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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] planting tomatoes in 5 gal bucket

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  • From: "MAsteveINE" <MAsteveINE AT 207me.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] planting tomatoes in 5 gal bucket
  • Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2011 07:51:54 -0400

A 5 gallon bucket does great, drill several 1/2 inch drain holes in the side right at the bottom, with good
airy soil they should be good for few to several crops before changing soil. Probably best if
hand watering, will not suffer if you choose to  miss a day.
 
Morden electronics make automatic watering quite reasonable, right off the shelf at Home Depot,
controllers are $30.00 to 50.00, for 6 - 8 zones, solonoid valves; one per zone about 20.00 ea,
regular drip equipment or common black plastic pipe and some Chapin drip tube.
 
With automatic water you can get down to a lot less soil, at this place we have used commercial
grow bags made with peat lite mix, plastic grocery shopping bags  filled with straight compost
(until they went to degradable
corn plastic and everything fell appart) wood beds 16" wide x 6" deep as long as the house,
styrofoam grape boxes with the top cut open (my current favorite but the newest boxes are very
shallow and not as rugged) (free from the local produce guy and excellent for salads, greens,
and radishes,  portable crop lets you work at a bench, grow on the floor, even move outside to
a cool shady grove for summer growing.) I have not used rock wool slabs but the neighbors do
in their 40acre tomato house!
 
MAsteveINE



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