- Hey, everybody, it's Sean Schaub,
and today we're doing an updated video,
and we're talking about how
to plant your ZipGrow tower.
(bright music)
All right, so the first thing we wanna cover
for you guys today, is the table set up,
and some of the equipment you're gonna need,
some little tips and tricks that we like to use
that make the planting go a little bit easier.
The first thing we're gonna talk about
is your table set up, and a few of the things
to consider when getting everything set up.
You wanna make sure that the table
is a good height for yourself,
so it's comfortable, you're not bending over,
you're not reaching way up.
Another thing, you wanna make sure
you've got a smooth flat top.
This thing is gonna be getting dirty and wet,
so you wanna make sure it's easy to wipe off and keep clean.
And also it's easy to slide the towers around.
You wanna make sure you have something
to anchor the tower to.
In this case, we've got a little metal plate
with a little metal prong on it.
Just anything, it can be a screw head,
it can be anything, but you're just gonna,
something that can slide through this back hole
that'll anchor the tower to the table,
so it stays steady while you're pulling in the media.
Another thing that you're gonna
wanna consider with your table,
is you want it to be the appropriate length
for the towers that you're using.
So most likely, if you're in a greenhouse,
you're using our five-foot towers.
If you are in a warehouse, you're probably using
our ZipFarm with seven-foot towers.
So when you're making your table,
the length of the table, you want to have
a couple extra feet on the top end of the tower,
to be able to lay the strips of media up here,
and then you want a little bit on the end as well
to kinda just, a little bit of space to work with
so you're not sliding off the end of the table
when you're trying to plant.
So the materials that you're gonna need
to plant your ZipGrow tower are of course
the tower housing, the Matrix Media insert,
wicking strip, obviously your seedlings,
your pulling hook, and as always,
we recommend wearing some gloves.
The next thing we'll talk about is starting your seedlings,
and the type of seedlings that we recommend,
and just what we prefer using.
So our favorite type of plug are FlexiPlugs,
or something similar that's,
it's a peat material that's bound together,
so it's really clean, they're easy to work with,
they're just our preferred method.
They're probably gonna be a little more expensive
than some other methods, but,
especially if you're in a ZipFarm inside,
where cleanliness is usually a pretty big factor,
these are gonna be what we always recommend.
You can use a variety of other
seed-starting methods as well.
We've started our seedlings just in
typical potting mix, soil flats.
You can use Rockwool, you can use
any of those other standard methods.
They'll all work okay, but,
like I said, these are preferred method here.
So aside from using a standard seedling plug like this,
there's a few other things that you can plant in the towers.
A few examples are just rootstock.
The most popular example of this is gonna be strawberries.
We almost always plant strawberries from rootstock.
A couple of other things, you can start clones.
A popular example of that is mint.
Mint's real easy to clone, so oftentimes,
we'll start the clones in the towers.
Another example of a seedling type
is you can start bare root into the tower.
So this would be something like,
you've started your seedlings in an aeroponic system,
and you can transfer it over to the towers.
This will work pretty well, you'll just wanna be
a little bit careful with transplant shock,
since they are bare exposed roots.
But any of those types of things
can be transplanted into the towers.
So when getting your seedlings ready to transplant,
you wanna make sure you've got a seedling
that's a good couple inches tall,
it's probably been in your seedling system
for about two to three weeks,
depending on which variety of crop it is,
but you wanna look for a seedling
that's developed its first couple of true leaves,
not just the initial embryonic leaves,
but your first couple of true leaves,
like I said, about two inches tall or so,
and this is just gonna make sure that when you
go from your seedling system to your towers,
that the seedlings are robust enough
to handle the transplant shock,
and are gonna pick right back up and grow well from there.
Another thing to look for with your seedlings,
is you just want nice short and stocky seedlings,
as opposed to long and leggy seedlings.
The short and stocky, they're just gonna transplant better
and you're gonna get the overall shape and stature
of the plant that you're looking for in the long run.
All right, so now that we've covered kind of,
how you want your seedlings to look,
and kind of the equipment that you're gonna need,
now we're gonna move into actually preparing the media
and your seedlings to get ready to plant into the tower.
The first thing you're gonna do when you plant the tower
is you're gonna have your media laid out here.
We're planting a three-foot tower,
so we have one strip of Matrix Media.
So a single insert for a three-foot tower.
If you're planting a five-foot or seven-foot tower,
you're going to have two inserts,
but they're gonna plant the exact same way, so.
First thing we're gonna do is open up the media,
and place the wicking strip.
