I'm a 70 something Nana and I built a lovely "rain tower" by myself for around $100. without any help. Here are the steps I used I built it by drilling 5-6 holes in 4 sides of a PVC fence post with a hole drill. (you taught me how to do that) I then took a 4" PVC pipe and cut the pipe into 5-inch sections at a 45-degree angle. I also cut a section out of the bottom of the fence post so the pump hose regulator and plug could come out of the hole, this was an important step. I attached the angled pipe to the fence post using PVC glue which held very well. I then placed the tower in a snug hole I made in the middle of a 20-gallon rubber tote. I finished it all off with tubing going from the pump to the top of the tower where it splashed off a fence post cap a top tower and rained down the center washing the roots. I used net cups for heaver plants ie cukes, zukes, and tomatoes, and pool noodles for the lighter plants. I placed it next to the house in full sun and planted basil, strawberries, and more delicate plants on the sides of the tower that didn't get direct sun. This all worked out perfectly, everything received as much sun as it needed. I set it on a timer of 15 minutes on and 15 minutes off 24/7. This to me was the same as making a dress but using different tools. If I can do this most anyone can. I would like to send you a video or direct you to my youtube page so you can view the rain tower if you let me know where to send the video/link. Thank you for all you have taught me.
Way to go Sharon!! I am also a 70 something grandmother and I made a hydroponic tower similar to yours but using a round sewer pipe. Yours sounds a bit easier because instead of drilling holes in the flat sides of a fence post, I had to use the heat and bend method Mike mentioned to make the openings in the round pipe. Having done that, like you I cut smaller diameter PVC pipe at an angle and glued the pieces into the angled openings of the sewer pipe. I bought a heat gun after following your great videos Mike. Thank you. I have also made your gutter type hydroponic systems. I applied some of the skills from those into the tower design because the wretched possums were treating the gutters as a salad bar! However they don’t like movable objects so I suspended my tower from the edge of the roof. Mike, the higher the system the bigger the pump that is required. Here in Australia pumps that can raise water that high are very expensive. What I’d love to see is a system with several small height towers suspended from a bar. The pump would then be affordable. And, as you say, if the tower is too high it’s harder to harvest. Like Sharon the water can drain into a bottom pipe back into the reservoir. At the top the water can be fed through dripper lines at intervals into several towers. Having used a tower and produced some very big basil plants, I would say the pool noodle idea may not work. Sorry. Worth trying but I think it might be problematical. Even in my horizontal gutters, bok choy plants would sometimes pull the pool noodle out of the hole! Plants can get very heavy and I think there would also be leakage, not just from wicking, but simply the nutrients that hit the inside of the pipe may leak out around the pool noodle. Look forward to watching your future videos on this new topic 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
pool noodle approach seems the way to go. easy, cheap, efficient. can't wait to see the next video. some commercial towers that I've seen are in the $700 range. This would be much more accessible for many people. I've seen a few home-made towers that I like, but I think this is the start of something even better. Well done Mike! Love it!
I got a question about pool noodles, is that to replace net cups and the coconut husks things people tend to use? So all you do is put your seedling in it and should grow from there?
I did towers in my greenhouse they leaked so bad, they froze in the winter and were too hot in the summer. I did the heating and melting for using the net cups. If I had used the pool noodles it probably would not have leaked. Great idea.
I built a tower two years ago. Three vertical 4 inch pipes going down to one horizontal pipe which flowed back into a small tank with a pump in it. For the plant pots i just drilled 2 inch holes and cut 2 inch pipes about 2 inches long at an angle so it was facing upwards then glued them in. I put a garden sprinkler on the top of each vertical pipe to send the solution down . It worked very well but I had a mixture of vegetables and the tomato plant roots gradually clogged up the pipe! Fine for lettuce etc.
Went to the Clermont (FL) Farmer's Market today and I spoke to a plant vendor about your downspout method of growing. He was very excited to learn more so I gave him your website info. I'm excited to see him next week to see what he thinks.
I made a tower using those white buckets last year. Instead of cutting holes i heated the side of the bucket with a heat gun ... when the plastic was soft, i jammed a glass bottle into the soft plastic at an angle downward. I then cut a hole in the center of each bucket and lid for a plastic water pipe to send water to the top. The bottom bucket was purely a reservoir with a pump Then i put about 8 small holes in each bucket bottom near the edge And then put 24 or so small holes in each bucket lid. And then stacked them all and put the water tube up through the center. It worked perfectly and costed me next to nothing. Had about 48 plants growing at a time
Newbie here with stupid question. How do you stack the buckets if each has the lid on them ? Or maybe I’m miss understanding something This sounds like a good method. Hope you get this or someone can help me understand. Thanks
Where did you get that pre-made hydroponic tower? Do you use a net cup or pool noodle piece in it? What kind of plants are you growing in it? Overall, how well is it working for you?
Buckets are lightweight and looks like it would pack down for winter... we splurged on the big garden tower you discussed first...it's nice...but the sun is an issue...and it's suppppper heavy! Love the idea of stacking buckets that will nest down in each other in the off season with pool noodles that can always be replaced as needed! Seems lowesy cost! And ease of supplies! No trucks or trailers needed for 10 ft pvc pipes or special cutting tools
I use the 55 gallon drum (actually it's a garbage can) filled with soil, and the pipe down the center for my kitchen scraps, and red wrigglers for composting...not only do I grow culinary herbs, onions, garlic, on top and around the sides, but I use the worm-castings for making my own nutrient solution for my NFT, hydroponics and aeroponics... A 45 degree fitting will work better than a 90 also...(if you wanted to go with glueing the fittings on)
I'm excited to start this new growing endeavor! I am so happy to find your videos. You're forthright about what you've tried that you felt could use improving, as well as how you improved and refined your growing system. By being transparent about any problems you ran into and how you solved them, it keeps newbies like me from making costly mistakes that, without your channel, would have been unavoidable! Thanks for sharing your gardening gift with us, Mike. You're a blessing!
Thank you Diana, comments like this make it all worthwhile. I am experimenting with a lot of other stuff now, hopefully it will help a lot more people. Have an awesome day and Keep on Growin'!
This is a great idea! It’s cheap but also great for people like me who live in the city and don’t have a lot of space. I managed to do a good amount of gardening on my balcony but with this I could do so much more.
Good to see you again Mr. Duzee. I have made both of those before. Couple notes I made in my process of making them. I used a privacy fence post cover to solve the round pipe problem. I found the 5 gal bucket had to be refilled too often to my liking so did a 40 gal tote. Also I buried it halfway into the ground to help with this hot Florida weather. A cheap water distributor at the top of the pipe is a funnel from harbor freight or dollar tree. Only put holes about half inch out from wall of tube because hole in center just cost you more evaporation. All in all it was a fun project. Also make sure your pump is rated for the height needed. For me that was one of the hardest components to source locally. Had to end up buying off Amazon. It was a pleasure meeting you those years ago when I bought your starter kit. Happy growing brother.
I was going to go with this style but changed my mind for the reasons: 1. Build myself the garden tower is easy and cheap 2. Tower garden has better oxygen to the roots 3. Tower garden is more compact and more efficient use of space I intend to put in a flow meter that's monitored by phone anywhere I am. I will build that myself as I know electronic. Cost wise it is a bit more with more parts but well worth the result and effort with way faster produces to eat. The static water horizontal style can not beat the vertical type with continual water flow in term of how fast and how well plants grow. I don't even need to buy nutrition liquid either. I use compost organic tea that makes from food waste and shedded leaves. Composting that is!!!!! It is truly a recycled process, organic and healthy overall. It is more work and 99% of people won't want to do. That is the reason they buy ready to use vertical garden and liquid nutrients and complain the costly process. You can't have it both way.!!!!! I mainly use the tower garden for lettuce and herbs and it can grow from seeds to picking in 30 days. Go for it hydroponic is the way to go. Once you eat organic home grown whatever then you want to buy less from the crap chemical foods in store .
You are crazy brilliant man. I built a 600 gallon Aquaponic set up in my back yard a few years ago. Goat $$$. Labor and time cost $$. I shut it down because it was not cost effective. Your ideas are making me reconsider growing my own again. Pool noodles . . . BRILLIANT! ! !
Wow, beautiful wall in that room! Now, I want to do that at my house. Time to repaint everything & I cant make up my mind. Lol! I think my family will like it! 😃
Thanks so much! That's my wife's new set up for her craft channel, we worked for the last few months on it. She is going to post how to videos. We are really excited about it, we did it on the cheap with a lot of household items.
Love your videos Mike. I'm new to the hydroponics hobby. I have been inspired by you especially. I built a rack of downspouts that work great. I built a nft system, and a tower too because I'm addicted. I went the heat and bend route. It was hours of work as you predicted. One thing that I'm noticing is that using net cups, rock wool, and clay pebbles I'm having a hard time with drowning anything I try to grow besides lettuce since the net cup is half inside the flow of water. I tried a timer but even when watering little enough that the roots dry out the rock wool is still fully saturated. I'm experimenting with using part of a plastic cup cut off wrapped around the top side of the cups to prevent the rockwool from staying saturated the entire time. The pool noodle may be the solution to the problem since it doesn't absorb like the grodan/rockwool does. I can't wait to see what you come up with!
