jeremyeliosoff
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Joined: Thu Jun 25, 2020 8:09 pm

Self-watering wind-protected rain-fed rooftop tomato planter design.

Hello,

I'm a novice gardener making my first attempt at growing tomatoes in my condo. I live in Montreal, Canada, where the growing season is approximately April to October. I've already begun growing tomatoes on my balcony, but the space is limited so I want to migrate some of them to my rootop.

My roof has pros and cons as a gardening site:

pro:
lots of sunlight (around 9 hrs)
lots of space

con:

very windy
awkward to access (ladder through trapdoor), esp when transporting materials, including water

I work in computer animation and have used 3d software to design a planter setup that is intended to do the following things:

PROTECT THE PLANTS FROM WIND

The tomatoes are grown horizontally along stakes elevated 1' from the ground and surrounded by panels made of corrugated transparent plastic mounted on wooden frames. These panels block the wind but let the sun in.


COLLECT RAINWATER

Next to the box that contains the soil, rainwater is collected in a tray made of a wooden frame covered by a tarp (brown). This is in turn covered by another tarp (blue) that is suspended over the collection tray to prevent evaporation, and slanted to prevent water buildup. NOT SHOWN (because it's difficult to model): the blue tarp comes down on the sides and tucks into the tray, so there is no opening for the water to evaporate. Water runs off the blue tarp and collects in the tray. Note that there is also a ramp (support for ramp not shown) that drains into the tray, but I'm not sure if I'll use that in the end because it might be difficult to pin it down and prevent it from being blown away.


"SELF-WATER" THE PLANTS, IE. WICK THE COLLECTED RAIN INTO THE SOIL

An absorbant fabric (pink) - perhaps a towel - wicks water from the collection tray to the soil box, ensuring that the soil is always moist.


This design is not intended to be 100% self-sustaining; I will have to prune suckers + monitor the plants, and I will likely need to manually top up the rain in the tray if it doesn't rain for a long time, but the idea is to have it as low-mainenance as possible.


Here are my questions:

  • Does this general design seem viable?
  • Currently the six plants are spaced 16" apart. Is that a good distance?
  • Currently the box containing the soil is 8' long x 1.45' tall x 2' wide, = 23.2 cubic feet, which is 3.87 cubic feet per plant. Is that sufficient soil in the container?
  • Currently the stakes are elevated about 1' above the ground. Is that a good amount of space to prevent them laying on the roof surface? Or can I just forgo the stakes and have the plants spill across the roof within the wind-protected area?

Please feel free to let me know any other concerns or improvements I could make.


Thanks very much!


Jeremy.
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SQWIB
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Posts: 970
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2016 9:21 am
Location: Zone 7A - Philadelphia, PA

To be honest I would just make elevated wicking beds.
You could also make a water catchment system, elevate the collection barrel and hook a float valve up to the wicking bed. You may have to get creative to catch water
Another option is a Rain Gutter system with a float valve.
For a wind break, I wouldn't use anything solid, I would look into some type of lattice or similar. Too much surface area and the wind will tear those panels up. Plus you do want a little wind for the plants.

Thigmomorphogenesis is the response by plants to mechanical sensation (touch) by altering their growth patterns. In the wild, these patterns can be evinced by wind, raindrops, and rubbing by passing animals.

Wind is a Morphogenic Stimulus and strengthens stalks by resistance as well as increasing transpiration of the plants by dehydrating the leaf surface.
The transpiration causes rapid mineral and water uptake increasing the thickness of the stem.

Air movement also helps keep the surface of the soil dry to prevent mold, fungus Gnats and damping off.

jeremyeliosoff
Newly Registered
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Jun 25, 2020 8:09 pm

Thanks for the response SQWIB!

Re. elevated wicking beds: Yeah I got a response from another forum advising something similar. There was concern that if the bottom of the soil box was not higher than the top of the water reservoir, the wicks might endlessly siphon water from the reservoir, draining it. So I'll make sure the soil is nowhere lower than the water line.

Re. wind: I've already set up a wind block system for my balcony with rigid panels (see attachment), which I think are much more pummelled by the wind than the roof ones would be, since on the roof the shortest dimension of the blocker is 14", whereas on the balcony it's 43". The balcony blockers have held strong through some pretty bad windstorms. They are fastened to the balcony railing mind you, whereas the rooftop apparatus can't really be secured to anything (no drilling into the roof), so the weight of the structure alone will have to be enough to stop it from blowing away, but given how low-lying the structure is, I think it will be ok. At the same time, the panels surely won't block all the wind - there is a lot of it - so I think there will be enough circulation to prevent fungus, stimulate transpiration, etc.
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