Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

By popular demand, here's a video detailing how I build my strawberry towers. I hope you find it helpful!



A full transcript to the video can be found on my blog in the link below.

Thanks for sharing

You do very good videos too.

+1 Good video
Q's:
1. Do you filter the fish water before it gets pumped to the top of the towers?
2. How long have your towers been in operation?
3. Have you ever had to clean out the ports of gravel due to clogging?

Mine a similar but I use perlite and don't push the pocket so deep.
To plant mine clean roots of all plants put in hole and pour perlite down the top

That is done so well, i checked out your other videos also, very impressive system

Might make myself a small tower soon!!

Good work!

I love the concept and the construction of the system. This video is well done and very informative, I plan to build one very soon, the space saving design is great.

If you have salt in your system forget about strawberrys

Nice.........

I hadn't really noticed that that type of strawberry tower which ends up with individual pockets of media almost.. I was used to seeing smaller cuts and a continuous pipe filled with media, more like snaggs. I like the idea of the individual pockets though....

i'v salted it once, and strawbs are going great guns, they slacked off for a bit when i first salted, i only put 1.2kg to about 1200L of bulk water.

Tower will just get them vertical, which takes up less space as they currently take up a whole bed

1. no
2. 3 seasons
3. I had let the plants grow for 2 seasons and they became root-bound and the water wouldn't go through. The were packed to tightly they I had to use a screwdriver to pry them out. I now replace the plants each season by simply yanking them out. I haven't cleaned the media.

This year I removed the towers and completely cleaned them out. I had a bad white fly problem and wanted to make sure they didn't camp out in there over the winter.

I've saw yours (or maybe someone else's?) before. I like it since I'm sure it's easier to build. However, how do you remove the plants and get the roots out?

could you have half a dozen (or more) towers with a single pump split across all of them, emptying into a regular horizontal growbed? then you could run the whole system on a single pump... or do you have to run the towers on an interval timer so they roots don't get waterlogged?

I have 5 towers that run from one pump. To see them actually growing, you can see my main greenhouse video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU9x_W9X-tM (At around the 2:55 mark)

Haven't got to that yet.
They have been going for over six months but as they loose productivity, will probably just pull them out(if I can) and put them into a wicking bed to have some runners to start again for this years crop.
or
If I cant get them out dose them with nitrogen only to try and get them to runner where they are.
or
Plan C ...... buy new plants
Plan D is build more towers they have been great