Squashing The Gardening Game

Well, I hope so anyway.

I’ve been wanting to grow strawberries for a while and while looking for ideas on good ways to grow them, I researched strawberry towers. There are several varieties and I combined a few of the ideas to use what I had and need a minimal amount of other stuff. While putting the ideas and materials together, I realized the tower might also work for my squash plants this year. I’m trying candy roaster squash, mashed potato squash, and a few types of pumpkins left over from years prior. I keep having trouble with squashes; I tried them in bags last year and got one small one that rotted on the vine. So I’m putting them in towers this year for air circulation and so on. We’ll see if it works. If so, I’ll keep up with variations of this idea in later years.

Today I’m going to show my methods, later on I’ll either make a new post or update this post to say how this one’s working out.

For starters, I made an irrigation tube which I did not think to get pictures of, but you’ll see the results later. I used a 3/4 inch pvc pipe with a stopper on the end and drilled a hole in the bottom of the stopper and then holes at right angles to each other about a handspan away from each other, starting at about 2 feet up the pipe so the bottom doesn’t get sodden. Then I wrapped it in weed fabric to keep the dirt out and tied it with twine. I tried wrapping it diagonally upwards but that took too much fabric and I was worried about the water getting out, so I did a wrap or two then cut it and moved up.

Next was the tower. I put two t-posts about a foot apart, more or less; I didn’t want this to be huge. The tower I was basing it on was made of about 3 inch pvc pipe; aside from that, I need the water to permeate from the irrigation pipe. I wrapped it with chicken wire, securing it with the wire the chicken wire was packaged with, though I’m out of that now so I’ll probably use zip ties next.

Next I stuck the irrigation pipe in the middle, using some wire twisted around it to temporarily hold it upright.

The next step was adding soil. What I had on hand was coconut coir, potting soil, and leaves (to bulk out the space). I did a layer of coir, then leaves, then soil, then I put some sprouts on top of that. The order was good I think because the coir forms a nice base, the leaves bulk well, and the soil enables me to push it down with a shovel. Then in later layers, the coir goes on top of the sprouts and, given the way it’s been expanded by added water, which coir is very good at holding on to, means that the sprouts are being given an infusion of moist soil right away.

I decided to do this in this fashion because I’d started the sprouts in pots already and wanted to try not to crush them or the roots. I think this is actually being a bit of a problem because I think the bottom sprouts are being a little weighed down by the layers above. Further experimenting might be needed if you make it this way, but I think putting them in through the chicken wire as younger sprouts after the tower has been filled might be the better way.

I continued layering upwards; coir, leaves, soil, tamp, ease in the sprouts, alternating sides of the tower.

When I reached the second tower, I added more chicken wire, weaving it onto the first with more of the wire. I ended up with about 4 layers, topped with coir and leaves. I also tied the wire to the posts as best as I could. The topping piece was a funnel with a sink strainer in, both of which I picked up from the dollar store, to help get water into the irrigation pipe. Hopefully it grows well; it’s been almost a week and they haven’t wilted yet!* I have 2 towers of squash and am planning to put 2 more towers together to add some bare-root strawberries into later.

*and then we experienced a few below-freezing days and they have indeed wilted. I might have to get some more seeds and try again.

Expect a return to half-an-hour sprint on Cerule next week.

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