It used to be the case that vegies were going ballistic in my raised garden bed – often silver beet most of the year, sometimes broad beans, bush beans and lettuce and all those kinds of vegetables. Occasional cherry tomatoes. In the last few years, it has been getting very hot in the summer ( for Adelaide) and over the summer nothing survived in my raised garden bed, and nothing actually worked well at all in the difficult bed in front of the rain tank. Since it has been still quite hot, I have given up on planting any brassicas in that bed. Strawberries have been going ok, but I have pretty much killed or failed at preserving nearly every plant I thought I might try there. I’ve even managed to kill supposedly indestructible plants. I feel it is possibly a combination of soil issues and weather issues – and putting the plants in the wrong spot for them. About half of the empty plant pots in the failed plant depository area I failed at caring for enough and they just died from either overwatering or underwatering or too much heat or cold. Take your pick. Very easy for me to kill plants. That is why I thought if I got a hydroponic vertical tower system, this would be more likely to be totally foolproof and mean that I could supply myself and my friends and neighbours with more produce than they have had recently (which is zero).

-Diana