If you grow inside... get yourself a washing machine basin, water catch thing! I don't know it's name... it's a 3 or 4 inch deep tray your washer can sit in, it's reccomended for those with washers on the second floor to catch a leak! That would be excellent for Inside growing
If stability of your tower is a concern, It is possible to sink your bottom bucket into the soil to the level of your baffles, so that you could still access it to do some maintenance if you need to. That will not only lower the centre of gravity of the tower, but also make it easy for people who are not so tall, to work with and harvest from the plants at the top most bucket. If you have an indoor set up, but are experiencing some leaking from the holes around the pool noodles, it’s worthwhile to find a slightly wider bucket to use as the bottom, nutrient container. If the bottom bucket is slightly wider, then there’s a little bit of lip sticking out to catch any liquid dripping down from the upper buckets. If there is a concern that the holes that you drill near the outside of that bottom lid are not able to direct the water back into the bucket quickly enough, before any cutting is done on that lid, when a person goes to make a bucket set up, the lid can be heated with a heat gun, and force applied to the softened lid, to cause it to angle down in the middle, when the lid is actually on the bucket. So then everything else can be done the way that mike shows in the other video, but the rim of the bucket will be sticking out slightly more than the bottom of the block above it, with a few holes on the bit that sticks out, that will serve to catch the drips, and the angling off the lid after that will direct the water back to the bucket below. For anybody who is considering using pipe to angle heavier plants such that drips go back into the bucket, it may be possible to just do the slit idea and use the heat gun to make permanent supports that Will hold the correct angle and are far less likely to leak, or for those who actually want to have a piece of pipe, it’s possible to recycle food containers like pop bottles to make little sections of pipe that don’t cost anything, but could serve the purpose for quite a long time. I’m wondering if anybody has tried this system with just a few really tiny holes in the bottom of the nutrient bucket, at the top of the stack, and possibly some small tubing leading to the lower buckets, to make sure that they actually get nutrients. Perhaps a recollection bucket at the bottom with a spigot? It seems to be that for anybody who’s totally off grid or starting off without very much money, that perhaps a gravity fed system might be a useful thing. I’m also wondering if anybody has tried a solar powered pump, Possibly with a battery system that would kick in a few times a night.
Instead of drilling a hole in the bucket, only cut a horizontal slit, then use a heat gun to make it pliable, then use a 2 inch dowel to shape it. With the extra material, you can get it to be slanted the way you want by pulling the bottom lip forwards while the top one goes back
@@Gary-uy9mr did you end up trying it? Many people on RU-vid have been doing as you've described with PVC, which is a toxic material, so I'd rather use buckets.
if your bottom bucket is too thick to see the level, you could use an elbow for like irrigation and a clear hose like for aquarium pumps. Poke a hole at the bottom, poke the elbow in, and put the hose on the other end of the elbow, and run it vertical. The water will rise up inside the clear hose and tell you the level inside. Impressive that you got very little if any algae.
AMAZING FOLLOW UP..I wanted to know how do you change out the water from the bottom an how often do you have to take bottom res bucket an clean out nutrient build up? an what nutes to you use..i moved to mexico an nervous about the nutrients to get to grow lettuce herbs and sweet peppers. can you please give any suggestion of base nute. i see here in mexico ultrasol tomatoe 15 9 26 but they said i dont need epsom salt ..what do yo think?
Dear Sir, We really like the steampunk backdrop on the wall behind you! Can you tell us about what it does? Is it an operable machine, like a distiller?
has anyone else tried Mike's methods in the high desert? I'm at 6000 feet above sea level and we get 6 inches of total perciptitation a year. Zone 7 with micro zones closer to 8 up against south facing stucco or brick walls.
Hi Erika, I live at 7000 ft and the sun in the south gets REALLY hot. You may need to put silver insulation pads on each bucket to keep the water and roots cooler, consider a white sheet on the south facing bricks in hot summer right behind the plants (the hot bricks will still keep plants warm in chilly nights) and you might need a shade/umbrella/awning set up in the west/southwest so that AM sun is plentiful but plants are protected from afternoon scorch (esp kale/lettuce etc). good luck
I'm thinking of adding an extra bucket on the Botton full of gravel or concrete if the gravel works out. We get high winds here as in 40 to 60 mile per hour gusts regularly, some how plants seem to do ok. I was also thinking of driving some rebar into the ground on both sides of the tower and using shock cables to secure the tower. I will place the tower next to my shed and a tall gated wall to help as well.
No point in doing that. I didn't do it but try this.... put a wood or PVC Y brace in the center point of 3 of these towers or an X brace if you have 4... then use a piece of string or rope to tighten the columns so they push hard against the brace. That setup should survive a hurricane due to the footprint.
