How to Make a Garden Tower From a Barrel?

Hi i am new to gardening so How to Make a Garden Tower From a Barrel?

Jamesgarner wrote:Hi i am new to gardening so How to Make a Garden Tower From a Barrel?

Suggest you do a google search on such a design. Since this is unrelated to Square Foot Gardening, members here will not have much experience on such a project.

Yes tried it and searching for it

markqz wrote:

Jamesgarner wrote:Yes tried it and searching for it

If you can't find it on google, it doesn't exist

 

I asked google that question, and it reported a lot of finds:

If you want a tower, it's probably easiest to order a stacking tower online.  They should be on sale at this time of the year.  A barrel would best be used as 2 half barrels for planting blueberries, asparagus or something else you don't want to put in your SFG beds.

This Forum is dedicated to helping people use the Square Foot Gardening Method.

I used 45 gallon food grade screw top barrels .

Divide the diameter at the top & bottom in to nine from one vertical line top to bottom ,   use a strip of cardboard and mark off all the other verticals,  then on one height at a time six inches between horizontals ,  put in the same horizontal line round the barrel .

Using a 3 inch dia hole cutter and a power drill cut alternate holes round the top ring ie cut miss one cut etc. move to the next ring down  and this time cut where there is no hole immediately above it and then do the cut miss exercise  .  repeat this till you get to the bottom of the barrel , leave the bottom six inches hole free as it will act as a reservoir. I actually drew a ring round each hole I intended to cut .. saved making mistakes in the cutting .( honest   ) 
 
Down the middle of the barrel  put a 3 inch rain pipe tube about six inches longer than the height of the barrel ,  draw four equally spaced vertical lines on it and from the top edge of the barrel drill a series of holes down the verticals   make the lower down holes smaller say 1/8 inch and the upper most a maximum of 1/4 inch ,  reduce the sizes evenly as you get to the end of the tube .... this  stops the pressure of a full tube of fluid flushing the growth medium out the bottom . Block the bottom of the filling tube with a tight fiting plastic bottle etc   ,
set the tube central and vertical then stand the tub on a stand of bricks / blocks so the lowest holes ar about 15 inches from the ground ( Save you a lot of back ache later on )  
  I inserted  small cups made  from cut down small plastic soda pop bottles to make shelves to stop the fillings from coming out and to help support the strawberries . On later barrels I used weed barrier material across the holes and cut a + in them to insert plants . 
 
Twice a week I fed the tubes with 3 gallons of diluted tomato feed, two barrels made like this gave the three of us more than enough strawberries 

 After three years you'll need to empty,  clean & refresh the barrels. 
Grow the replacement runners in the tops of the barrels ( an art in itself ).
 Put the spent growth medium on your veg beds as it still has several years of useful decaying nutrient material left in it.

Plantoid, Do you have any photos of this?

I have thousands of SFG pictures taken since I joined SFG ,  a lot were erased when photobucket tried to charge me to store them . This could take some time

Sorry  my hard drive storage devices  only run to 2008 I need to look at a few CD's prior to then

Photobucket!! That's the word I have been trying to remember. Yes, we lost a lot of valuable photos when they decided to hold everyone's photos for ransom.

I was spared in that I always saved to my Pictures on my PC.

FWIW, I bought a greenstalk planter that I plan to use like a SFG.  In my mind (scary place, that) each "pocket" equals 1 sq ft give or take.  This particular company is based in my new home state of Tennessee and the containers are recyclable if you decide you are done with them.  I bought the one with the deeper pockets and plan to put strawberries, green beans, mostly shorter stuff.

Happy growing!

Been through zillion of photo's but can't find my blue barrel in a good picture .

However a few minutes ago in a moment of inspiration I put barrel of strawberry plants into my search engine and came up with this picture , which is a similar looking barrel but with less planting holes .

 At the top I did pi x d / 9 to get the verticals by using a long strip of 12 "wide carboard bent over a foot at the top off the bottom line I again did  pi x D /9 to get the verticals even ,  then used a marker pen through a drilled hole in a length of scrap wood to put the horizontal rings 6 inches apart round the barrel . Alternative crossings points  were marked .

 Once done it was a simple case of hole of cut alternative holes ( miss a crossing point then repeat )    when it came to the next horizontal band I missed out where the hole would have been directly below the top hole  and marked alternates .
 
I did this for all rings so the final cut outs looked like a gentle spiral .  Found it easier to have the barrel rolled on it's side against a brick wall to hole cut as it is secure and safe. 

www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1387495975/strawberry-barrel-planter-plans-diy?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_uk_en_gb_all&utm_custom1

plantoid wrote:Been through zillion of photo's but can't find my blue barrel in a good picture

Been there!

I just saw a planter  like the barrel planter made of an IBC tote.
https://permies.com/t/38152/a/19921/IMG_0280.JPG