I have the exact system your proposing for your vertical tower the issue I have is water weeping out from around the netcup. The extra step of heating it up to put the netcup at a 45 degree angle will alleviate the loss of water not getting back to your sump. Because I had so much money tied up into the system and predrilled so many pvc pipes I bought coco coir so it would keep the water from splashing off the netcups running down the sidewall of the pipe and dripping out. If you would like photos of my setup I'll save you the growing pains of my design flaws.
My wife and I have been exploring ideas of hydroponics and just watched this video after Thanksgiving dinner. We like how you are very detailed in your video and are new subscribers of your channel 👍🪴🌱🌿
So I just was watching another guys video. He used those square pvc hollow fence posts. Drilled holes, then used two inch round pvc cut at an angle and silicone glued them onto the outside of the hole. The plant cups set in it nicely.
I love my GreenStalk and will be adding another, very easy to turn. $130 - $150 I am very interested in your inexpensive hydroponics for indoors, you have such great ideas. I would love to have my favorites all year long.
Hi Mike, I’ve tried building one with a bucket with a lid and I had three towers growing into the bucket on the bottom and then I had a thick black tubing I think 2” that I affixed with a pump in the bucket and then I ran the tubing up the Center with a hole through the lid and then I went around the tops of the 3 towers and clamped the pipe just to hold it in that round shape not restricting the flow in any way and then ran the tubing back down into an in hole back into the same bucket so basically a recirculating system and then using the much thinner black tubing I connect four into the top circle of the black tube and I had flow controls on the end of each and I should have done varying lengths of the 4 smaller tubes for each pipe then I turned each flow valve to on full blast and had those 4 smaller tubes in all three of the towers believe it or not it worked and worked really well and with the three towers together with holes all around I only had mine in the front just to see if it would work these are the smaller pipes about 2” I think. The only problem I had was because I want this for indoors and I had put net cups into the holes they leaked water and some splashed water out of the holes so I love the suggestion of the pool noodle cut on an angle!! Genius by the way! I think it could just solve that issue I think I also yes for stability the big black tubing that came up from the Center I put small holes in the tops of each pipe and I ran the black tubing around the three pipes on the outside so when I clamped the pipe it gave the pipes more stability in the top and since my pipes were only 4Ft lengths if I had stood them on the bottom of the bucket it reduced the grow space too significantly so the holes in the plastic bucket that I drilled made for a very snug fit and the pipes were only in by an inch or two I’m sure if it was going to be a workable solution I would have wanted to use some sort of coated wire(just plain floral wire that I would wrap with a plastic or water proof tape can add some color)to wrap around or to secure each tower to the bucket base. I don’t tend to use any glues because don’t want any possible toxins added and also if you don’t use glue it makes it so much easier to take apart and clean. Also one thing to add I think that some people perhaps don’t realize is that the kinds of plants that grow well in a system like this are herbs and leafy greens like lettuce, bok choy, tat soo, those kinds of things but definitely not peppers or tomatoes because the root structure would be much to large. I just bought some tennis ball lettuce and some tiny Tim lettuce and these would be absolutely perfect for this kind of system I can just picture one tower all filled with tennis ball heads of lettuce! Lol! The one thing people will have to realize also is they will need to run it 24/7 I don’t think intermittent watering would work in this instance. Anyway that’s what I’ve tried in the past. Love the idea of the base tote I use one for my diy NfT system and it works very well all through the year but again it’s indoors and our temps are pretty consistent through all the seasons. I like that it can hold 70 litre and I have a larger one that can hold 120 litres. If I were to use the larger one I would only fill it about half full and especially indoors. I got my totes with black bottoms and with royal blue colored lids with the square pattern on the top. I’ve not seen a lot of these used but they are heavy duty and if anyone is concerned about food grade you can buy large restaurant food grade bags that I cut and lined and taped on the inside I didn’t have to tape anywhere that water would be that’s also why I would only fill it half full because I wouldn’t want tape in the water. Again likely wouldn’t hurt anything as far as toxins but I try to be cautious with that kind of thing. If I used the tote instead of the bucket I would Set up 5 towers four on the outer corners and one in the middle the one in the middle I would tie the large black hose coming up from the bucket on the outside of the tower and then loop it around to the outside of the towers and then come back to the other side of the Center pipe and wrap it tightly not restricting water flow to that Center tower I would probably put that one several inches further down into the tote just for more stability if required. Then I would do the same thing I would put in the smaller black tubing through a piece of cut pool noodle at the top to keep them together and also to restrict light down into the roots and on the end of each tubing on the inside I think again it would be wisest to make different lengths so that the lower plants are sure to get water I’d probably do a short length that would just spray from the top just inside the pool noodle and then have the one that goes down to just above the bottom plants and have it in full and then the next halfway down and the next a third the way down. Which should provide enough spray for all the plants. In theory this should all work well and the towers can be affixed with a heavy gauge wire to the bottom of towers to the lid and I would also wrap wire around each about halfway up again using a plastic tape covered wire maybe I can buy them like that. And I’d wrap it completely around each corner and then towards the Center and then back out to the next tower creating a type of x with the wire if that makes sense? Could do that at the top as well. It will also give any larger vining type plants something to hold on to as they grow. That’s why I would definitely want it covered. So that’s what I’d like to try. First I have to find out how many types of pipes I have and then basically all I’d need is maybe more pool noodles and the wire I already have the tote base. One other thing I would do to prevent algae which is what I also did with my NfT pipes is wrap them in black plastic type tape this prevents algae completely. I may also use some cling film around the pool noodles that are sliced on an angle. The part of the noodle that goes into the hole id wrap a piece of cling film all the way around it so that some of it sticks out of the hole all the way around and that will prevent any leaked and then when I want to put a seedling in that I would have to puncture the plastic film but which would make a very small hole and once the hole is made as the plant grows at it get a thicker stem the plastic will likely tear further open or just stretch. Also another way to secure a seedling if you u were to use a flat piece of Pool noodle you could do the same thing with the plastic to prevent leaks and then besides the pool noodle you can give the plant additional stability with tin foil shiny side out and fold it over on itself a few times making sure sharp edges are in the Center and then wrap the collar around the stem and part of it around the pool noodle that’s sticking on the outside of the tower. I really like using aluminium/tin foil the stuff you use in your kitchen because I always have an ample supply on hand and I believe the shiny from the foil creates much more light with its reflective qualities. I even use it on my 4Litre jugs to hold my seedlings in place without having to cut the tops of the jugs at all the tin foil collar which is what I call it works perfectly to hold the plant up and out of the container and keeps it from falling down in(when it’s young) I used these for growing basil all my herbs really and my starter seedlings that are too big to keep in the self-wicking seed starting containers but are too small to go into their final growing place. So I keep them in the 4 litre jugs wrapped in foil shiny side out and it works for tomatoes and peppers and the plants love having their roots free and not restricted by next cups. All tin foil is affixed to the outside of everything it never comes into contact with the water. So a tin foil collar is just a piece of folder aluminum/tin foil where the shiny side is kept to the outside and all sharp edges are on the inside and then it’s just folded over a few times to create a bit of thickness and it can be as wide or as narrow as you require it. You don’t even need a pool noodle when you use these with the jugs, no cutting of the jugs, no net cup and no pool noodle required just be sure when you wrap the foil around the seedling it can’t be too tight it just needs to keep it upright. 🥰❤️🇨🇦
For the vertical pipe sturdiness, drilling a hole into a bucket and then flipping the bucket upside down would be pretty cheap. Wouldn't need to build anything fancy structure wise. Great video!
If you were to use the 4" pvc pipe witht the 5 gal bucket maybe cut the 4" pvc pipe 4-5 inches lengthwise, heat up and spread them to make legs to make a larger base on the bottom. Combined with the hole in the lid holding it might make it alot sturdier.
I'm using the pool noodle to root my sweet potato slips in my fish tank. I use moss to fill the hole, poke in the slip and float the noodle. The fish feed the slips while they root out. I used a secondhand fish tank and feeder fish (little goldfish) keeping the cost to a minimum.
You might be able to get pool noodles online and have them delivered to you. I'm brand new here too, so I could be wrong. But it's worth looking into! Good luck with your growing 😀.
I love the way you keep the price on hydroponics low, and yet you try to make it look professional at the same time. I would like to see you grow more than leafy greens so I can work out my problems, I want to keep my cost down and production high using hydroponics. Thanks Mike you awesome and I really appreciate all your trial and error and research. Blessings
currently have the ingredients to build a tower in my workspace..... guess i found the right channel- day of the build!!! i got a hefty bin as the base, 2 white buckets, went for larger net cups on the bottom bucket for larger crops and smaller net cups on the top for leafy's & herbs on tippy top and debating on doing a hole or two in the lid to increase my growing space, hmm, THANK YOU ill be checking back for sure:) .....the pool noodle is INGENIOUS
The five gallon buckets do not hold up well in sunlight. From my experience you're lucky if you get two years out of them. I have had them fail in one year. Sunlight breaks them down and they crack and break.
one last thing: if you could come up with a solution that rotates slightly, maybe even with the wind, I think it could be a game changer to optimize for sun exposure on all sides. maybe wind is too unreliable, but if the middle pipe could float in the base piece, it could theoretically be moved circularly. Dunno, not an engineer unfortunately. If anyone, I'm sure you can figure it out. :)
I've seen, on RUclips, the vertical tubes that rotate...I've got my vertical tubes designed to rotate, although I don't worry about it; there are plenty of plants that don't like a lot of sunlight, or do well in shade or partial sunlight that can be planted on the north side of the tube...
