Printing the grow pods
The printed pods that turn the tower into a garden — a mesh basket and threaded collar for every plant, growing everything from greens to full tomato trusses.
Once the tower proved a printed column could grow food, it needed somewhere to put the plants. Each one sits in its own printed pod: a mesh basket that holds the growing medium and lets roots reach into the column, on a threaded collar that seats it into the tower at an angle so the plant leans out toward the light.
The basket
Open enough for roots and water to pass freely, stiff enough to hold a maturing plant and its medium without sagging. The mesh pattern is the whole job — too closed and the roots can’t breathe, too open and the medium washes out:
What grows in them
The point of all the printing is what comes out of it. The pods carry far more than salad — peppers, herbs, and full trusses of tomatoes, fruiting indoors and out of season:
A planted tower fills in fast, the canopy spilling out of the pods until you can barely see the column underneath:
Print and repeat
Pods are small, so they print fast and I keep a stack of spares. A tower needs a couple dozen, and a cracked one is a one-pod problem instead of a whole-tower one — the cheap, repeatable part that turns a printed column into a garden.