Substrate-Based Vertical Barrel

|
| > Hier geht es zur Deutschen Version dieser Seite…
|

Manual Substrate Barrel

Mounted on a roller base to rotate and move

In order to grow more hyperlocal edible plants, aponix also provides parts that can be assembled into a soil-based or medium-based vertical barrel and placed on your balcony or terrace. This raised bed alternative is easy to use.

The concept just applies like in the soil-less version, you can configure the ring segments of your barrel using the appropriate 1/6th-parts and start to stack them from a standing base at a variable height.

To save substrate the inside is freely configurable. In this case using a wire mesh tightened with zip ties.

Raised bed alternative

This is an example shows a 6 ring segment high ring segment configuration with open top standing on a closed pot-like base. The base can be filled with pebbles or hydroton. A piece of cloth is put on top of the first layer. The base has 2 holes in this case: one to fill it with water and one that serves as an overflow valve to prevent standing water from touching your substrate. This mechanism also saves your plants from being overwatered if you use it outside. You then stack the ring segments from there and add the medium or a mix of your choice to fill up to the top ring segment. Plants go into the shelves.

The mesh wire is held in place by lava rocks in the base. The overflow is protected with larger stones.

You can use a standard garden shovel to dig in your plants or put in seeds. You can also grow larger plants on the open top. Once your plants are big enough and have longer roots the water from the base irrigates from the inside by serving as a wicker bed.

Water filtration system

Another use case would be to use a setup like this to filter water from a pond or even grey water. You need to use an appropriate medium like hydroton or also suitable synthetic substrates to provide surface to the microbes. In this case the water is distributed on the top, wicks down by gravity and exits on the bottom.

Planted setup in a garden context.

City XL Vertical Barrel

Based on the white substrate based setup on this page we have also created a City XL version with added properties to integrate it into public spaces. It is much bigger, vandalism and flame resistant and meant to be set up and integrated into a larger city context and public spaces.