I received an e-mail from Smith and Hawken today featuring their vertical garden. I have to admit that this is an intriguing idea and I have just the place for it. At $400 it is a bit pricey (actually tremendously pricey) so I haver two questions:
1) does anyone have experience with vertical gardening and
2) assuming the experience was good, are there any plans that could be had to build my own for a lot less than $400?
My thanks ahead of time to the always helpful Dave's community.
Vertical Gardens
Here's another one you might want to look at...the individual units are cheaper than Smith & Hawken but they're also smaller so I think your price per square foot of vertical garden is going to work out to be similar, but it gives you more design options depending on what look you're going for. http://www.gardeners.com/Living-Wall-Indoor/NewIndoorPlanters_Cat,37-085RS,default,cp.html They also sell outdoor ones that are a lot cheaper because they don't have the wooden frame http://www.gardeners.com/Living-Wall-Outdoor-Planter/37-001RS,default,pd.html I saw that Smith & Hawken also sells the planting insert by itself, so if you have some carpentry skills I think you could save a lot of money by buying the insert and then making the enclosure yourself.
Here's a recent thread from the Vegetable Gardening forum that might have some helpful info:
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/942319/
Editing to say, I had not yet visited the link posted in this thread for the system in question and just did so, it is quite a bit cheaper than 400 bucks and there are various alternatives as well, to "build your own." ;-)
Kyla
This message was edited Jan 12, 2009 3:24 PM
It's amazing how many outfits try to get peoples money!
We used this last year to grow lettuce.
The rain gutters cost 3 bucks apiece. Maybe a couple $ worth of screws. A small bag of soil. We watered with a hose, then set it up for drip irrigation. Lettuce was so clean you could eat it without washing.
Country Gardens, Wow! How did you come up with ths? I am so impressed. Are the gutters attached to a house wall or are they in a greenhouse? I suppose one could attach them to any surface where there was enough sunlight? Devota
Also....what else would you think of planting in this system? I am thinking the gutter holds 4 6 inches of soil or potting mix? D in TN
It's a wall between 2 greenhouses.
They got very hard to keep watered after it got hotter.
Hey CountryGardens
I bought a long plastic gutter too from HD. I just set mine on the ground. I put it on a slight decline so I didn't have to drill any drainage holes in it. Add coconut coir, planted leaf lettuce seed and wow!!. Cheap and efficient. That one from Smith and Hawkin is CRAZY.
BocaBob
I have a ¼" hole every 2 feet. I think outside of the greenhouse would be better.
I am ordering a couple hundred strawberry plants from www.inberry.com
I am going to build some troughs & have them on legs so they are at waist height. The berries are ones that bear all summer. I won't get a sore back picking them. The varieties are Selva & Seascape.
These will be in a high tunnel. Look at www.growerssupply.com for lots of goodies. I have bought fans & shutters & other supplies from them with good results.
Bernie
I HAVE to go up. Run out of room. My garden space is 10 by 10 with a 4 by 6 Raised bed in the middle and EBs and HEBs on the perimeter. I wonder if they make a gutter deep enough to accomadate strawberries. I do have some deeper window boxes that I could hang vertically on a couple of 4x4 posts. I don't know if that would allow me enough grow room for all the plants I would need for 2 people. I love the vertical system you have Bob, but I'm on a budget here and doing some stuff on the cheap. Suggestions?
It isn't the size of the box, but you need enough soil to keep it damp. Little soil amount dries to fast.
CountryGardens "Little soil amount dries too fast."
That is true. I was thinking of root needs. I loved the look of your "lettuce garden." So neat. Then again after you mentioned that they were harder to water after it gets hot I began to wonder if the 8 hrs of sun might just cook them in a shallow container. So much to learn..so little time. Oops! LOL. I have all winter and a lot of experts to talk with before I get to the planting phaze. Devota
Devota,
If the vertical systems were a lot cheaper I would have a lot more myself. The amount you can grow on one square foot of land is incredible. They are so overpriced, and there is no reason for it. I may make it my next quest to find a manufacturer I can work with to create one that is super reasonably priced.