@@edwassermann8368 culinary herbs, mostly, (lemon balm, tyme, basil, several different mints), but there are a lot of leafy greens that grow well in shade; mustard greens, kale, bok choy, spinach, chard,...the thing with most of these, the herbs and leafy greens, is that you only have to plant them once and they will continue to produce as you just clip what you need... Don't forget, you can always plant vine plants in the shady holes and string the vines into the sun...tomatoes, cucumber, peas, beans...just the root and part of the vine would be in the shade, the leaves and fruit would be strung out into the sun...
@@edwassermann8368 I have a 6 inch pipe for my vertical planter (planters, I actually have 5 vertical pipes draining into a 6 inch horizontal pipe that drains the nutrient solution back into the tank), at the bottom of the vertical pipe I have a reducer, from 6 to 4 inches...the horizontal pipe has a 4 1/2 inch hole to allow the reducer to fit into it snugly, to minimize vapor loss, but loose enough to allow the reducer to rotate...at the top of the of the vertical pipe I have an end-cap with a hole drilled into it to allow for a half inch cpvc pipe to go down through the center...this half inch pipe is my water line and also acts as the hub that the 6 inch pipe rotates on...I was going screw bicycle sprockets to the top of the end caps (a friend of mine has a bicycle shop and bunches of old sprockets and chain) and I have a 12 volt disco-ball motor and solar panel hookup...the sun would hit the panel, the motor would spin (slowly), and the bicycle chain would turn the sprockets on top of the five vertical pipes, rotating the plants...the motor would only run when the sun was up... I hope that gives you an idea...I'm a visual kind of person and it's easier for me to understand if I see it... I'm hoping to do some videos soon...I have been trying to make some videos for years, but something always hinders me...
Reflective thing like foil insulation to reflect the sun back towards the back side of the tower . I love the pool noodle thing I am thinking lava rock inside to roots will cling to those as well lava rock really does not weigh that much either a few inches concreate in the bottom of the bucket heavy base
I use poolnoodles! Love your tower Idea, I do 3 gal buckets-passive hydroponics-leave alone and no need to water or any pumps-for 30 days! Love your steam punk set, I'm doing my bathroom in steam punk!
I am working on 3 buckets stacked. Where I can just run water or pump water to top lid with holes ( that I will cover with a elevated bored to use as shelf) When it runs down first buckets watering all the plants it will drain into second bucket and them collect in the third and bottom bucket. I have pics. Simple and I am thinking spaced in a spiral from bottom up each to of the flowering buckets should hold 12 to 20 plants each. So 3 buckets food grade at 7 bucks a piece and a pump with some hose.
I'm interested in the buckets approach for more surface area. Also, plunging it into a bigger water filled base for stability and cooling seems smartest. Especially if the base itself has some traditional Kratky method options to additionally use the space of the bottom piece. My $0.02 anyway. Looking forward to the next video.
Haven't read of anyone's 4" or 5" PVC tube, installed through a hole in the 5-gallon bucket's lid, tilting or falling over once the bucket is filled with water. But hey, there could be someone out there and theirs did tilt or fall over. To help resolve any possible accidents try this "Stand pipe in center of bucket." 1. Put a 1"-2" layer of pebbles or rock in & around the PVC pipe. Also make sure there is a cut out for the water pump and holes in PVC pipe for the water to flow into the pipe. 2. Cut hole in PVC pipe for a 1" PVC pipe, sized to fit across the bottom of the bucket. Place the 1" PVC pipe into this hole through the 4"-5" PVC pipe. The sides of the bucket will help further in the stabilization of the 4"-5" PVC pipe. A picture diagram would be like looking through a hunting scope with cross hairs, but only missing one of the cross hairs. Or like an O with - minus sign going through it.
@@KeepOnGrowin Check out this RUclips video named "How to Make a Gutter Garden Using the CNC to Grow Lots of Food". Thought it was neat to watch how he used Gutter Downspouts & made Endcaps for each of the 30 inch sections of downspouts. One has to wonder where CNC is going to take us???
Think that I have a solution, using PVC as a cheap and easy construction process. There is just one more tool that I need, and a pvc pipe. This has been the project that I have been planning for several months, and planned to purchase the remaining items today or tomorrow. Perfect timing. Will create a video for my first attempt, because it's important to see how easily it goes from theory into action. We need an easily reproducible and cheap process
I think you can even stick the pool noodle in the other way around so that the top is more upright instead of sticking out in a 90 degree angle... gonna try... you gotta make an oval cut though
I built one with sewer pipe and a fountain pump with a sprayer nozzle the reservoir wasn't big enough went a vacation the strawberries I had die but it very doable for cheap. Didn't think about using a 5gallon bucket but I was trying to do it cheap as possible
Idea* Bucket, lid, vinyl gutters (4) 6', water pump hose/line, misting emitter and pool noodles. Bucket will be the base, cut the lid so you could install the 4 gutter sections with the hole in each for the noodle pieces, run a small diameters hose to the top of each gutter hooked up to a misting head to mist down each gutter. It seems to me like it would work. If it does not work doing it this way, you could get the end caps and use the gutter and noodle parts like you have been showing.🤔
A 4” wye (Y) fitting works well. Problem is, they’re about $8 each. I spent about $100 on just the wye fittings. Add in the rest of the needed materials, and I was well over $200. I built a wood A frame to mount it. Thank goodness I did it before lumber prices went crazy.
Instead of cutting a round hole in the pvc maybe a half circle with the flat part on the bottom. Then heat the bottom part and use a bottle to bend it out.
Hey Mike! Ive build a 5gal tower with a pump. My most didficult part in this thing was water distribution. It was also expensive. Ill find my photos and post em in a bit.
I took horse troughs floating rafts you did very well I also ran it into the fish pond but fishpond wasn’t enough fertilizer so I want to go hydroponics
That's what I'm curious about and interested in. My "grow season" is unstable and erratic and tornadoey. I am growing indoors to lower my stress levels from worrying about my poor plants
I ordered the stackable planters from Dollar Tree online. I put a water reservoir in a 5 gallon bucket ( milk jug, soda bottle, etc). Put castors on the bucket. Then, I put holes for a pipe in the middle of 6 of the planters. The pipe is inserted into the water reservoir. That's where you fill it. I put a wick ( cut up t-shirt) into the reservoir and up through the holes the pipe runs through. I attached the bottom planter to the bucket with zip ties. This gives me 21 planting spaces including the 3 in the bucket. I thought about using the whole bucket as a reservoir but decided I didn't want to deal with the pumps, etc. I haven't planted it yet. I'm gonna do that with the granddaughter. It's her strawberry/ salad bar tower. She loves salad. I found dwarf okra, dwarf sunflower, dwarf tomatoes, etc to include among the greens. Oh, and I'm incompetent with tools like drills so I made my holes with a soldering iron. I know...y'all are laughing but I did what I needed to do lol So bucket (Walmart) $2.69 Planters 1.25×6= $7.50 Castors ( Harbor Freight) 1.79×3=5.37 Nuts and bolts for castors: I forget but around $3-4 use those locking nuts I had the pipe so ??? * All math done in my head so definitely needs checking*
I've spent a lot of time trying to develop a good grow tower. My best guess so far uses 4-inch thin-wall pipe. Inflation has driven everything else beyond practicality. My best guess uses a fixture to guide a hole saw in at the proper angle to enable good watering while cupping the root system. I envision a 4" pipe that supports dozens of two or three-inch pipes at perhaps 45 degrees. The smaller pipes would have to be fabricated in such a way as to interact with a nutrient stream flowing from top-to-bottom of the 4" pipe. A standard small pipe design could be made by the dozens to fit the 4" pipe. Each column can be rotated 180 degrees every 8 hours and returned at the end of the day. The 4" pipes could dump into a rain gutter so the nutrients could be re-pumped back to the towers. The small pipes could be a good candidate for 3-D printing.
K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Silly. Improvement to a design is not how much can you add, but how much you can take away without hindering function and while saving time and money. I have never tried the pool noodle thing, but after seeing this, I might have to. I want to try some grow towers but don't want to do a bunch of stuff or spend a bunch of money. A 4in pipe, hole saw, and pool noodle is pretty cheap and easy to obtain. Of course, the price of the pipe here is now about $28. A bit of a price increase in eight months.
Yes these are great. Just keep plants small. No tomatoes but I do them in 3 gal paint buckets full of perlite with a 20g tote to mix ro water and nutrients. Then a pump to push the water to a dripper in every bucket, that all drain back intonthe sump. Man what great tomatoes. Need to grow more food, gettin too expensive.😊
There are so many ideas. What about hanging milk or tea jugs on some kind of rack or pole (for the tower concept). Then it would be Kratky and you wouldn't need the electrical components. You would probably have to start the plants another way because of the angle the jugs would hang at. But once they were started you could transplant them into the kratky tower (or mayby something more like a kratky wall). Maybe even come up with a way to hang them in a window in the winter months. Some kind of a rack. I'm currently not living at home, but once I get back home I will be working on prototyping this idea. But I will want it to be open source because we need ideas that will help people, especially poor people, to overcome the restrictions that globalist oligarchs apparently intend to impose on us in the very near future.