So the wicking strip is really important,
because this is what is taking water from the dripper
and diverting it right to the root zone of the seedling,
so we wanna make sure that that's
coming into contact with that.
So what we're gonna do here,
we'll place the wicking strip.
This is the front of my tower,
so this is where my plants are gonna be coming out of.
So we wanna make sure the wicking strip is set back
about a half of an inch from the front of that.
And what this does is when your seedling is sitting there,
it keeps the moisture away from the crown of the plant,
and so that helps reduce disease instances,
and things like that, so you wanna make sure
that's set back a little bit from the front.
You're gonna have a little flap on the back side,
and so what this is gonna do is it's gonna be
sandwiched up against the back of the tower.
And so if water is being directed
towards the back of this tower,
it's gonna catch on the wicking strip,
and then help it wick evenly throughout the media.
Also with this being back away from the front of the plants,
you're gonna decrease your odds of getting
any dripping out of the front of the tower,
which can sometimes be an issue.
So just make sure that's back,
and that'll alleviate a lot of those problems.
And also you wanna leave a little bit
of a flap here at the top of the tower,
about an inch or so is usually good.
By leaving this little flap at the top of the tower,
what that's gonna do is, if our dripper
is not placed directly above,
directly centered above this,
we can flap this to either side, and it's gonna hit,
the water's gonna hit on that,
and then it's gonna wick down evenly from there,
so that helps make sure that we're actually
getting water regardless of where
the dripper's actually dripping onto the tower.
All right, so now that we've kinda gone over
how you want your wicking strip placed,
let's go ahead and talk about actually
planting the seedlings in the tower.
When you start planting your seedlings,
you're gonna wanna refer to the seedling packet,
as far as the spacing goes for that crop,
so it'll be crop-specific, so make sure you look at that,
and space them appropriately in the tower.
Most things are gonna be six to eight inches apart.
So I'm planting some lettuce here.
I'm gonna plant six of these for this three-foot tower.
And so what you wanna do here is,
you wanna make sure that your seedling is,
the crown of the plant is above the front of the media here.
You don't want that being extra wet,
you want that out of the tower, so,
you kinda want your plug just
right flush with the top of that.
And then make sure that the root zone of the plug
is in contact with the wicking strip.
Another kinda little tip here is
if you put just a little upward angle on the plug itself,
it's gonna help avoid dripping out of
the front of the tower in the future as well.
This way, when water's traveling down the tower,
it can hit this plug and be diverted towards the back
rather than running down the front of it
and out the face of the tower.
So from here, in this case, I'm gonna do
a little bit different planting method here.
I'm gonna go ahead and just lay out my plugs all at once.
Now, there's a few different ways to do this,
which we'll cover here in a second, but,
since I'm kinda doing this by myself,
I'm gonna just do it this way to begin with.
So I'll get these spaced where I like 'em here.
Go ahead and sandwich them within the media.
Gonna anchor my tower in.
Then I'll just get a good grip on this,
and get it started in the tower here.
Some of these I can just sorta feed in most of the way.
Get 'em kinda where you want it,
and then pull from there.
Lettuce is kinda tricky 'cause it typically flops over
like this, so you just wanna make sure you're not
catching up in the towers there.
Then I'll just pull it all the way down here,
and we're ready to go on to the next one.
All right, so once you've got your tower planted,
I just wanna go over a couple things to look for
when you actually place the tower in place in your farm.
One thing to look at is, if you've got a ZipFarm,
the way that that's set up is your tower
is already gonna be kinda angled like this,
so what this does is once your water comes in,
the water stays near the back of the tower.
Again, this helps eliminate any sort
of dripping that's coming out.
A similar way to do that in your greenhouse is,
you'll notice there's two sets of holes
at the tops of your towers, and if you put that in
the hanging hook, in the front set of holes,
it's gonna set your tower at a little bit of an angle.
It's gonna imitate the same thing as that's in the ZipFarm,
so it'll help in the same way.
And then the last thing you wanna look for,
once you get your tower placed,
is where the water is hitting on the top of the tower,
and just make sure that your
wicking strip is under that drip.
So you should be able to tell pretty quickly
if water is hitting the wicking strip or not,
and if it's not, you need to adjust it.
If it is, the water will be wicking evenly
through the tower, so you should be good to go.
So again, my name's Sean Schaub.
Thanks for watching.
Hopefully that answers some of your questions
about planting a ZipGrow tower.
If you've got any further questions in the future,
feel free to call or email us.
You can check out Upstart University, check out our blog.
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