BocaBob
I like my EZgrow pole systems. With 20 plant sites per pole they will turn out a tremendous amount of fast growing vegetables in our long growing season here in central Texas. Many vegetable crops will mature in 30 to 40 days. The hydroponic type fertilizers designed for systems like this seem to be more effective than regular garden fertilizers and result in fast growing plants. Not too much labor involved in harvesting the plants, dumping the pots and removing root material and remounting the pots and replanting. For replanting, you have your choice of transplants or direct seeding.
A vertical pole of 20 flower plants can be spectacular. It is kind of fun to mix them up for different size and color.
Of all the various types of growing systems I have tried though, my favorite is still the single containers, ranging from one gallon to five gallon. A five gallon container contains about 1 square foot of growing surface and I can grow more than one plant per container depending on what type plants I am growing. I can pick up that container and move it easily to make sure it gets the right amount of sunshine or shade. Our summer has intense sunshine and heat and most plants really appreciate some afternoon shade. My fenced in yard has a combination of open areas and shade so I watch where the tree shadows fall throughout the day and arrange containers accordingly. I dont move them every day but as summer progress's, I shift their location so they get some dappled tree shade during part of each day. When it comes to harvest or re-potting time, it is simple to dump the single container, clean up the grow mix, slap the mix back in the container with some time release fertilizer, re-plant (seed or transplant) for whatever season is coming up, sit the container back where it gets the right sunshine, and take a coffee break. It seems to me that there is much less labor involved, not to mention much less expense, to single container planting. Rather than spend more money on expensive vertical grow systems, Im thinking of either building or buying tables to sit containers on to make it easier on my aging and aching body.
But Bob..........if you come up with a less expensive vertical growing system let me know. Im still willing to experiment some more.
Jaywhacker, love your space there. must be nice. I promised others in another thread not to whine about lack of space and how nice it must be to garden in zones 8-9. I must be careful...anything I might say in this envious state might sound like, well, whining.
Bob, I like the sound of that... "I may make it my next quest to find a manufacturer I can work with to create one that is super reasonably priced."
I think you may be in a position to do that so we will wait and see.
Say you need a tester? I'm your huckleberry...LOL Devota
My son likes the calundula's (pot marigold's) on the poles because they are hanging on right thru the winter. That surprised me. We have had quite a few 30 degree nights and no telling what the chill factor is with them stuck up there in the air like that. Tomato's grew on that pole untill about Dec 10 and finally succumbed to the frost.
January 14, 2009........Sniffing the first sweet pea bloom on one of the sweet pea poles. Boy them things stink purty!!
For a cheaper vertical growing system, you can buy just the hard plastic pots from www.theezgro.com for $6.00 each and then provide your own 3/4 inch diameter electrical conduit and fittings and use your own grow mix. The fitting shown in this photo is an EMT coupler. The two screws on the side will tighten down and secure the two pieces of conduit in the coupling. The bottom pot can just sit down on the top of the coupling and the other pots stack on top of that. The pots spin on the poles so you can walk by and turn them now and then to ensure all sides of the pots are exposed to an equal amount of sunshine. If I were setting up a pole system like this I would prefer to drop a large washer on top of the coupling to better support the pots and prevent wear on the bottom pot. Tighten only the top screw of the coupling and then you can just lift all the pots off the bottom piece of conduit and move them around if you desire. A system using only three pots per pole would be easy for one person to move around in case you have shade trees casting different shadows thru the growing season. Let your imagine run wild as to how and where you will mount the bottom piece of conduit. EMT straps are available to screw the conduit to most surfaces.........a porch railing for instance. Another post showing the pot sitting on top of the coupling follows.
And here is the ;pot sitting on top of the coupling. You can see that a washer on top of the coupling would better support the pots.
Jaywhacker-
Do you have any problems with the styrofoam ones I use (Hydro-stacker) What I mean is if the price of these type were REAL GOOD, would you use them instead of the hard plastic? They claim many years of re-use.
