Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Strawberry tower???!!! What the h... is that???

can anybody tell me how does the concept o "strawberrytower" works????

and also what are those "little details" that can destroy the dream of a succseful begginer´s AP system???? or main concepts to have in mind when starting in this new world???

...yup am a newbie. jejej thanks!

search Food&Fish 's thread, he made a few. In short, it's a tall tower full of gravel with apertures down the side from which strawbs are grown. water is pumped in the top and drains out the bottom. The search feature on this site should pull up a numbe rof photos and diagrams.

Like this

Yeah that's the one Beer Strawberries!

I have one too...

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5098&start=0

wow.... that´s awesome, AP really is about creativity; but why the straberries need a tower?? can´t they be grown on a GB as all the other stuff????

coz they grow in vines. they need to spread roots everywhere and they last longer than a year so it has to be a way where they can keep growing and still produce fruit year round.

what would be the proper meassures of the tower???

7 pages of "hits" from the search function... ... including a thread called "strawberry towers"....

search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&keywords=strawberry+towers

No strict rules there..... you can do them like F&F (looks like one drum inserted into another)...... or you can start up with with 90 mm PVC pipe. (I suppose 90mm is about the minimum). I have seen towers (PVC pipe) 150mm (6")diameter) up to two or three meters tall - commercial production of strawberries in Hydroponics.
Search the forum& web plenty of info........
Build it so it can be incorporated into your system.

They even make hanging plastic bag type planters that can work for strawberries.
The reason many people like to do strawberries in towers is that the berries tend to rot if they rest on something like gravel while if they grow in a tower or hanging pot of some sort the berries usually hang free and are less likely to get a rotten spot from resting against anything.

As to what can ruin the AP experience for a newbie? Well there are quite a few things that could do it and most of them are more likely to happen if you jump in without doing any research here.
Learn about the Nitrogen cycle
research media and why most of us use flood and drain media filled growbeds
learn some about your water and it's natural pH (need a test kit for some of these things.)
And always plan on hooking up at least some growbeds before even attempting to get fish in a system. (It is sad to hear about people getting a big fish tank and putting 100 fish in it and then saying they need to start working on getting a growbed hooked up only to find they don't have any fish alive in a couple days.)

Oh, and welcome to the addiction

Wow F&F, I only just realised what this is made of. Can I see 3 Beer kegs there welded together? I know Synaptoman upped his pipe diameter on his last big system due to the smaller sizes getting blocked up (leaving fish poop running down the sides). How well has that tower performed F&F? Does the water just run straight through and collect at the bottom and return to tank? What's the media type? What do you plant in it during the colder months? I want one

Taz, most of these questions are answered in F&F's thread. Get a beer, coffee, or tea, and a sandwich, chips, slice of cake and some bickies... it's a good long read