@@fuzzybud8346 I just supplement the light coming through the window using cheap 5000k "Daylight" bulbs. In a south facing window I can grow a lot of leafy greens without any light supplementation, but currently I'm growing green onions in an east facing window, so I need the supplemental light. They get a little leggy, but are still good to eat. My experience with Lacinato Kale has shown that it will grow quite well just in a sunny south facing window without lights. There are some who claim that you can grow certain tomatoes and certain peppers in a sunny south facing window. I may experiment with that in the future, but for now I'm sticking with things I'm fairly sure will grow in a sunny window or with 5000k light bulb supplementation. So far I've had success with leaf lettuce, kale, kohlrabi, Chard, Basil, Mint, Sorrel, Egyptian Walking Onions and Arugula. I have a huge list of other greens that I intend to experiment with growing this way before I try doing this with fruiting or rooting crops. Most of these plants do need artificial light (as well as some degree of warnth) in the seedling stage, but again the 5000k "Daylight" bulbs have been sufficient. 6500k would obviously do a better job, but they're more expensive and harder to come by. I do have a plan to eventually run 6500k 12 volt lights using solar power in the near future. Those plants will be less leggy. But for now these slightly leggy plants are actually great. I just had some of the scallions in my soup for lunch. I intend to have a huge window put into one of my south facing rooms which will be where I plant my indoor garden in the future . I'm not in a position to do that right now, but hopefully by 2024.
This is so cool. You got me and my kiddos into hydroponics now. Dont wanna be a party pool noodle pooper lol but what about any chemicals in the pool noodle getting into the plant and or water 🤔. Its a great idea as its so cost effective. Would love to use but just interested how safe a pool noodle is gonna be for food? Thanks brother for your cool videos. My eldest took environmental management and now gonna get him working on growing food for the family as part of extension of his study. 🙏🏼😊 💜
@@KeepOnGrowin thank you for such a quick reply 🙏🏼 had another thought on it if you think kids are using them in the pool right. Then most kids end up getting water in their mouths in a pool full of noodles. Appreciate they are holding the baby seedling 🌱. Just working through your videos from years back and just planted out some seeds for sprouts. Ready grown sprouts cost here in UK £2.50 for a small tray of organic micro brocoli so am hoping to grow our own alot cheaper and alot more as kids seem to enkoy eating them too which is a super bonus as they full of vitality. 🙏🏼 thank you 😊
Im thinking for tomatoes the bucket witht he pool noodle idea would be best only because of the enormous roots but for herbs and lettuce probably the towers would be fine. Im in the middle of my first build right now.
Angle cut those pool noodle pieces on each end, on the inside, it can take any excess water away from the hole and drip it down away from the tube wall?
Whatever approach you and others take I firmly believe from experience you need a 20 gallon solution capacity. Otherwise the EC, PH and temperature will swing wildly and need daily attention.
@@NoMoreInfo4You Electrical conductivity. There are devices that measure this just like PH. It tells you how much nutrients are available in your water the higher the EC reading the more nutrients you have available and when you have a low reading it's time to add nutrients.
I am working on a tower design which is very afordable/a little complicated but very useful. I'm building it right now. The only drawback is that it uses a lot of 3d printed parts. I 3d print all the pots for the plants to be put in and a special water-saving method which reduces the amount of cutting you have to do in whatever buckets you use for the tower. This is so that you can use any version of the bucket and also so that each plant pot is directly fed water and does not rely on the whole system necessarily being perfectly level. Also, I wanted to use totes instead of buckets for more stability and larger space for the plants which can be upsized considerably. So much so that you could use large totes as the walls of the greenhouse structure. Those would be the large 50-gallon totes you get at Walmart super cheap. Each of my towers costs much time but only about $60 to build and you get twice the yield and 3x the stability and water storage. You also will need a 3d printer. I designed it so you could use square net cups or square foam which is good because there is no waste when cutting squares in a sheet of foam or a pool nudle if you cut squares from the sides. I think it is a great improvement on the bucket tower idea. contact me if you would like to see pictures.
You could bolt the pvc tube to the side of the 5 gallon bucket, put 3 or 4 tubes in the bucket to stabilize it. Maybe even drill holes and use zip ties to secure the pvc tubes to the bucket.
I build "A" frame and used same tubes that you holding in this video. I used different approach. I mount the tubes horizontal instead vertical tower. Tubes needed to be cleaned out every other day since there was constant build up jelly like stuff, bacteria and it was suffocating the plants/ roots. I gave up once all 60 plants died. My "a" frame was in direct sun and so did the plastic water tank, made of black plastic. Was the problem due to high temperatures or what did I do wrong ? anybody have ideas ? I gave up on hydroponics system because of that. I like to try again thou. Any suggestions please ?
I live in the desert in California, my question would be if the pool noodle has any chemicals that would release from heating up in the sun? Some containers have specifications, that say they are sage for growing vegetables and fruits.
Put mirrors behind the tower to reflect the light back into the plants. Place your sun loving plants in the front for full sun and your leafy greens in back as they need less light.
@@KeepOnGrowin Just put the mirrors right next to the tower (inches away from your plants) to reflect the light on to the dark side of your tower. Mirrors are cheap at 2nd hand stores...
I'm a 70 something Nana and I built a lovely "rain tower" by myself for around $100. without any help.
Here are the steps I used
I built it by drilling 5-6 holes in 4 sides of a PVC fence post with a hole drill. (you taught me how to do that)
I then took a 4" PVC pipe and cut the pipe into 5-inch sections at a 45-degree angle.
I also cut a section out of the bottom of the fence post so the pump hose regulator and plug could come out of the hole, this was an important step.
I attached the angled pipe to the fence post using PVC glue which held very well.
I then placed the tower in a snug hole I made in the middle of a 20-gallon rubber tote.
I finished it all off with tubing going from the pump to the top of the tower where it splashed off a fence post cap a top tower and rained down the center washing the roots.
I used net cups for heaver plants ie cukes, zukes, and tomatoes, and pool noodles for the lighter plants. I placed it next to the house in full sun and planted basil, strawberries, and more delicate plants on the sides of the tower that didn't get direct sun. This all worked out perfectly, everything received as much sun as it needed.
I set it on a timer of 15 minutes on and 15 minutes off 24/7.
This to me was the same as making a dress but using different tools. If I can do this most anyone can.
I would like to send you a video or direct you to my youtube page so you can view the rain tower if you let me know where to send the video/link.
Thank you for all you have taught me.
You rock! My email is keepongrowin1@gmail.com
I would love to see it.
Way to go Sharon!! I am also a 70 something grandmother and I made a hydroponic tower similar to yours but using a round sewer pipe. Yours sounds a bit easier because instead of drilling holes in the flat sides of a fence post, I had to use the heat and bend method Mike mentioned to make the openings in the round pipe. Having done that, like you I cut smaller diameter PVC pipe at an angle and glued the pieces into the angled openings of the sewer pipe. I bought a heat gun after following your great videos Mike. Thank you. I have also made your gutter type hydroponic systems. I applied some of the skills from those into the tower design because the wretched possums were treating the gutters as a salad bar! However they don’t like movable objects so I suspended my tower from the edge of the roof.
Mike, the higher the system the bigger the pump that is required. Here in Australia pumps that can raise water that high are very expensive. What I’d love to see is a system with several small height towers suspended from a bar. The pump would then be affordable. And, as you say, if the tower is too high it’s harder to harvest. Like Sharon the water can drain into a bottom pipe back into the reservoir. At the top the water can be fed through dripper lines at intervals into several towers. Having used a tower and produced some very big basil plants, I would say the pool noodle idea may not work. Sorry. Worth trying but I think it might be problematical. Even in my horizontal gutters, bok choy plants would sometimes pull the pool noodle out of the hole! Plants can get very heavy and I think there would also be leakage, not just from wicking, but simply the nutrients that hit the inside of the pipe may leak out around the pool noodle. Look forward to watching your future videos on this new topic 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Sharon your tower is so beautiful! Did you use a 4 or 5 inch fence post?
Oh I have to see it ! Be right there!!
Wow!
pool noodle approach seems the way to go. easy, cheap, efficient. can't wait to see the next video. some commercial towers that I've seen are in the $700 range. This would be much more accessible for many people. I've seen a few home-made towers that I like, but I think this is the start of something even better. Well done Mike! Love it!
Thank you Ed! I am sure we will come up with something creative.
Are pool noodles BPA free?
I got a question about pool noodles, is that to replace net cups and the coconut husks things people tend to use? So all you do is put your seedling in it and should grow from there?
@@Da16652
Good question but no answer
Can the microplastics be a problem?
I did towers in my greenhouse they leaked so bad, they froze in the winter and were too hot in the summer. I did the heating and melting for using the net cups. If I had used the pool noodles it probably would not have leaked. Great idea.
I built a tower two years ago. Three vertical 4 inch pipes going down to one horizontal pipe which flowed back into a small tank with a pump in it. For the plant pots i just drilled 2 inch holes and cut 2 inch pipes about 2 inches long at an angle so it was facing upwards then glued them in. I put a garden sprinkler on the top of each vertical pipe to send the solution down . It worked very well but I had a mixture of vegetables and the tomato plant roots gradually clogged up the pipe! Fine for lettuce etc.
If you had not glued the PVC together (which is not necessary), why not take it apart to clean it ?