Bob
Bob........I havent had any problem with the verti-gro styrofoam pots. I dont doubt they would last a long time especially for a home gardener where they probably wont be used as hard as they may be commercially. Verti-gro makes a slightly larger pot which should be better than the ones I have which have small corners to plant in.
Most of the vertical growing systems are advertised as "Hydroponic" systems and come with their own fertilizer. I think this scares lots of people, makes them think that it is too complicated, requiring too much special knowledge. Dont let that scare you away from using this type fertilizer. It is just another type of soluable fertilizer, similiar to miragle grow and other soluable types. The trick is to just mix the right amount of fertilizer with the right amount of water, just like with any soluable fertilizer. If you are the type person that figgers if a little fertilizer does a lot of good, well then a whole lot more will do much better, you will waste a lot a lot of money on fertilizer. I tend to be cheap and may sometimes under fertilize. But I can look at the plants and tell if I am playing it too cheap. Either way, your plants will just take what they wont anyway and spit the rest out to "drip to waste."
The simplified version of hydroponic gardening is called "drip to waste". You put the fertilized water in the small diffuser pot at the top of the stack and it filters down thru all the pots and "drips to waste" out of the bottom pot. It is easy to judge the amount of water so that you dont waste too much dripping out the bottom. Being El Cheapo, I devised a saucer at the bottom of the stack to catch the drip. That is still pretty good fertilizer, although in diluted form because most of its chemical elements have been absorbed by plants in the stack. I just collect it and poor it into container pots and can see good results from it.
If you are really CHEAP and wont to recirculate the drip water, then you will have to get scientific and will need instruments to constantly measure ph and electrical conductivity of your fertilized water. Those instruments are not cheap but in the long run, recirculating the fertilized water will probably pay for their use. As for me.........I prefer the drip to waste method. Too much scientific thinking just tires me out.
The EZgro system fertilizer comes in two parts, one being Calcium Nitrate and the other being everything else. I think that "everything" else stuff has more of the minor elements than standard pellet type fertilizers. But dont take my word for that as I am not scientific minded. All I know is that it works great. Your plants do not need to grow a humongous root system to get all the nutrients they need. You can grow large tomato plants in these relativity small pots. The instructions that come with the fertilizer advises that if the plant foliage is not as bright green as you think it should be, just slip an extra tad of the calcium nitrate into the fertilize water. You can see an almost instant reaction. Organic fertilizer takes awhile to be processed by a plant but the soluable ferts give fast results.
Not all so called hydroponic fertilizer comes in two parts like that used by Verti-gro and EZgro. BocaBobs fertilizer looks like it comes in just one part. Either way, the mixing and using instructions are not really any more complicated than the miragle gro stuff we buy from Home Depot so dont let the big bad word "hydroponic" scare you away from these systems.
OK, so much for that hydroponic stuff. This year I experimented with just plain slow release pelleted fertilizer and Miracle grow soluable fertilizer. I mixed some slow release pellets into the pot grow mix and watered the poles from the top with just plain water. About once a week, maybe a little more often, I would water for a day or two with miracle grow soluable stuff. And about every two weeks, I would throw about a half handful of time release ferts in the little water diffuser pot on top of the stack, figuring that watering would melt the pellets and flow ferts down thru the stack. As you can see from my photos, it worked pretty good. One thing I have noticed is that using this system of fertilization, my plants developed huge root systems in the pots. In fact, roots grew from one pot down into the next pot down and "locked" all the pots together. I had to cut them apart with a knife. Im glad I didn't try this with the verti-gro styrofoam pots. This means to me that the plants were searching for more nutrients than my experiment was providing. But the plants look good, all flowers, I havent tried vegetables with this experimental system. If I had been using the hydroponic type fertilizer, the root systems would not have been so humongous. Whether my experiment fertilization system would effect the taste and texture of vegetables or not, I dont know. Thats for another experiment.
