I improved on last years design and have gone with a larger cooler. Now instead of adding water everyday I now add water every 3 - 4 days depending on how hot it is on those days. This year my tomato plants are much bigger and taller than last years. I have some beefsteak, cherry tomato's and 1 Spanish pepper plant growing from this rail. I've had average temps of 90+ degrees during daytime and in the upper 70's lower 80's at night for the last 6 weeks. I thought last years summer was bad but this has been the hottest summer I can ever remember. Surprisingly the plants are all doing well. I usually put 2 -4 frozen bottles of water in the cooler around 10AM and it will keep the water temps nice and cool thru the rest of the day.
I also built another rail using 2 inch net pots. I re-used the old cooler to grow everbearing strawberry plants with 1 bell pepper and 1 lettuce plant. I had some algae problems at first because sunlight was getting using these small pots. i bought some small 2 inch neoprene inserts to hold the strawberry plants and the algae problem is almost all gone. I had a lot of lettuce from the 1 plant, made great salad for 2 multiple times. The bell peppers are getting nice and big almost ready to be picked. Next year I will grow more peppers and lettuce from this rail.
I'm still working on an
aeroponic tower for strawberries for next years grow. This year I rushed it and had some major leaks where the plants were so I had to re-think the project. I will test it out again in the fall to see if water escapes if it doesn't it will be used just to grow strawberry plants.
Here's some pics of this years grow. Again like last year I started this grow late during the last week of June.
