Aeroponic End of the Season Update

[TFro3]

The outdoor growing season has now come to an end for me.
A quick recap of this first attempt to the Aeroponic Tower grow is below along with some pros and cons.


Recap:

• ~10-15 gallons of tomatoes harvested between the 2 plants.
  • The plants did survive the big storm that bend the plants in half basically. But they recovered and kept on producing even though they looked ugly.
• ~ 20 or so cucumbers were harvested. These were really fun to watch mature and pick. Unfortunately its life had ended early due to disease/virus.
• ~ 10 zucchini's were harvested. It was doing really well and the taste was outstanding. However its life was cut short by a pest infestation.
• The Kale, Iceberg lettuce, Gourmet lettuce, and Arugula all did way better than I thought they would. This was my first time ever growing Kale and it was super easy to grow and manage in the tower. All the lettuces were fantastic not only grow but their taste was unreal.
  • Not only that but I felt that the lettuce in the tower took way longer to bolt which is great. That meant lots more time with lettuce before needing to replant. The Kale never did bolt, but we pulled them due to a caterpillar feeding frenzy.
• Mint... f*ck mint. It grew really well. Like.... EXPLODED. However, the roots overtook the inside of the tower and did damage some parts of the tower. Mint isn't save planted in the ground, or in this tower. I guess the only way to grow it is in a pot by itself because their roots are crazy invasive.
• Cilantro was disappointing. It didn't last too long but I also had it lower on the tower so it could have simply been the placement.
• The basil was a rockstar. For some reason it did take it a long time to get to a point where we could harvest some leaves but once it did it really took off. We make a lot of pesto so we will be doing basil again hands down.

Pros:

• Planters didn't take up a ton of space like a traditional garden.
• Watering was fairly simple. Only had to make sure the bucket had nutrient water in it and you were good to go!
• Harvesting was easy! Not having to be on your hands and knees to harvest like a traditional soil garden was life changing.
• Everything was delicious and convenient.
  • Having lettuce you can just pick from was amazing. Not having to worry about lettuce in the fridge going back was great.

Cons:

• Like I said, watering was FAIRLY simple. However, in peak summer it was hard to keep water in the buckets. With the plants consuming tons of water along with natural evaporation in the 90+ degree (Fahrenheit) heat I was having to fill the buckets in the morning and evening to make sure they weren't going empty.
  • This can make it challenging if you ever want to go out of town for a couple days and don't have anyone to fill them for you.
    • However this can be solved by having a large food grade barrel (can get them for $20-$40 used) and filling that with nutrient water. Then using a simple gravity system to autofill your towers as they need it.
• Some of the plants we picked had intense root systems. This made it hard to pull out some of the net cups and clean out the tower at the end of the season.
• Power outages. We lost power only once this summer but of course it was on an extremely hot day. No power, no pumps. Bad news. Luckily we have a generator so it wasn't a big deal. But its something to think about. I'll be looking at power solutions and pumps to help account for this next year. If you're at work and you lose power that could be the end of your garden by the time you come home.

Takeaways:

• Better plant planning next year. Doing a little more research into plants and picking ones that have smaller root systems AND pick plants that are resistant to viruses/disease.
• Setup autofilling so there isn't a big time commitment to filling the towers.
• To look into a better pest solution to help keep plants from being overrun with hungry feeders.

Also, I know I dropped the ball on updates post July 1st. I have a ton of photos and updates to make so I will be slowly doing that and backdating the posts so they fall in line correctly to look back on.