(lively music)
- I have always wanted to build a vertical strawberry tower.
And I think today's finally the day
that we're gonna do that
with what I have inside this box.
I have been growing in GreenStalks now
for about two years.
And right here I actually have the seven-tier leaf,
which actually has softneck garlic growing in it.
So that's a little fun experiment on the side.
But today, like I said,
we're actually going to be growing strawberries,
and it's really the main reason I actually got
a GreenStalk in the beginning
is because I saw other people growing strawberries in them,
and I was so amazed.
(planters clattering)
And now we're gonna do it.
So this is actually the exclusive color
that's for Epic Gardening.
It's called Oasis,
and I have the five-tier with the bigger pocket here.
So I'm gonna set this aside.
We'll grab some soil, talk about how to fill this,
and how to plant bare root strawberries.
(fertilizers popping)
Some fertilizer, and a little bit of worm castings,
and now we've got everything we need
to fill the GreenStalk.
Now when you're filling a GreenStalk,
there are some soils that you shouldn't use.
You don't wanna use anything that's like raised bed mix,
you don't wanna use any planting soil
or things that are made to go in ground.
You wanna use something that's designed
for containers that's well-draining,
but can still retain a little bit of moisture.
I'm using Strawberry Fields,
which is a little bit on the pricier side
in terms of potting mix,
but it's a great soil for growing strawberries,
and that's exactly what I'm doing in this case.
It also is made with coconut coir,
which allows it to soak up moisture in between
when it dries out a little bit,
which can be a little tricky with the GreenStalk
if you use something that's like straight peat
and that dries out, it can be really hard to hydrate.
So I highly recommend adding something in
that has a little bit of coconut coir.
So now I'm gonna lay out the GreenStalk,
fill them all up,
and we'll talk about how to plant into them.
(lively music)
When you're pouring your soil into the actual GreenStalk,
try to rough it up a little bit first,
'cause I just noticed
that it's coming out in like, brick-like chunks,
and that's probably not gonna do a very good job
at distributing water.
So I'm gonna go ahead,
break up this one since I forgot to do it at the beginning.
But for the rest of 'em,
I'm gonna rough it up a little bit to make it easier.
The other thing to mention is that
at the top of the GreenStalk,
it actually tells you that you wanna fill soil to the top.
So when we're filling this,
you don't wanna just fill it like down an inch
or two below the surface,
you wanna go right up to the brim.
With the five-tier GreenStalk,
it should take about one cubic foot per tier.
So in this case, I have five tiers
which means five cubic feet.
Each one of these bags is 1.5,
so I'm gonna use a little bit less
than four bags of soil here.
(lively music)
Now we have the basic soil filled in,
and at this point, I'm going to take the chance to amend it,
because once I set this up finally
I'm not gonna wanna mess around with it probably ever again.
So I'm gonna go in with some of this Espoma Berry-tone.
This is a great fertilizer
if you're growing things like strawberries,
any type of berry like blackberries.
You can tell this bag has been sitting out
for quite a while here.
(sack rustling)
I'm gonna go ahead and sprinkle some along the outside,
but also mainly towards the middle.
And that's because when you water a GreenStalk,
most of the water comes down in this middle section,
where the watering ring is.
So if we wanna make sure
that the actual fertilizer breaks down over time
and distributes, then we wanna make sure
we put some of it towards the edges.
(lively music)
Next up, I'm going to be putting
some of this Worm Gold in here,
because it has kelp meal,
it also has rock dust,
and worm castings, of course.
And all of that stuff contains all the little micronutrients
that might just be missing in a potting soil.
And this I just treat as basically an insurance policy.
You can't really put too much usually.
Well, I guess you can
if you put over 20% worm castings instead of soil,
that's probably gonna be too much.
But just in general,
you could be pretty aggressive with this stuff.
It's not like a heavy fertilizer.
(lively music)
Now we have all the soil filled just about to the top
of each one of these.
They've been amended with some berry mix
and a little bit of worm castings,
and we could finally plant the strawberries.
So a few weeks ago,
I actually got my bare root strawberry order in,
and what I have is just a bucket here
with a bunch of vermiculite to keep the root stamp.
Go ahead and pull out this clump of roots here.
And that's our bare root strawberry pile.
So I have seascape strawberries here.
They are a day neutral variety,
meaning that they will produce berries throughout the year
instead of just in the summertime or early spring.
In San Diego, I could grow these day neutral varieties
and get berries almost the entire year.
So that's why I went with this selection here.
And I've had seascapes before at Kevin's house
and they are quite delicious.
