A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Vertical Media experiences and suggestions

I have been running my Vertigro stacks 6 high. I have a 80% Coir and 20% pearlite. I run the system 15mins every daylight hour. The Coir seems to be too wet. I am looking for feedback from other Vertigro and vertical folks. What light weight media do you recommend? How about the mix - any suggestions?

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Permalink Reply by Nate Storey on June 5, 2010 at 4:46pm

I've gotten away from any kind of coir, peat or mix-type media in any kind of vertical tower- it's exactly as you say. It gets too heavy, too wet and there isn't enough oxygen to the roots. you can cut your coir or peat with perlite, but I've found even with perlite the mixture is just not porous enough for any kind of tower work where percolation is necessary. remember this stuff has to serve as a nitrifying site, so you need percolation- as much as you can get. My experience with gravel is that it's too heavy for towers, and clogs way too easily as roots develop. I've also found that gravel surface area/volume when constrained to towers requires a lot of towers to match the volume of a growbed. As a result, I've tried a bunch of artificial medias, including polyurethane foam, various meshes, plastic materials and have started getting a company to make me some artificial media that works really well. The things I specified to end up with this material are: high surface area/volume, UV resitant, food grade, very high percolation rate, and high shear strength. So far it's perfect for my towers. I don't know how it would perform in vertigro towers. Might be worth trying.

Permalink Reply by M Cosmo on June 5, 2010 at 7:34pm

I would like to try you media. Let me know how to proceed.

Nate Storey said:

I've gotten away from any kind of coir, peat or mix-type media in any kind of vertical tower- it's exactly as you say. It gets too heavy, too wet and there isn't enough oxygen to the roots. you can cut your coir or peat with perlite, but I've found even with perlite the mixture is just not porous enough for any kind of tower work where percolation is necessary. remember this stuff has to serve as a nitrifying site, so you need percolation- as much as you can get. My experience with gravel is that it's too heavy for towers, and clogs way too easily as roots develop. I've also found that gravel surface area/volume when constrained to towers requires a lot of towers to match the volume of a growbed. As a result, I've tried a bunch of artificial medias, including polyurethane foam, various meshes, plastic materials and have started getting a company to make me some artificial media that works really well. The things I specified to end up with this material are: high surface area/volume, UV resitant, food grade, very high percolation rate, and high shear strength. So far it's perfect for my towers. I don't know how it would perform in vertigro towers. Might be worth trying.

Permalink Reply by Nate Storey on July 14, 2010 at 10:27am

I've been thinking about this. I think you could take the media that I'm using, (even scrap from the inserts that we're having manufactured), chip or shred it, and using it in your vertigro towers. send me an email at nate81@uwyo.edu and we can talk about it. my website will be up at the end of next week too. . . zipgrow.com

Michael Cosmo said:

I would like to try you media. Let me know how to proceed.

Nate Storey said:
I've gotten away from any kind of coir, peat or mix-type media in any kind of vertical tower- it's exactly as you say. It gets too heavy, too wet and there isn't enough oxygen to the roots. you can cut your coir or peat with perlite, but I've found even with perlite the mixture is just not porous enough for any kind of tower work where percolation is necessary. remember this stuff has to serve as a nitrifying site, so you need percolation- as much as you can get. My experience with gravel is that it's too heavy for towers, and clogs way too easily as roots develop. I've also found that gravel surface area/volume when constrained to towers requires a lot of towers to match the volume of a growbed. As a result, I've tried a bunch of artificial medias, including polyurethane foam, various meshes, plastic materials and have started getting a company to make me some artificial media that works really well. The things I specified to end up with this material are: high surface area/volume, UV resitant, food grade, very high percolation rate, and high shear strength. So far it's perfect for my towers. I don't know how it would perform in vertigro towers. Might be worth trying.

Permalink Reply by Two Jay on September 23, 2010 at 10:15am

Nate, have you found any certifiable organic solutions to your vertical growing system media?

Permalink Reply by Michelle Silva on October 1, 2010 at 9:27pm

Does this material retain water? I run my verticals on a timer set for 3 min ,3x a day..need something that retains moisture inbetween. Nate, I got your message stating how you feel about coco coir, but seems to be working so far. I am experimenting in some of the bottom pots with expanded shale..others have chunky perlite and coco coir (some are a 50/50 mix and others 75/25) both of these seem to be working OK so far, except that I thought I would have a larger of volume of water that I could cirulate back. I don't have the ones with the shale/coco coir planted yet, but concerned that the shale doesn't hold moisture like the chunky perlite does.