Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

i know people on here have done strawberry towers, but what do you think about cherry toms in towers? i'm thinking of having a tower of them connected to a NFT with strawberries, due to reports i've heard of tomatoes having root blocking issues in NFT.
it shouldn't be that much of an issue i'd think since you can grow tomatoes upside down easily.
anyone found their towers get blocked with roots over time?

Tim a beter way is the autopot way google auto pot then go to retail display

autopot style won't work for me, i'll have a constant flow, non of their fangdangled valves that periodiclly flood the pot.

Unless you use 300mm wide towers, tomatos will block them.

it's not that bad surely? i was going to use 150mm pipe and go down to 100mm for the nft.
i was also going to space the toms at 40cm intervals which would mean a pretty huge area for them.

One tomato bush will put out about 2 cu feet of roots, if you let it.

Then theres the problem of cleaning out the roots after you finish with the plant

Theres always Gnash's way

It probably pays to go as big as you can for tomatoes, if theres too much root room its not going to hurt as much as not enough

They are right, tomatoes can be monsters!!!!!!! If you let them. I've heard of hydroponic tomatoes regularly clogging a 5 gallon bucket with roots. That is kinda like a 300 mm pipe at 30 cm spacing for one plant being able to clog.

Also remember that the top part of a tomato plant can take quite a lot of space too. I would not want more than say two tomato plants hanging down from a tower or you wind up with a really tangled mass of vines.

Sure it is possible to grow tomatoes in NFT or towers or upside down, but is it really worth the trouble. If you really want to try it, see if you can make a low cost small scale trial tower to see how it goes before you put too much into something that might be more trouble than it's worth.

cleaning out is easy - just lift out the tower and give it a good shake to slide out the mass of rocks and roots.
I still think the tower has merits - it'll keep rodents out of my bushs for one thing. i think i'll start out with just one tom in the tower though.

good idea on the one tom in the tower. Ya know, you don't necessarily have to do it as a tower, what about just hanging a bucket with the tom in it where you would plan on putting the tower? Either just let the flow drip through the bucket an out the bottom (if it happens to be hung over a growbed or the tank or something or hook up a pipe and direct the drain where you want it. Let the tomato plant hang down till you have to start training it back up.

I think TCL is right, compact plants are more efficient in vertical tube towers due to the sheer number of plants you can stack up in the same footprint. Using a single plant you may not gain much over using a tub with a trellis.
A really giant tower might be altogether different though

Buckets FTW

Nice OBO, after the tomatoe take over I have had in my AP garden, I would love to do upside down tomatoe plants, cause the tomatoes form better, and the plant just seems a better fruiting plant. I have a few plants hanging over the table, and they have the most fruit on them.