Went to the Clermont (FL) Farmer's Market today and I spoke to a plant vendor about your downspout method of growing. He was very excited to learn more so I gave him your website info. I'm excited to see him next week to see what he thinks.
Awesome! Thank you so much Peg! Bee the Change!
I made a tower using those white buckets last year. Instead of cutting holes i heated the side of the bucket with a heat gun ... when the plastic was soft, i jammed a glass bottle into the soft plastic at an angle downward.
I then cut a hole in the center of each bucket and lid for a plastic water pipe to send water to the top. The bottom bucket was purely a reservoir with a pump
Then i put about 8 small holes in each bucket bottom near the edge
And then put 24 or so small holes in each bucket lid.
And then stacked them all and put the water tube up through the center.
It worked perfectly and costed me next to nothing. Had about 48 plants growing at a time
Awesome! Thanks for the info Michael!
What kind of pump did you use?
Newbie here with stupid question. How do you stack the buckets if each has the lid on them ? Or maybe I’m miss understanding something This sounds like a good method. Hope you get this or someone can help me understand. Thanks
Really like the community getting together to share ideas here. This is a great opportunity to learn.
It's awesome! I love it!
Thank God for this video! I've wanted to make affordable grow towers for a long time. 😅 Thanks, Mike!
No problem. I've had quite a few people asking so I figured it was about time.
Why don't you thank him for the video since he made it?
I have one of those premade towers. I put it on a rolling platform and I was able to move it freely anytime I needed. Thanks for doing this....
Where did you get that pre-made hydroponic tower?
Do you use a net cup or pool noodle piece in it?
What kind of plants are you growing in it?
Overall, how well is it working for you?
Buckets are lightweight and looks like it would pack down for winter... we splurged on the big garden tower you discussed first...it's nice...but the sun is an issue...and it's suppppper heavy! Love the idea of stacking buckets that will nest down in each other in the off season with pool noodles that can always be replaced as needed! Seems lowesy cost! And ease of supplies! No trucks or trailers needed for 10 ft pvc pipes or special cutting tools
Awesome! I did not even think about breaking it down. That's why I asked for everyone's input. Well done.
I use the 55 gallon drum (actually it's a garbage can) filled with soil, and the pipe down the center for my kitchen scraps, and red wrigglers for composting...not only do I grow culinary herbs, onions, garlic, on top and around the sides, but I use the worm-castings for making my own nutrient solution for my NFT, hydroponics and aeroponics...
A 45 degree fitting will work better than a 90 also...(if you wanted to go with glueing the fittings on)
Cool! Thanks for the input! You are correct about the 45.
I'm excited to start this new growing endeavor! I am so happy to find your videos. You're forthright about what you've tried that you felt could use improving, as well as how you improved and refined your growing system. By being transparent about any problems you ran into and how you solved them, it keeps newbies like me from making costly mistakes that, without your channel, would have been unavoidable! Thanks for sharing your gardening gift with us, Mike. You're a blessing!
Thank you Diana, comments like this make it all worthwhile. I am experimenting with a lot of other stuff now, hopefully it will help a lot more people. Have an awesome day and Keep on Growin'!
I works good, but far away from simple low cost diy towers.
This is a great idea! It’s cheap but also great for people like me who live in the city and don’t have a lot of space. I managed to do a good amount of gardening on my balcony but with this I could do so much more.
That's fantastic!!
That's my idea. I'm on the ground floor so I do have a small yard , but my space is so small.
I made one a long time ago using PVC pipe with some 45's. Worked pretty good. Thanks for the tips Mr. Mike.
Thanks CB! Hope we all have an awesome Spring!
Good to see you again Mr. Duzee. I have made both of those before. Couple notes I made in my process of making them. I used a privacy fence post cover to solve the round pipe problem. I found the 5 gal bucket had to be refilled too often to my liking so did a 40 gal tote. Also I buried it halfway into the ground to help with this hot Florida weather. A cheap water distributor at the top of the pipe is a funnel from harbor freight or dollar tree. Only put holes about half inch out from wall of tube because hole in center just cost you more evaporation. All in all it was a fun project. Also make sure your pump is rated for the height needed. For me that was one of the hardest components to source locally. Had to end up buying off Amazon. It was a pleasure meeting you those years ago when I bought your starter kit. Happy growing brother.
I was going to go with this style but changed my mind for the reasons:
1. Build myself the garden tower is easy and cheap
2. Tower garden has better oxygen to the roots
3. Tower garden is more compact and more efficient use of space
I intend to put in a flow meter that's monitored by phone anywhere I am. I will build that myself as I know electronic.
Cost wise it is a bit more with more parts but well worth the result and effort with way faster produces to eat.
The static water horizontal style can not beat the vertical type with continual water flow in term of how fast and how well plants grow.
I don't even need to buy nutrition liquid either. I use compost organic tea that makes from food waste and shedded leaves. Composting that is!!!!!
It is truly a recycled process, organic and healthy overall.
It is more work and 99% of people won't want to do.
That is the reason they buy ready to use vertical garden and liquid nutrients and complain the costly process.
You can't have it both way.!!!!!
I mainly use the tower garden for lettuce and herbs and it can grow from seeds to picking in 30 days.
Go for it hydroponic is the way to go.
Once you eat organic home grown whatever then you want to buy less from the crap chemical foods in store .
You are crazy brilliant man. I built a 600 gallon Aquaponic set up in my back yard a few years ago. Goat $$$. Labor and time cost $$. I shut it down because it was not cost effective. Your ideas are making me reconsider growing my own again.
Pool noodles . . . BRILLIANT! ! !
Awesome!!!! Happy gardening!!!!
Wow, beautiful wall in that room! Now, I want to do that at my house. Time to repaint everything & I cant make up my mind. Lol! I think my family will like it! 😃
Thanks so much! That's my wife's new set up for her craft channel, we worked for the last few months on it. She is going to post how to videos. We are really excited about it, we did it on the cheap with a lot of household items.
Thank you! That "stove" is actually our mini fridge. We decorated it to look like a "Steampunk" boiler.
@@KeepOnGrowin Nice! 😃 Lab looks great!
Love your videos Mike. I'm new to the hydroponics hobby. I have been inspired by you especially. I built a rack of downspouts that work great. I built a nft system, and a tower too because I'm addicted. I went the heat and bend route. It was hours of work as you predicted. One thing that I'm noticing is that using net cups, rock wool, and clay pebbles I'm having a hard time with drowning anything I try to grow besides lettuce since the net cup is half inside the flow of water. I tried a timer but even when watering little enough that the roots dry out the rock wool is still fully saturated. I'm experimenting with using part of a plastic cup cut off wrapped around the top side of the cups to prevent the rockwool from staying saturated the entire time. The pool noodle may be the solution to the problem since it doesn't absorb like the grodan/rockwool does. I can't wait to see what you come up with!
Awesome! I am so glad to hear that! Keep up the great work!!
I'm visually impaired. I built a tower system outdoor at night by myself lts 7ft high and 10ft long .it's a month old and works great
That's awesome!!!
I have the exact system your proposing for your vertical tower the issue I have is water weeping out from around the netcup. The extra step of heating it up to put the netcup at a 45 degree angle will alleviate the loss of water not getting back to your sump. Because I had so much money tied up into the system and predrilled so many pvc pipes I bought coco coir so it would keep the water from splashing off the netcups running down the sidewall of the pipe and dripping out. If you would like photos of my setup I'll save you the growing pains of my design flaws.
Awesome! You can send them to keepongrowin1@gmail.com
I am hoping the pool noodle will alleviate the spillage. I will experiment a little with it.
The 4 or 5 buckets stacked sounds great... ease of access for all... and low cost...
Sounds great!
Appreciate all you and your wives hard work researching and testing. Thank you both!
My wife and I have been exploring ideas of hydroponics and just watched this video after Thanksgiving dinner. We like how you are very detailed in your video and are new subscribers of your channel 👍🪴🌱🌿
Thank you! Happy Thanksgiving!
So I just was watching another guys video. He used those square pvc hollow fence posts. Drilled holes, then used two inch round pvc cut at an angle and silicone glued them onto the outside of the hole. The plant cups set in it nicely.
I love my GreenStalk and will be adding another, very easy to turn. $130 - $150 I am very interested in your inexpensive hydroponics for indoors, you have such great ideas. I would love to have my favorites all year long.
