This photo doesn't do it justice, but was the best I could manage.

It's a very pleasing thing to look at in the real world.

If you have a fish tank with some of this tubing pumping air to them, cut some off a tiny bit, and have a look with a torch.

They wont miss it. Fish love science.



So the plan is to make five of these caps and stick them onto some semi-upright tubes, full of holes full of strawberry plants. These will all drain into a gutter that drains into the fish tank.

That should work.








I'll be making 5 of these short strawberry towers to go on the southern side of my grow house.

I live in the southern hemisphere, so that's the side that won't block the sun in winter. I don't care how much sun I block in summer. We have plenty of the stuff in summer in Australia, and for that matter we have plenty of it in winter as well. Although saying anything general about Australia and weather in the same sentence is a bit pointless because this place is kind of big. Australia stretches from a few hundred kilometres away from the polar region to within a few hundred kilometres of the equator, so we see a fair range of climates. Mine in Adelaide, is Mediterranean in behaviour.

Which is nice.

[note from the future - a couple of the little strawberry towers leaked at the bottom around the unsealed end cap, but a thin smear of silicone from the outside fixed it.]

Aquaponics - Strawberry towers MK 237 and much much more at http://120thingsin20years.blogspot.com/