Following are the directions from the Rooftop Garden Project for making a spiral staircase garden. It took some digging on their website to find this because half the page is in English and half in French. Remember that Montreal (after Paris) is the second largest French speaking city in the world.
It's as I thought from looking at the photo. Water simply flows by gravity from a supply tank (with a valve) through the tube planter into a collection tank. I assume they recycle the collected nutrient solution.
Once again, I tip my hat to their creativity and resourcefulness in experimenting with various ways to water plants other than a drain hole pot with saucer.
Also note their growing media recipe of equal parts of coco fiber (coir), potting mix and compost. I have been using coir and potting mix and need to find a compost source. Perhaps I'll buy a kitchen composter. Living in an apartment, I have no yard.
Captions on the diagram - reservoir with valve, guard rail, plants, flexible pipe (tubing) filled with substrate (media), 4" holes (for plants)
Recipe to make a stairway garden
Are you a citizen with no land and no roof, but only a fire escape stairwell to take advantage of the sun? Read this recipe to transform your stairwell into a garden!Materials:
1 unperforated drainage tube
2 empty 20 liter olive barrels with lids
1 adaptable valve
1 piece of recuperated watering hose
1 piece of tube
2 4-inch stoppers to cover the drain
2 washers to avoid leaks
1 part coco fiber
1 part potting mix
1 part home-made compost
1 bottle of natural liquid fertiliser
iron string
Various plants(from a Babel Fish translation)
Hang your drain along the staircase with wire, then, with the assistance of a seed-planting drill provides with a circular saw, to cut out the holes for the plants. Think of the possibility of using the slope as tutor to choose the site of your holes. Clean the drain to withdraw the residues and to place the lids perforated beforehand in bottom and provided with a washer. Place the barrels at each end and in that the top, insert a valve attached at the end of pipe. Mix coconut, the compost and the compost according to proportion 1: 1: 2 (or according to your imagination) and humidify it. Insert in the holes the mixture and compact slightly. To avoid the mixture leaving the holes, placing a mulch around the base of the plant.When time lends itself to it, transplant your favorite flowers, fruit and vegetables (by selecting varieties miniature and not too demanding) in the tube and to sprinkle abundantly with a nutritive solution. Repeat watering if the need arises during the summer. Recover the too full one in the barrel with bottom and to go up water in that the top. Have patience some little then collect your salad breaks into leaf of oak, your basil, your flowers edible, your beans and the smile of your neighbors or neighbors while climbing. Good appetite!
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