2012 strawberry towers for fair

[fintuckyfarms]

Anybody know how L O N G it takes to pre-drill 100 holes, drill 100 1 1/2 holes then sand 100 holes? About 5 times longer then I thought But it is done, now just working on the "plumbing" and I should be planting this afternoon. I added some utility gate handles so I can move the system inside at night pretty easy. It snowed here last night but the rain melted it away. All around us is getting hammered with snow. Weird climate issues going on. Been hammering my husband pretty bad about getting that greenhouse up and going i.e I would not be building systems in our kitchen Any way, will post some pictures tonight after I get it going....

[fintuckyfarms]

So it's up and going... in the kitchen. Suppose to get down to freezing again tonight and snow. Took a pict from my back door to show the snow from last night.

So I still have some bugs to work out. The lady at the grain store was only suppose to give me 120 plants, but it's more like 400 Didn't even make a dent in the pile she gave me. Have no idea where I'm gonna put the rest of them. Will make another tower on my weekend and maybe pick up some cement trays and make a flood and drain system for the rest or maybe put some in my 4" pvc from last year. I can drill some more holes and place them closer together.
The pump I got donated is way too strong for only one tower, but I think it will be ok with 2 and can handle 4.
Back to work tomorrow

[fintuckyfarms]

So I have been tring to get the strawberries outside but the weather has been crazy! I went to the weather channel to check the next 10 days. Look at our high and lows this month, crazy

I really need a green house

I have a 4 day weekend thanks to no voice... Kind of hard to answer phone and talk on the radio w/o a voice. I have one more week of days then I switch to graves for 3 months. Will be building another tower to try and use up some more of the strawberries and also gonna give some away.

So I now know why it seems there are so many strawberries.... because there is! I planted 100 of them and did not make a dent, I think the lady gave me closer to 400 of them. Think of the cardboard that goes under a case of pop, filled to about 10 inches tall w/strawberries. I am so nieve sometimes, cuz really who would take the time to count out 120 strawberry plants if your not getting paid for them, nope just grab an armfull and call it good!

[fintuckyfarms]

Put it outside last night!!! Only 3 more to make...

[GpsFrontier]

Hello fintuckyfarms,
I'm wondering, it dosen't look like you used any baskets. Did you fill the tube with Perlite, and just placed the plants directly into the Perlite? If so how much Perlite did it take to fill it? The strawberry plants look like their getting nice green leaves. It's hard to really tell from the pictures, but the only concern I have is that the plant spacing may be to close, they look like their only spaced about 4-5 inches apart.

I know you said you have your system planed out your constructing it, but I wasn't sure if you have seen the drawings I made of a similar system I planed to build when I can. I had two different designs thought out for the vertical tube stands. One is for a single tube system, the other is for holding multiple tubes. Anyhow I just thought they may give you some more ideas if you haven't already got it covered.

P.S.
I guess you'll have plenty of strawberry plants left over to stick in your backyard, but keeping the animals out of them may be another issue.

[fintuckyfarms]

No I hadn't seen your drawings before, wish I had. I copied a commercial strawberry system I saw on-line. They built theirs in a greenhouse and had rows after rows of the towers. They used 6" pvc and I used 8" because I also thought that was a little close. They also utilize a run to waste drip system and I chose to recirculate the nutes so I added the bottom part. It is working well and the plants are growing. I will look at your design before I build the other 3 towers. I have not yet buried the nutes so they are in a temp bin but I plan to use a 55 gall barrel.

I did not use net cups and planted directly into the perlite just like the commercial system. It took about three 5 gal buckets to fill the tube. You fill to the bottom of the first row, add plants and fill to bottom of next row and repeat. Goes pretty fast once you get use to it. You have to rinse the perlite first and I made sure the crown? part was out of the tube since they don't like to get wet.

[GpsFrontier]

I know I've posted these drawings a few times, but don't remember in what threads. So I'll post them all for you here (though their not in any particular order). When I come up with a concept, I like to use Google sketchup to make 3D drawings to work out details, as well as use later for my website/share with others. My vertical tube designs are planed as an aeroponic/soakaponics system, and use baskets to hold the plants and growing medium. The roots then hang down inside the tube (thus aeroponic). I worked the water delivery system out a couple different ways. One just uses sprayer heads at the top and lets it rain down through all the roots to the bottom. The other uses a center PVC tube with misters in it for a more direct spray. But I like the top spray the best for ease. Either way I would have the mister tubes easily swappable, and have extras to replace them with if they got clogged. That way it would only take me a couple minutes to change them all, then take my time cleaning each of the mister heads. Then it would be ready to swap the whole thing out the next time.

I also worked them out as either a single tube design, with either a separate reservoir, or with the reservoir at the bottom. As well as a multiple tube system using a central reservoir. Of coarse the basket size, as well as the tube size would be up to the grower, and I would base that on the size of plants planed to be grown. The drawings aren't perfect, it was just to hard to draw. But the side tubes are shown to be straight and go all the way through. That wouldn't be the case, the side tubes would be glued to the side with marine goop. The baskets would slide down into the side tubes, and go down parshley inside the vertical tube for the growing media to get moisture. My designs are a bit more labor incentive in constructing than the one you built. But in the long run will use a ton less growing media, and that can add up, especially if using many vertical tubes (and 12 inch tubes) like I plan.

P.S.
I have drawings of a system I plan to build for growing strawberry's if your interested in those drawings as well.