TruthbeTold: In my area, some will give them free, and even wash them out for you. Others will charge as much as three dollars a bucket with a lid, which is still a huge bargain over the hardware store, where the bucket will run approximately eight dollars with the lid. They may or may not come pre-washed, but it is no hardship to wash Icing out of a bucket. The nicest thing about their buckets is that the lids are actually gasketed, So that they are a great fit every time, and even really good for Food storage. They also tend to be a little bit better quality than the hardware store buckets, because they’re meant to hold heavy icing. The ones that I’ve noticed are free, tend to be the bakeries that are associated with large department stores or food chains, that would otherwise send the empty buckets out to the compactor.
I just finished building a tower out of firehouse subs pickle buckets! They are food grade and come with the lid for $3 if you have one nearby, plus the money goes to a charity for first responders so win/ win situation. One thing I recommend before doing anything else is to get the pump and hose first to see how high your submersible will pump water. Keep in mind that you will need more pressure than you think to run your sprinkler head if you go that route. I also recommend cutting the holes last because the hole size depends a good bit on which pool noodles you get. Thanks for all you do Mike!
Worked great indoors. Using pvc zip tied to buckets for ports. Next spring ill try how you left the lid intact. I think that was the hiccup to my water distribution. I cut the inner lids out to make way for the feed line. Nice job on the setup and execution.
I love the ingenuity behind the simplicity! It's brilliant! Regarding leaking pool noodles, what would happen if you built these upside down, so that the narrow portion of the bucket was above the wider portion? Would that keep them from dripping as much? Couldn't all but the bottom bucket be built that way?
MJShaheed: Click on the screen, and you will either get a few dots or somethings show up on the right hand corner of the screen. You should be able to select your close captioning there. If you’re using a different system, underneath the video screen for the video shown, yet on your screen, on the lower right hand side underneath there should be buttons that you can use To access your captioning. I hope This helps.
@@mjshaheed : You’re kindly welcome; I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a case of somebody just learning to use the Internet or a lag on getting the closed captioning working from the channel that provides the videos. And I’ve also known what it is to be living in somebody else’s language, and trying to get my communications skills up to speed, so it only made sense to take a chance to err on the side of caution for you. All the best on your new journey in a new language! :-)
I built my tower based off your videos. I had trouble finding a pump strong enough for the diameter of my tube but I did find one. Lots of free buckets from bakeries! Im using pool noodles at an angle, 5 buckets tall, and in my apartment. I had a leak issue once because the plant shifted towards the light but that was solved with a longer, angle cut noodle. My plants are doing AMAZING. 15mins on, 30 mins off with a basic mechanical pin timer. I haven't gotten to the first harvest yet but I'm hopeful and it's looking very promising. Thank you for all your info.
AMAZING FOLLOW UP..I wanted to know how do you change out the water from the bottom an how often do you have to take bottom res bucket an clean out nutrient build up? an what nutes to you use..i moved to mexico an nervous about the nutrients to get to grow lettuce herbs and sweet peppers. can you please give any suggestion of base nute. i see here in mexico ultrasol tomatoe 15 9 26 but they said i dont need epsom salt ..what do yo think?
@@KeepOnGrowin what? Are you advocating for unhealthy cancer causing gardening methods? Why should anyone trust you of you continue errors while knowing better???
Hey! What would happen if you sunk a mesh/cloth pot with a tomato planted in it down in the top of your two tiered bucket??maybe smaller than the lid? Gallon bucket?? I really like your tips!
Thank you. Trying to avoid that. Not everyone has a heat gun and doesn't want to buy one just for this one purpose. You can improve it in many ways, just going for the cheapest, easiest way.
I also had a hub coming out of the top of mine while youve got your sprinkler contained inside. Im kind of excited to try it again this spring. Thanks Mike.
Damon Gardens: About the hub that you mentioned, was that to connect To an outside sprinkler system? Or perhaps for topping up the system when the nutrient solution got low?
lol. 14:07 i just watched this video and i recently 3d designed this adapter but i'm selling on ebay. Just got a new born baby girl and trying to make money for her. my design snaps into place with no tools, and it has a snap on cover when you're not utilizing the hole and has a place to add plant label, i also got labels with nfc chip built in where you can program it to point to a website about that exact plant, like a wikipedia page. i'm still building out the website where you can log your plants like a journal, get help and information and such. goal is to integrate an arduino/raspberry pi to monitor your hydroponic tower garden as well and get help from the community. getting harder to build this while taking care of my baby. @KeepOnGrowin if you want some adapters, i can send some your way.
I am curious about the food grade issue. Are the plant pots for regular "dirt grown" plants food grade? If not what is the difference. If the buckets are not food grade on the tower, is the PVC in the rain gutters? Help, I'm not certain what to purchase.