Hi Mike, I’ve tried building one with a bucket with a lid and I had three towers growing into the bucket on the bottom and then I had a thick black tubing I think 2” that I affixed with a pump in the bucket and then I ran the tubing up the Center with a hole through the lid and then I went around the tops of the 3 towers and clamped the pipe just to hold it in that round shape not restricting the flow in any way and then ran the tubing back down into an in hole back into the same bucket so basically a recirculating system and then using the much thinner black tubing I connect four into the top circle of the black tube and I had flow controls on the end of each and I should have done varying lengths of the 4 smaller tubes for each pipe then I turned each flow valve to on full blast and had those 4 smaller tubes in all three of the towers believe it or not it worked and worked really well and with the three towers together with holes all around I only had mine in the front just to see if it would work these are the smaller pipes about 2” I think. The only problem I had was because I want this for indoors and I had put net cups into the holes they leaked water and some splashed water out of the holes so I love the suggestion of the pool noodle cut on an angle!! Genius by the way! I think it could just solve that issue I think I also yes for stability the big black tubing that came up from the Center I put small holes in the tops of each pipe and I ran the black tubing around the three pipes on the outside so when I clamped the pipe it gave the pipes more stability in the top and since my pipes were only 4Ft lengths if I had stood them on the bottom of the bucket it reduced the grow space too significantly so the holes in the plastic bucket that I drilled made for a very snug fit and the pipes were only in by an inch or two I’m sure if it was going to be a workable solution I would have wanted to use some sort of coated wire(just plain floral wire that I would wrap with a plastic or water proof tape can add some color)to wrap around or to secure each tower to the bucket base. I don’t tend to use any glues because don’t want any possible toxins added and also if you don’t use glue it makes it so much easier to take apart and clean. Also one thing to add I think that some people perhaps don’t realize is that the kinds of plants that grow well in a system like this are herbs and leafy greens like lettuce, bok choy, tat soo, those kinds of things but definitely not peppers or tomatoes because the root structure would be much to large. I just bought some tennis ball lettuce and some tiny Tim lettuce and these would be absolutely perfect for this kind of system I can just picture one tower all filled with tennis ball heads of lettuce! Lol! The one thing people will have to realize also is they will need to run it 24/7 I don’t think intermittent watering would work in this instance. Anyway that’s what I’ve tried in the past. Love the idea of the base tote I use one for my diy NfT system and it works very well all through the year but again it’s indoors and our temps are pretty consistent through all the seasons. I like that it can hold 70 litre and I have a larger one that can hold 120 litres. If I were to use the larger one I would only fill it about half full and especially indoors. I got my totes with black bottoms and with royal blue colored lids with the square pattern on the top. I’ve not seen a lot of these used but they are heavy duty and if anyone is concerned about food grade you can buy large restaurant food grade bags that I cut and lined and taped on the inside I didn’t have to tape anywhere that water would be that’s also why I would only fill it half full because I wouldn’t want tape in the water. Again likely wouldn’t hurt anything as far as toxins but I try to be cautious with that kind of thing. If I used the tote instead of the bucket I would Set up 5 towers four on the outer corners and one in the middle the one in the middle I would tie the large black hose coming up from the bucket on the outside of the tower and then loop it around to the outside of the towers and then come back to the other side of the Center pipe and wrap it tightly not restricting water flow to that Center tower I would probably put that one several inches further down into the tote just for more stability if required. Then I would do the same thing I would put in the smaller black tubing through a piece of cut pool noodle at the top to keep them together and also to restrict light down into the roots and on the end of each tubing on the inside I think again it would be wisest to make different lengths so that the lower plants are sure to get water I’d probably do a short length that would just spray from the top just inside the pool noodle and then have the one that goes down to just above the bottom plants and have it in full and then the next halfway down and the next a third the way down. Which should provide enough spray for all the plants. In theory this should all work well and the towers can be affixed with a heavy gauge wire to the bottom of towers to the lid and I would also wrap wire around each about halfway up again using a plastic tape covered wire maybe I can buy them like that. And I’d wrap it completely around each corner and then towards the Center and then back out to the next tower creating a type of x with the wire if that makes sense? Could do that at the top as well. It will also give any larger vining type plants something to hold on to as they grow. That’s why I would definitely want it covered. So that’s what I’d like to try. First I have to find out how many types of pipes I have and then basically all I’d need is maybe more pool noodles and the wire I already have the tote base. One other thing I would do to prevent algae which is what I also did with my NfT pipes is wrap them in black plastic type tape this prevents algae completely. I may also use some cling film around the pool noodles that are sliced on an angle. The part of the noodle that goes into the hole id wrap a piece of cling film all the way around it so that some of it sticks out of the hole all the way around and that will prevent any leaked and then when I want to put a seedling in that I would have to puncture the plastic film but which would make a very small hole and once the hole is made as the plant grows at it get a thicker stem the plastic will likely tear further open or just stretch. Also another way to secure a seedling if you u were to use a flat piece of Pool noodle you could do the same thing with the plastic to prevent leaks and then besides the pool noodle you can give the plant additional stability with tin foil shiny side out and fold it over on itself a few times making sure sharp edges are in the Center and then wrap the collar around the stem and part of it around the pool noodle that’s sticking on the outside of the tower. I really like using aluminium/tin foil the stuff you use in your kitchen because I always have an ample supply on hand and I believe the shiny from the foil creates much more light with its reflective qualities. I even use it on my 4Litre jugs to hold my seedlings in place without having to cut the tops of the jugs at all the tin foil collar which is what I call it works perfectly to hold the plant up and out of the container and keeps it from falling down in(when it’s young) I used these for growing basil all my herbs really and my starter seedlings that are too big to keep in the self-wicking seed starting containers but are too small to go into their final growing place. So I keep them in the 4 litre jugs wrapped in foil shiny side out and it works for tomatoes and peppers and the plants love having their roots free and not restricted by next cups. All tin foil is affixed to the outside of everything it never comes into contact with the water. So a tin foil collar is just a piece of folder aluminum/tin foil where the shiny side is kept to the outside and all sharp edges are on the inside and then it’s just folded over a few times to create a bit of thickness and it can be as wide or as narrow as you require it. You don’t even need a pool noodle when you use these with the jugs, no cutting of the jugs, no net cup and no pool noodle required just be sure when you wrap the foil around the seedling it can’t be too tight it just needs to keep it upright. 🥰❤️🇨🇦
For the vertical pipe sturdiness, drilling a hole into a bucket and then flipping the bucket upside down would be pretty cheap. Wouldn't need to build anything fancy structure wise. Great video!
Thank you Jose! I will actually give this a try!
Check wedding cake shops for used frosting buckets. Or burger kings for used pickle buckets
Yes!!! That's why I probably will go with the bucket idea first. More accessible to everyone!
Once you use the genius pool noodle hack...you'll never go back. I tried it and love it. Thank you. Your tips an channel are invaluable.
The Dollar Tree employees look at me funny when I grab a buggy full of them, lol.
Thanks, I'm thinking about building my own garden tower. Not trying to spend hundreds of dollars when I could do it myself for much less
If you were to use the 4" pvc pipe witht the 5 gal bucket maybe cut the 4" pvc pipe 4-5 inches lengthwise, heat up and spread them to make legs to make a larger base on the bottom. Combined with the hole in the lid holding it might make it alot sturdier.
I'm using the pool noodle to root my sweet potato slips in my fish tank. I use moss to fill the hole, poke in the slip and float the noodle.
The fish feed the slips while they root out. I used a secondhand fish tank and feeder fish (little goldfish) keeping the cost to a minimum.
That's awesome! Great tip with the moss.
This is going to be great Mike! I can't comment, I'm too new. I like the pool noodle idea, but we can't get them here. Maybe this summer.
Thank you Dawn, any input is much appreciated!
You might be able to get pool noodles online and have them delivered to you. I'm brand new here too, so I could be wrong. But it's worth looking into! Good luck with your growing 😀.
I love the way you keep the price on hydroponics low, and yet you try to make it look professional at the same time.
I would like to see you grow more than leafy greens so I can work out my problems, I want to keep my cost down and production high using hydroponics.
Thanks Mike you awesome and I really appreciate all your trial and error and research.
Blessings
currently have the ingredients to build a tower in my workspace..... guess i found the right channel- day of the build!!! i got a hefty bin as the base, 2 white buckets, went for larger net cups on the bottom bucket for larger crops and smaller net cups on the top for leafy's & herbs on tippy top and debating on doing a hole or two in the lid to increase my growing space, hmm, THANK YOU ill be checking back for sure:) .....the pool noodle is INGENIOUS
The five gallon buckets do not hold up well in sunlight. From my experience you're lucky if you get two years out of them. I have had them fail in one year. Sunlight breaks them down and they crack and break.
Thank you for that info, I will take that into consideration.
Would adding a wrap or coating slow that degradative process? Might be a bit of work, but might be worth it in the long run.
Thank you for sharing! You have a good way of explaining these concepts and innovative ideas! Happy Journeys Friend!
This looks so fun!! 👏🏼 Thanks for this great idea!
POOL NOODLE IS AN AWESOME IDEA & SO PRACTICAL . . . INGENIOUS TOO! THANK YOU FOR SHARING! YOU HAVE AN AMAZING CHANNEL!
That's fantastic! I am so glad you find it helpful!
I really love both ideas, 4 tubed in 20 gallon tote, also maybe 2 stacks of the 5 gallon buckets on a 20 gallon tote.
one last thing: if you could come up with a solution that rotates slightly, maybe even with the wind, I think it could be a game changer to optimize for sun exposure on all sides. maybe wind is too unreliable, but if the middle pipe could float in the base piece, it could theoretically be moved circularly. Dunno, not an engineer unfortunately. If anyone, I'm sure you can figure it out. :)
I've seen, on RUclips, the vertical tubes that rotate...I've got my vertical tubes designed to rotate, although I don't worry about it; there are plenty of plants that don't like a lot of sunlight, or do well in shade or partial sunlight that can be planted on the north side of the tube...
@@shawnncheriyoung3597 ah, yes, that is smart. planting those on the other side. What plants are you using on the "north side"?
@@shawnncheriyoung3597 how does your tower rotate exactly? electrically?
@@edwassermann8368 culinary herbs, mostly, (lemon balm, tyme, basil, several different mints), but there are a lot of leafy greens that grow well in shade; mustard greens, kale, bok choy, spinach, chard,...the thing with most of these, the herbs and leafy greens, is that you only have to plant them once and they will continue to produce as you just clip what you need...
