My goal was to build a free standing, plastic free, vertical, drip driven berry patch (mostly using strawberries, but with intent to add raspberries, and maybe blueberries once I stabilized it...) And while in the short term the design worked, later due to what I have assumed to be a poor material choice, and inadequate monitoring of my nutrients, the plants succumbed to incapacity to thrive, and eventually most died off before I decommissioned the whole structure. None the less there were a few cool parts to talk about, and up until everything started going brown I took a number of pictures, so let's look at the highlights!
As it always does, it started with an idea, this particular idea being for a check valve lift mechanism, rather than the ball inflation needle design I had used in the past. The theory being without the possibility of backflow due to increased pressure with increased height, this could lift higher easier. If the only way out is up, then up the water and air must go, right?
My ideas often become drawings:
Then I find materials, and my ideas get simpler:
Then I run into issues, like it not working. And I tweak to get it to where I want. This alteration being that I cut the piping between the check valve and the T joint, and added a 4"piece of 1/4" copper tubing, as small reservoir. It worked:
So I had this new pump mechanism, this was back when I had the Pentatower going, but I didn't trust it there because it was untested, and I was a little skeptical. So I had this dirty old galvanized trashbin at my apartment, and sitting on the deck one day I thought it might be a good reservoir. So I got a clean one, and caulked all of the seems with silicone.
This more than anything else was the poor material choice, by the end it had rusted (but the seams were good!), and while it wasn't structurally at risk I suspect that there may have been toxic levels of iron in the solution.
Punched a whole in the center of the bottom.
Did this:
And there it sat for a bit, until one day I was cleaning up some things, and found this old tripod, formerly the base of a drum kit cymbal stand, which had lost its matching pieces. Oh and I made a giant net pot out of 1/4" steel mesh.
And so it sat for about a year, I put some water in it to check for leaks, there were none.
Put some air stones in it to prevent stagnation. Put a lid on it, and left it in the summer of 2011. I just didn't know what to do next with it I was planning to suspend the pentatower from the top, but just couldn't think of how to do it. So it sat, until I remembered I had another piece of pipe like I used in my portable tower, which I thought would sit nicely on top of the tripod. It did, I stabilized with some insulating foam strips coiled around the base, and made a cut out of the lid to use as an umbrella of sorts to keep water of the iron wire I used to anchor the base:
Giant net pot, connected the lift tube:
It worked! This thing was easily 7-8' of lift, and it had no trouble, even with low pressure due to long air lines:
So me and my friend stared at it for a bit and eventually had a couple ideas that seemed interesting, so I went with it. Whole thing, made a cone thing out of mesh:
Filled 'er up (over 5 gallons of hydroton) and cut little inverted Ts in the mesh to make planters:
And put in the berries!
And so it was for weeks, the plants did great at first, then they started looking a little iffy, the airline got detached for a day at one point, and then it was all down hill. Plants dropped like flies, turning vibrantly red first. And around this time I realized how impossible the idea of a water change was... I will also mention that while I stopped taking pictures at this point, I also put berries in the giant net pot, with a fogger in the reservoir, though it wasn't air tight, so everything outside of the drip ring from the 'umbrella' dried out on a hot day. And in the end when I disassembled everything there was A LOT of corrosion everywhere, so changing water was at least necessary. Also not having a good way to monitor nutrient levels was a problem with rain, and hot days skewing my conception of water::nutrient usage.
While I did not produce anything, I still think the pump mechanism was great and will use it again. The cone tower thing, well that I am up in the air about, I may give it another go. The tripod, detachable, scalable lift tube is definitely a keeper, I could potentially put the pump mechanism directly at the bottom, drop it at the shores of a lake and call it a day. And who knows, maybe with the right coating (wax maybe?) the galvanized been could work too. Just a perfect storm of issues this time around.
In other news!
10 foot tall tomato plants! And some awesome daily harvests from the soil:
Our compost sprouted tomatoes, and then our whole garden did! And those raspberries really took off!
And my pineapple is unwieldy. No fruit yet, hopefully in the next 6 mos.
Thank you for reading,
Namaste.
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