Here is the last tomato plant I pulled from that calundula pole and hung it on the fence about Dec 10. Speaking of vertical gardening, if you look real close in this photo see a net thingamajig. Looks something like a bird net but is sold as a deer fence. Comes as 7 foot tall by 100 ft long and cost somewhere around $8.00. Pretty cheap for something for plants to climb on, can be cut with scissors, and I just cut a small hole in it and draped it over the metal poles of my privacy fence. Presto!! vertical gardening. CHEAP!!!!
Sweet peas just love climbing that deer fence thingamajig!
Jaywhacker,
I like the idea of getting the word "hydroponic" out of the eqation. I would just like to call it container gardening. Most people use soiless mix of some kind, and a water soluble fertilizer. Drain holes are a must so drain to waste is just the easiest way to set it up. Except for my 12 Earthboxes, all my grow bags and verticals are drip to waste with water soluble fertilizer. Just a great, controlled way of growing veggies.
BocaBob
Yeah and I have really learned to appreciate the fast reaction time of soluable (or call it Hydroponic if you must) fertilizers. Plants react fast, assuming there is not problem with PH or over or under watering, etc. I have done much better with faster draining mix and watering every day with a weak all-purpose soluable fertilizer. So much seems to depend on the grow-mix where it is almost impossible to overwater. Your coir growing systems are doing great and you are doing us all a favor by keeping us all posted with great pictures of the results. I was just wondering, Bob, dont you think it is time you filled in that swimming pool so you would have more room to garden?
I totally agree, and the commercial fertilizer i use is a powerhouse. The veggies love it. And like you said, you water and feed everyday. Just like us, we need nourishment daily for healthy growth. Plus the Coco Coir drains so beautifully through the grow bags. Overall a perfect veggy growing scenario. (if I may say so)
BocaBob
Jay-
Don't think I haven't thought about it. But my grandaughter would kill me. She loves to go swimming with me. But just think how much food I could grow in a 15 x 30 area under screen.
BocaBob
I don't think anyone suggested this yet. But you can add a little vermiculite to shallow troughs or gutters or window boxes to hold more moisture in soil and even add water crystals.
Hi Cricket............It is a cold day here in the hill country...........down to 50 degrees and windy, brrrr. So I have spent the morning on the computer reading through your "CricketsGreenhouse" posts over on the greenhouse forum. Great info and pictures there. I kind of got fascinated by some comments you made about trimming lower leaves from tomato plants in order to grow thicker and shorter stalks. Im hoping you can find the time to expand on that a little bit.
I will be adding more post over there shortly----just let me know what it is your are curious about.
I believe you said that clipping the lower leaves off young tomato plants allowed more sunshine to get to the stalk and resulted in thicker stalks and shorter plants. Did I get that right?
yes, trimming off lower leaves one at a time every few days allows more light to stalks. The plant puts more energy into the stalk causing the height to slow down.
I was cruising around DG Forums and stumbled across this thread. There are some great ideas here! I started playing with the idea of vertical gardening last spring and here's what I came up with. It's not in the least bit sophisticated but it has a lot of promise.
It is 6' wide and the end posts are 6' above ground and it's made from basic materials. There are three 1 1/2" holes covered with a piece of hardware cloth in each box for drainage.
This pic was taken the day I finished it. Now it is a salad garden with lettuce, arugula, spinach, green onions and radishes.
Thats neat and well made. You sure blended it into its surrondings well and the green plants will show up nicely in that setting.
Great ideas! The only place I have for any veggie gardening is in the 5' easement on the side of my house. Which is also where compost, rain harvesting, and potting supplies have to go. Lots of stuff going on in a 5' x 40' strip. Gonna have to get creative.
Thanks Jaywhacker! It's pretty low tech but it's also a learning experience for me. I might do it slightly different next time.
Amfm ... sounds like vertical is going to be about your best viable option if that spot gets sufficient sunlight.
tons of sun... South facing with lots of western sun. I'm not sure I won't need some shade cloth.
In a space only 5' wide that shouldn't be to hard...or expensive. :o)
True :)