I keep a journal to track Tower Garden events - everything from checking Ph to adding nutrients to spotting new growth and pruning. The month of June reads more like an archive of metereology.

Week One: Rain. Cloudy skies.
Week Two:  Intermittent sun.
Weeks Three and Four: Heavy, fierce rain and flooding from Tropical Storm Debby.

Now if I were gardening in soil, it's likely most of my crop would be damaged after nearly three weeks of intense rainfall. Water-soaked roots would be suffocating and bacterial wilt would be effectively killing these fruits.

As I inspect my Tower Garden this morning, I see no such damage or wilt. Instead, I see an abundance of blooms! If anything, my tomatoes need pruning. This is yet another wonder of soil-less Tower Gardening. The vertical farm keeps on growing, immune to the rainy days of June.

It's rampant! Wild! A glorious living wonder!

Today, I found my first squash blossom, a buttery yellow bloom shooting off from a just-planted seedling.

My Tower Garden is in its glory! The squash blossom was just the start.

Chives have spurted a good inch overnight. The razor edge fancy lettuce is keeping apace. And there are tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes! Little cherry tomatoes like gems. The bigger beefsteaks nestled among cucumber leaves. I love how the Tower Garden can become a tangled mess, and that is to say I have the choice of pruning and snipping or allowing the growth to run its natural course. I pick plan B.

The cucumbers, the first bloomers, are snarled and slightly battered from the rain and Tropical Storm Beryl, and their leaves are a map of snail trails. But they continue to bloom! I am amazed.

I am in love with my Tower Garden.

Now, as harvest time nears, I must begin seeding for the next cycle. This is all so exciting.

The Sun is missing from this Sunday.  It's Day 11 of uninterrupted rain and clouds.

Every morning, I visit my Tower Garden and every morning, I discover new growth! Even with the absence of direct sunlight, things are happening. The tomatoes are especially active, and this brings me to a quandary.

With dirt farming, the standard procedure is to snip the suckers that branch off from the main tomato plant stems to encourage robust growth. I am not sure if this standard carries over to hydroponic farming. But I'm finding bud development on the suckers! I've come to the conclusion that there is plenty enough circulating nutrients to feed the suckers. So I'm snipping conservatively. My focus is to prevent rampant growth that might interfere with productivity. I'm also clipping where I see heavy overlap to prevent any rotting leaves.

Quandary solved.

This morning at early light, I inspected my Tower Garden. This is my daily routine and it's both an act that brings pure delight and a maintenance process.

I found eight land snails of varying sizes, crawling up the side of the Tower, resting in the broad lap of a cucumber leaf, busily exploring a tomato leaf. I pulled off each one, waited while it recoiled into its round shell and then gently tossed it into waiting foliage a few feet away. I'm hoping the Dandelions and thick ivy will satisfy their appetites. But just as surely, I know that tomorrow morning, I will find more of the same.

This creature is the Florida garden or land snail, genus Polygyra, subspecies cereolus floridana. It is an air-breathing (as opposed to water snails) terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mullosk. All those terms are somewhat repetitive. Pulmonate means it has air sacs while gastropod is the huge group of 65,000 species of the phylum Mollusca. Terrestrial, of course means land-based.

In researching these archaic looking creatures, I discovered that there are two groups of Mullusks - the snail and the slug, which is a snail without the shell. I also found out that this group is one of the few which has adapted to all major habitats: the ocean, earth and fresh water. That is a feat of evolution in itself. But what makes them more endearing is the fact that they do not carry or transmit disease!


They do enjoy the greens of my Tower Garden, and while I like to follow their meandering trails (see tomato leaf), I do not like the accumulated damage they cause with their nibbling. Thus, the early morning routine.

Next, I'll talk about one of the other creatures to favor my Tower Garden, the chameleon.

Feng Shui has been much westernized and diluted but the basic concepts can be seen in the workings of the aeroponic Tower Garden.

The words feng shui, loosely translated as wind and water, epitomize the air and water system of the Tower Garden. This self sufficient system operates on a balanced sprinkling of nutrients through a water pump, alternating with periods of rest and aeration.

Balance is yet another vital element of feng shui seen in the proper alignment of energy or chi. The Tower Garden follows this practice too with its timed release of water-borne nutrients.

I don't know if Tim Blank (inventor of TG) was conscious of the way the Tower Garden follows the ancient Chinese principles of balance. But just knowing that the yin and yang are present in my vegetables and herbs gives me a new source of peace and happiness.

GO HERE READ ABOUT HOW THE TOWER GARDEN WORKS. Feel free to leave a comment! Email me if you'd like more information about growing hydroponically. Or visit my Tower Garden website.

Tropical Storm Beryl hammered through NE Florida last night with wind gusts up to 70mph and sustained winds of 55mph along with heavy rain.

I was worried but I'm happy to report that my Tower Garden made it through the storm!

It's bedraggled and water-logged but as soon as the sun comes through, it should perk up.

The tomatoes are most affected, mostly because I had not added additional cages for support. The two-week old seedlings look good - and of course, this is a view through the rain!

I'm assuming the 20-gallon reservoir is what kept the Tower standing as it is in an open area and unprotected.

The neighbor was not so fortunate!

I heard a heavy bang! last night as the storm was in full swing, looked outside with a flashlight but saw nothing.

This morning, I see the cause of the Big Bang - a large limb from an ancient oak that couldn't withstand the wind.

It's hard to tell from the photo that this tree limb stretches a good 12-15 feet in length. You can see that it dwarfs the shed. That big bundle of vine is likely what weakened the tree.

BABY CUCUMBER. Looks a little like Prickly Pear.

Beautiful Bibb lettuce.

Tim Blank talks about what inspired him to create the Tower Garden, including his experience at the Epcot Center's The Land.