Don't forget, you can always plant vine plants in the shady holes and string the vines into the sun...tomatoes, cucumber, peas, beans...just the root and part of the vine would be in the shade, the leaves and fruit would be strung out into the sun...
@@edwassermann8368 I have a 6 inch pipe for my vertical planter (planters, I actually have 5 vertical pipes draining into a 6 inch horizontal pipe that drains the nutrient solution back into the tank), at the bottom of the vertical pipe I have a reducer, from 6 to 4 inches...the horizontal pipe has a 4 1/2 inch hole to allow the reducer to fit into it snugly, to minimize vapor loss, but loose enough to allow the reducer to rotate...at the top of the of the vertical pipe I have an end-cap with a hole drilled into it to allow for a half inch cpvc pipe to go down through the center...this half inch pipe is my water line and also acts as the hub that the 6 inch pipe rotates on...I was going screw bicycle sprockets to the top of the end caps (a friend of mine has a bicycle shop and bunches of old sprockets and chain) and I have a 12 volt disco-ball motor and solar panel hookup...the sun would hit the panel, the motor would spin (slowly), and the bicycle chain would turn the sprockets on top of the five vertical pipes, rotating the plants...the motor would only run when the sun was up...
I hope that gives you an idea...I'm a visual kind of person and it's easier for me to understand if I see it...
I'm hoping to do some videos soon...I have been trying to make some videos for years, but something always hinders me...
Reflective thing like foil insulation to reflect the sun back towards the back side of the tower . I love the pool noodle thing I am thinking lava rock inside to roots will cling to those as well lava rock really does not weigh that much either a few inches concreate in the bottom of the bucket heavy base
Hi Mike. The Pool noodle cut at a slant is a great idea, Love your work!
Thanks Cheryann, this will be a first for me, it's fun experimenting.
I use poolnoodles! Love your tower Idea, I do 3 gal buckets-passive hydroponics-leave alone and no need to water or any pumps-for 30 days! Love your steam punk set, I'm doing my bathroom in steam punk!
Awesome!!! I would love to see pics of your work!
Newbie here. May I ask what do you mean passive and how does it work with no pumps etc ? Thanks
Hi Mike I luv the way the wall setup looks great job look so real and some great ideas growing in tower form ♥️😁✌🏼
Thanks Gina!
I am working on 3 buckets stacked. Where I can just run water or pump water to top lid with holes ( that I will cover with a elevated bored to use as shelf)
When it runs down first buckets watering all the plants it will drain into second bucket and them collect in the third and bottom bucket. I have pics. Simple and I am thinking spaced in a spiral from bottom up each to of the flowering buckets should hold 12 to 20 plants each. So 3 buckets food grade at 7 bucks a piece and a pump with some hose.
Awesome! You can email me if you like at keepongrowin1@gmail.com or share it in our Facebook group.
Great video - pool noodle is brilliant solution to many shortcomings of traditional approaches…outsmarting old ways
make sure pump can handle lift say 10feet?
Thanks, I recorded that and edited it out some how, lol.
I'm interested in the buckets approach for more surface area. Also, plunging it into a bigger water filled base for stability and cooling seems smartest. Especially if the base itself has some traditional Kratky method options to additionally use the space of the bottom piece. My $0.02 anyway. Looking forward to the next video.
Great points! I may do that.
Haven't read of anyone's 4" or 5" PVC tube, installed through a hole in the 5-gallon bucket's lid, tilting or falling over once the bucket is filled with water. But hey, there could be someone out there and theirs did tilt or fall over. To help resolve any possible accidents try this "Stand pipe in center of bucket."
1. Put a 1"-2" layer of pebbles or rock in & around the PVC pipe. Also make sure there is a cut out for the water pump and holes in PVC pipe for the water to flow into the pipe.
2. Cut hole in PVC pipe for a 1" PVC pipe, sized to fit across the bottom of the bucket. Place the 1" PVC pipe into this hole through the 4"-5" PVC pipe. The sides of the bucket will help further in the stabilization of the 4"-5" PVC pipe. A picture diagram would be like looking through a hunting scope with cross hairs, but only missing one of the cross hairs. Or like an O with - minus sign going through it.
Thanks much Bill, great idea!
@@KeepOnGrowin Check out this RUclips video named "How to Make a Gutter Garden Using the CNC to Grow Lots of Food". Thought it was neat to watch how he used Gutter Downspouts & made Endcaps for each of the 30 inch sections of downspouts. One has to wonder where CNC is going to take us???
I invented the Rain Tower. The Tower garden sellers really came after me 10 years ago, lol.
Woah, lol, wonder if I will get any heat.
@@KeepOnGrowin They gave up after a few years of complaining. So no - there are so many home made ones now.
Think that I have a solution, using PVC as a cheap and easy construction process. There is just one more tool that I need, and a pvc pipe. This has been the project that I have been planning for several months, and planned to purchase the remaining items today or tomorrow. Perfect timing. Will create a video for my first attempt, because it's important to see how easily it goes from theory into action. We need an easily reproducible and cheap process
I think you can even stick the pool noodle in the other way around so that the top is more upright instead of sticking out in a 90 degree angle... gonna try... you gotta make an oval cut though
You, sir, are a genius. You've saved me lots of time and money
Glad I could help, thank you!
I built one with sewer pipe and a fountain pump with a sprayer nozzle the reservoir wasn't big enough went a vacation the strawberries I had die but it very doable for cheap. Didn't think about using a 5gallon bucket but I was trying to do it cheap as possible
Fantastic! Thank you Joe!
@@KeepOnGrowin no problem I think like you do the cheaper the better
A year later my son and I are going to try and replicate this $0-10 ...we shall see;) thank you so much
The pool this is gonna save me a lot of money
A 4 inch flange glued into the bottom of the bucket for the 4 inch pipe to slip into would help solve the stability problem.
Idea* Bucket, lid, vinyl gutters (4) 6', water pump hose/line, misting emitter and pool noodles. Bucket will be the base, cut the lid so you could install the 4 gutter sections with the hole in each for the noodle pieces, run a small diameters hose to the top of each gutter hooked up to a misting head to mist down each gutter. It seems to me like it would work. If it does not work doing it this way, you could get the end caps and use the gutter and noodle parts like you have been showing.🤔
Perhaps if you put a nail through the noodle on the inside it can hold the plant better when it gets heavy.
Pool noodles are brilliant! This is the first time I’ve seen that and I love the idea
A 4” wye (Y) fitting works well. Problem is, they’re about $8 each. I spent about $100 on just the wye fittings. Add in the rest of the needed materials, and I was well over $200. I built a wood A frame to mount it. Thank goodness I did it before lumber prices went crazy.
I know what you mean. I have a wye fitting that I have been staring at for two years, lol.
So grateful for your help
Thank you for explaining this well. 💯 I'm new to all this but I'm liking it, and will try it. 😉
Sound like A great idea! Doing it together.the stack idea got me. Especially apartment living, and sturdy!
Sounds like a plan!
Instead of cutting a round hole in the pvc maybe a half circle with the flat part on the bottom. Then heat the bottom part and use a bottle to bend it out.
Hey Mike! Ive build a 5gal tower with a pump. My most didficult part in this thing was water distribution. It was also expensive. Ill find my photos and post em in a bit.
I think my pump was like 50 or 60 bucks. It was a 400 - 650gph pump. Ill check for the specifics when the snow melts a bit.
@@KJ7JHN Commercial grow towers run $700 to over a grand. The pump I used is now $15.29.
amzn.to/3HEEaPe
I'm game to try this! Thank you for sharing 🌿🌿🌿🌹🌹🌹🌿🌿🌿🌄🌄🌄
I took horse troughs floating rafts you did very well I also ran it into the fish pond but fishpond wasn’t enough fertilizer so I want to go hydroponics
Love the idia I think should use buckets.Can't wait to see next vedio.
Mike could you create a solution of grow light for the DIY tower garden? It would be perfect for the indoor setting.
That's what I'm curious about and interested in. My "grow season" is unstable and erratic and tornadoey. I am growing indoors to lower my stress levels from worrying about my poor plants
I ordered the stackable planters from Dollar Tree online.
I put a water reservoir in a 5 gallon bucket ( milk jug, soda bottle, etc). Put castors on the bucket.
Then, I put holes for a pipe in the middle of 6 of the planters. The pipe is inserted into the water reservoir. That's where you fill it. I put a wick ( cut up t-shirt) into the reservoir and up through the holes the pipe runs through.
I attached the bottom planter to the bucket with zip ties. This gives me 21 planting spaces including the 3 in the bucket.
I thought about using the whole bucket as a reservoir but decided I didn't want to deal with the pumps, etc.
I haven't planted it yet. I'm gonna do that with the granddaughter. It's her strawberry/ salad bar tower. She loves salad. I found dwarf okra, dwarf sunflower, dwarf tomatoes, etc to include among the greens.
Oh, and I'm incompetent with tools like drills so I made my holes with a soldering iron.
I know...y'all are laughing but I did what I needed to do lol
So bucket (Walmart) $2.69
Planters 1.25×6= $7.50
Castors ( Harbor Freight) 1.79×3=5.37
Nuts and bolts for castors: I forget but around $3-4 use those locking nuts
I had the pipe so ???