So now let's talk a little bit about
how a strawberry bare root works.
You have the top here,
which is called the crown,
and that's where the leaves come up
and actually form the strawberry plant.
Then at the base, of course, are all the roots
and they're actually generally quite long,
which is great, 'cause that means that there's a lot
of roots already established,
and the growth is going to be very easy.
So now let's go ahead
and put this strawberry plant into this pocket right here.
Now remember, there's going to be another tier
on top of this,
but for now we're going to plant one tier,
start setting it up and build our way up.
So when you're thinking of the GreenStalk,
you don't wanna plant it over here,
'cause that's going to be squished by the next tier.
You wanna kinda go close to the edge.
So I'm gonna aim for it to be just like this,
and to get the roots spread the way I want it,
I'm gonna go in like this with my hand,
and make a sort of cavity.
This allows me to spread the roots out a little bit,
and actually fold them into the soil
so they're at stern depth
instead of just sitting on the surface here.
And then what I could do is seal that in.
And there we go.
We have a planted bare root strawberry.
So now, I'm gonna finish up this tier
and we'll move over to the location
where the GreenStalk's going to be,
and then I'll show you how I build this up
as it gets to that top fifth tier.
(lively music)
Now that I have this tier planted out,
you could see that I use some of this soil
to help hill it back up.
So I'm gonna go ahead and take another handful here,
make sure that I have this nice and filled out.
And then what I'm gonna do,
is bring this over to the location
where it's going to live for the rest of this year.
(sack rustling)
(Jacques grunts)
(birds chirping)
Here's the location of the GreenStalk.
This is where it's going to be for the foreseeable future.
Down here I have the little spinny base
that you could get with the GreenStalk.
So I'm gonna place these little feet
in between these bins here.
See?
(GreenStalk clattering)
There we go.
So now it's very securely locked in place.
I could spin it,
so they can capture the sun throughout the season.
And now, I'm gonna go ahead and grab the second base
and we'll keep planting strawberries and building it up.
(lively music)
All right, so here's the second tier.
And one thing that I should mention
is that right here,
this is the water distribution ring.
So the water will come down through,
hit this and water my strawberries.
So I'm gonna make sure that the little holes in there
are lined up with my plants.
And the reason we're doing this in sections,
let's see if I can get this on right,
is that if I were to stack it all at the very beginning,
and then try to plant strawberries,
it'd be really annoying to have to try to get in there.
Now, of course, once the season progresses
and if you wanna swap plants out,
that's gonna be what you have to do.
But at this point, I can make my life easy
and just plant it as I stack up.
So I'm gonna go ahead and do that,
get all these strawberries in,
we'll talk about how to water it,
and how to care for this after that.
(lively music)
Just like the other one before
as I actually plant these out,
I wanna make sure that I'm topping the soil back off,
so that the water distribution works as intended.
(lively music)
The dream is finally here,
I have a vertical tower full of bare root strawberries.
Each one of these holds six,
so now I have 30 strawberry plants
in something that's like less than two square feet
in terms of how much space it's taking up down here.
Now, of course, all of this is made up for with the height.
And the nice thing about the spinner base
the way that I use it,
is that every time I remember
I'm not really that intense about it,
but maybe every other day
I'll come through and I'll give this a half spin.
The idea behind that is that right now afternoon sun
is only gonna be hitting this side.
If I leave it like this at all times,
this section back here probably won't grow very well.
So that's the nice thing about the spinner
is it lets you move it around,
get the light distributed through.
Now the final thing to do
is add this watering reservoir,
which just sits up top.
I'm gonna go ahead and clip that in.
Now the reservoir is attached,
and I could go ahead and water this in.
And really, when it comes to strawberries, though,
you wanna be careful that you're not overwatering
especially with the bare roots.
They can rot if they get too wet.
And actually, I think GreenStalk even has
some sort of suggestions on different soil mixes
you could use for strawberries,
because you don't want it to be too heavy.
That's why I didn't add anything like compost,
because if I got that too wet early on,
it would probably rot the strawberries away.
So instead, what I'll do right now
is I'll fill it exactly how they recommend,
which is taking my hose,
filling the top basin until it hits the top line,
and letting the water distribute through.
But that's it for this.
The GreenStalk is now fully planted.
Come summer, you know there's going to be some updates.
I'm gonna be doing pruning of the runners,
and also come July,
I hope to be doing some harvesting.
But hopefully, this was helpful for you guys
on how to set up a vertical tower,
and how to plant bare root strawberries.
(lively music)