Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My wife works at the Kitchen Collection store and I'm planning on using her discount to get one of these planters for about $10, put a hole in the top to pump water in and a drain in the bottom, fill it with hardwood charcoal, and have a row of them to grow various plants.

http://www.topsygardening.com/10/produc ... lanter.php

Would love to hear if anyone has tried these and what the results were, and whether they would do a good job in an AP system.

RS_ has some.
I never got any. I was figuring the main benefit of the TT planters' gimmick is their tiny footprint, not to help the plant... and that $10 would be about $5 too much... But with your planned mods, who knows? If the charcoal gets well drained between fills, it could be a nice situation for roots.

Thanks, yep I don't want them for tomatoes, but for other kinds of plants. I know how to grow tomatoes with AP and they aren't upside-down.

I have found the plastic used in those is not the most UV stable. My parents got three of them last year, and they did not make it thru the full growing season before it started to rot and have the soil start falling out.

I have seen some that use coco mess like planter:
http://www.gardeners.com/Deluxe-Revolut ... lt,cp.html

Also they sell this one:
http://www.gardeners.com/Gardeners-Revo ... lt,cp.html

I suppose it'd be as effective as those strawberry towers some forum members have built. I'd question the build quality and durability of the Topsy Turvy. I had a chance to look at one and you'd be better off building your own out of a bucket or some other type of sturdy container.

how do you keep the water from dripping out around the plant hanging out of the bottom rather than going through the drain back to the system?

Dave I got 4 of those and gave one to a friends wife and after a couple of months she said it fell apart then a week later my 3 did the same all within a day of each other, pic below

What a great terrible picture Nocky.

Sorry they are such junk but thank you much for sharing.

No worries TC, they were genuine TT's but since that pic a few others have reported the same, MJH posted above about UV and they have no resistance at all, mine lasted about 4 months and they worked well so am thinking of making one out of a plastic bucket, why just to see how many tomato's I can grow upside down

I once actually used some hanging plant pots to do the upside down planter thing (I wasn't willing to spend any extra money on it) It was kinda tricky getting the seedling up through the hole in the bottom but the plant grew well enough. Problem I did notice was that water would drip out the hole around the plant and then the tomato plant of course curved up and grew beside the pot instead of hanging down.

Again, I don't want the upside-down tomato planter with the hole in the bottom! I want the strawberry planter with the multiple holes in the sides.

Nice picture Nocky!

No worries Dave, I believe the strawb ones are much the same material

So even without the hole in the bottom, how ya going to go about watering and recirculating? I've had issues with any pebble shaped media in strawberry pots getting clogged and then the water flows out the holes or over the top and down the outsides of the container. I've tried it with gravel and once upon a time, perlite. Even with water that had already been filtered through grow beds, I still had problems with algae and bio-slime causing issues.

I think the only way that would not have had overflow problems would have been very small flows or intermittent watering and in that case, how do you make sure all the plants get enough water?

I think the best and cheapest strawberry towers are made from PVC pipe

oh shoot, Buckets, I know I saw some one making planters out of buckets and barrels where they did holes around the sides.

I might be a little worried that a bucket handle is going to give way in time while holding up a bucket of plants (the plastic that holes the handles in eventually gets brittle in the sun) but I'm sure it would last longer and be easier to plumb than the topsy turvy things.

Now where did I see that. Oh here is the video some one posted somewhere
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjY3C81zSZM