* All math done in my head so definitely needs checking*
That sounds awesome Kelli!! Keep me updated and would love to see pictures some time.
👋 Mike. Nice background set. I like the bent noodles. I still use your ideas for my hydroponic plants. 👍
Thanks much Rocky! Hope you are doing well!
@@KeepOnGrowin Thanks. Doing well, hope you are as well. Looking forward for spring.
I've spent a lot of time trying to develop a good grow tower. My best guess so far uses 4-inch thin-wall pipe. Inflation has driven everything else beyond practicality. My best guess uses a fixture to guide a hole saw in at the proper angle to enable good watering while cupping the root system. I envision a 4" pipe that supports dozens of two or three-inch pipes at perhaps 45 degrees. The smaller pipes would have to be fabricated in such a way as to interact with a nutrient stream flowing from top-to-bottom of the 4" pipe. A standard small pipe design could be made by the dozens to fit the 4" pipe.
Each column can be rotated 180 degrees every 8 hours and returned at the end of the day. The 4" pipes could dump into a rain gutter so the nutrients could be re-pumped back to the towers.
The small pipes could be a good candidate for 3-D printing.
Cool! Lots of great input!
K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Silly. Improvement to a design is not how much can you add, but how much you can take away without hindering function and while saving time and money. I have never tried the pool noodle thing, but after seeing this, I might have to. I want to try some grow towers but don't want to do a bunch of stuff or spend a bunch of money. A 4in pipe, hole saw, and pool noodle is pretty cheap and easy to obtain. Of course, the price of the pipe here is now about $28. A bit of a price increase in eight months.
I can get 55 gallon plastic food grade drums for $6 each. Drill a few extra holes and you have the perfect fill and forget hydroponics.
Yes these are great. Just keep plants small. No tomatoes but I do them in 3 gal paint buckets full of perlite with a 20g tote to mix ro water and nutrients. Then a pump to push the water to a dripper in every bucket, that all drain back intonthe sump. Man what great tomatoes. Need to grow more food, gettin too expensive.😊
I am thinking a double tower in a plastic heavy duty tote would be cool to holes drilled only on 3 sides of the tower one pump
There are so many ideas. What about hanging milk or tea jugs on some kind of rack or pole (for the tower concept). Then it would be Kratky and you wouldn't need the electrical components. You would probably have to start the plants another way because of the angle the jugs would hang at. But once they were started you could transplant them into the kratky tower (or mayby something more like a kratky wall). Maybe even come up with a way to hang them in a window in the winter months. Some kind of a rack. I'm currently not living at home, but once I get back home I will be working on prototyping this idea. But I will want it to be open source because we need ideas that will help people, especially poor people, to overcome the restrictions that globalist oligarchs apparently intend to impose on us in the very near future.
I don't think the window would supply enough light the plants require. You could though suppliment them with led grow lights. Good luck.
@@fuzzybud8346 I just supplement the light coming through the window using cheap 5000k "Daylight" bulbs. In a south facing window I can grow a lot of leafy greens without any light supplementation, but currently I'm growing green onions in an east facing window, so I need the supplemental light. They get a little leggy, but are still good to eat.
My experience with Lacinato Kale has shown that it will grow quite well just in a sunny south facing window without lights. There are some who claim that you can grow certain tomatoes and certain peppers in a sunny south facing window. I may experiment with that in the future, but for now I'm sticking with things I'm fairly sure will grow in a sunny window or with 5000k light bulb supplementation. So far I've had success with leaf lettuce, kale, kohlrabi, Chard, Basil, Mint, Sorrel, Egyptian Walking Onions and Arugula. I have a huge list of other greens that I intend to experiment with growing this way before I try doing this with fruiting or rooting crops.
Most of these plants do need artificial light (as well as some degree of warnth) in the seedling stage, but again the 5000k "Daylight" bulbs have been sufficient. 6500k would obviously do a better job, but they're more expensive and harder to come by. I do have a plan to eventually run 6500k 12 volt lights using solar power in the near future. Those plants will be less leggy. But for now these slightly leggy plants are actually great. I just had some of the scallions in my soup for lunch.
I intend to have a huge window put into one of my south facing rooms which will be where I plant my indoor garden in the future
. I'm not in a position to do that right now, but hopefully by 2024.
To secure and stabilize a vertical 5 gallon bucket with a 4 inch upright could you use a few inches of cement in the bottom of the bucket?
This is so cool. You got me and my kiddos into hydroponics now. Dont wanna be a party pool noodle pooper lol but what about any chemicals in the pool noodle getting into the plant and or water 🤔. Its a great idea as its so cost effective. Would love to use but just interested how safe a pool noodle is gonna be for food? Thanks brother for your cool videos. My eldest took environmental management and now gonna get him working on growing food for the family as part of extension of his study. 🙏🏼😊 💜
The pool noodle just holds the plant in place. It is more like a plastic nursery tray or pot than a grow medium like rockwool or coir.
@@KeepOnGrowin thank you for such a quick reply 🙏🏼 had another thought on it if you think kids are using them in the pool right. Then most kids end up getting water in their mouths in a pool full of noodles. Appreciate they are holding the baby seedling 🌱. Just working through your videos from years back and just planted out some seeds for sprouts. Ready grown sprouts cost here in UK £2.50 for a small tray of organic micro brocoli so am hoping to grow our own alot cheaper and alot more as kids seem to enkoy eating them too which is a super bonus as they full of vitality. 🙏🏼 thank you 😊
@@istandforfreedom1111 Awesome! Getting the kids involved! Keep up the good work!
How do you start seeds with the pool noodles?
I wonder if I could build a bucket aeroponics tower for potatoes... (Would need to be light proof to keep the potatoes from turning green)...
Im thinking for tomatoes the bucket witht he pool noodle idea would be best only because of the enormous roots but for herbs and lettuce probably the towers would be fine. Im in the middle of my first build right now.
Did someone tried the angled pool noodle method yet? Hopefully it works!
I love the way you think!
Angle cut those pool noodle pieces on each end, on the inside, it can take any excess water away from the hole and drip it down away from the tube wall?
Whatever approach you and others take I firmly believe from experience you need a 20 gallon solution capacity. Otherwise the EC, PH and temperature will swing wildly and need daily attention.
New here...what does EC mean???
@@NoMoreInfo4You Electrical conductivity. There are devices that measure this just like PH. It tells you how much nutrients are available in your water the higher the EC reading the more nutrients you have available and when you have a low reading it's time to add nutrients.
I am working on a tower design which is very afordable/a little complicated but very useful. I'm building it right now. The only drawback is that it uses a lot of 3d printed parts. I 3d print all the pots for the plants to be put in and a special water-saving method which reduces the amount of cutting you have to do in whatever buckets you use for the tower. This is so that you can use any version of the bucket and also so that each plant pot is directly fed water and does not rely on the whole system necessarily being perfectly level. Also, I wanted to use totes instead of buckets for more stability and larger space for the plants which can be upsized considerably. So much so that you could use large totes as the walls of the greenhouse structure. Those would be the large 50-gallon totes you get at Walmart super cheap. Each of my towers costs much time but only about $60 to build and you get twice the yield and 3x the stability and water storage. You also will need a 3d printer. I designed it so you could use square net cups or square foam which is good because there is no waste when cutting squares in a sheet of foam or a pool nudle if you cut squares from the sides. I think it is a great improvement on the bucket tower idea. contact me if you would like to see pictures.
I would like to see that. Can you show me? I'm working on something similar
I would like to see, thank you!
You could bolt the pvc tube to the side of the 5 gallon bucket, put 3 or 4 tubes in the bucket to stabilize it. Maybe even drill holes and use zip ties to secure the pvc tubes to the bucket.
Great idea!
Newbe question but how do you compensate for natural rain water when growing with a outdoor hydroponic system?
I build "A" frame and used same tubes that you holding in this video. I used different approach. I mount the tubes horizontal instead vertical tower. Tubes needed to be cleaned out every other day since there was constant build up jelly like stuff, bacteria and it was suffocating the plants/ roots. I gave up once all 60 plants died. My "a" frame was in direct sun and so did the plastic water tank, made of black plastic. Was the problem due to high temperatures or what did I do wrong ? anybody have ideas ? I gave up on hydroponics system because of that. I like to try again thou. Any suggestions please ?
to rotate plants towards sunlight, just make a base with a repurposed stool that swivels :-)
Pool noodles are the best for this! I'm going to try this along with you, thanks Mike.
Awesome! Keep me updated Kye!
genius. right on mike!
Thank you! I am sure we will come up with a cool and practical solution.
What type of plastic is the pool noodle made of? Does it give off harmful elements that the plants can suck up that you could potentially eat?
i like the bucket method.
I live in the desert in California, my question would be if the pool noodle has any chemicals that would release from heating up in the sun? Some containers have specifications, that say they are sage for growing vegetables and fruits.
If concerned, don't use them. Also, if your nutrients get that hot, the plants will die.
Put mirrors behind the tower to reflect the light back into the plants. Place your sun loving plants in the front for full sun and your leafy greens in back as they need less light.
There is a major road on that side of my house, I might cause an accident, lol.
@@KeepOnGrowin Just put the mirrors right next to the tower (inches away from your plants) to reflect the light on to the dark side of your tower. Mirrors are cheap at 2nd hand stores...