The Vertical Gardening Guidebook (2 page)

Urban Living

If you live in a city, you can still enjoy vertical gardens! Here’s how:

Vertical Gardening on Your Balcony or Patio

Don’t fret if you have a small condo or apartment in the city that has no green space. The beauty about vertical gardening is that it can be built anywhere you have enough space. With a vertical garden, a foot of space is enough to start a garden!

Vertical gardens work great in small places and you will be surprised how much food you can grow in a tiny space when you grow vertically!

If you have a balcony or patio that has free space, you can transform the entire area into a vertical garden. A lot of people in urban areas have taken to this idea. Just take a look at many of the balconies that you find in major cities throughout the United States. You may see all types of plants growing on them.

In fact, I personally have a Tower Garden® by Juice Plus+® vertical aeroponics system (learn more in Chapter 11) growing on my balcony. It turns my otherwise “dead space” of a concrete balcony into a massive food-producing haven. In just a 2 foot by 2 foot area, my balcony vertical garden produces fresh, delicious, organic tomatoes, mint, purslane, lettuces (4 kinds!), strawberries, cucumbers, watermelons, parsley and snap peas!

That one vertical garden has saved me about $50 a month in grocery bills too!

Vertical Gardening on Your Rooftop

If you weren’t lucky enough to get an apartment that has a balcony or patio, then you may be able to use the rooftop. Make sure to speak with the management of your building to make sure that it’s alright. If so, you can begin planning out an area of the rooftop for your vertical garden.

In fact, rooftop gardens are cropping up in urban areas all over the world - both for fun and commercial use.

Video Extra:
Check out this video of a chef in New York City who uses Vertical Gardening on the rooftop of his restaurant to produce several TONS of fresh produce every year! You can watch it on Youtube:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=72rtc2EaMQA

Suburban Living

If you live in the suburbs and have a small yard or larger, then you have even more options for vertical gardening!

Small Backyard Space

Do you live in a suburban area with a small yard?

Maybe you already have a garden and lack more space to plant additional vegetables, fruits and/or flowers. No matter where you live, you can put vertical gardening to use even if you only have a small amount of space to work with.

It’s 100% Eco-Friendly

Individuals who are looking to plant a garden in an economical manner will find vertical gardening to be a great option. These ingenious garden plans can also be very eco-friendly. The benefits of vertical gardening are quite extensive, which is why so many vertical gardens are popping up all over the world.

Vertical Gardens are Environmentally Friendly

One of the best factors about vertical gardening is that it doesn’t have a negative effect on the environment. There are various reasons why vertical gardening can be even friendlier to the eco-system than conventional gardening.

For starters, a lot of the manufacturers of vertical gardening supplies use “green” materials that are biodegradable or recyclable. Since vertical gardens help to keep away pests, less or no pesticides are required to keep them safe.

In fact, some people build their vertical gardens themselves using PET plastic bottles that they saved around the house. The plastic bottles are cut in half and used to filter water that drains from the hanging plants. This prevents water from being wasted, another reason why it’s eco-friendly!

Another way to use PET bottles is to cut an opening on the side of the bottle. Pour in soil and plant the seeds of small herbs. The PET plastic bottles can then be screwed into a vertical platform, such as a wall or board using a screw and washer. This can be a great design for an outdoor wall you have in the garden.

Above is a picture of a “bottle garden” using recycled plastic soda bottles.

PET plastic does not contain bisphenol-A but it may contain other hormone disruptors that can leach into the plants and your food so I avoid the use of it personally except for flower gardens.

Surely, you can probably think of many other ways to grow the seeds for your vertical garden, using items like rain gutters and containers. There are many different eco-friendly designs that you can use for your vertical garden.

Vertical Gardening is Economically Friendly

Anyone who is worried about the high costs of starting a garden should rest at ease once they learn how easy and cheap it is to build a vertical garden. First of all, you aren’t required to buy a home with a lot of land in order to plant a lot of plants.

If you design your vertical garden smartly, you could have a large garden even if you have limited amount of space horizontally. Whether you’re using a yard, balcony or rooftop, vertical gardens are proven to be easy on your wallet – and most gardeners find they’re saving enough money on their grocery bills to more than pay for their investment in building the garden.

The amount of money you’ll spend on a vertical garden is far less than what you’d spend on a traditional in-the-ground garden. Since there’s no tilling of the dirt required, you won’t need all of the gardening equipment that is commonly needed.

Then if you set up your vertical garden correctly, you could have it so that water isn’t being over-consumed. There are water preservation techniques that are easy to implement into a vertical garden. Simply place something at the bottom to catch dripping water and reuse it, saving you on your water bill.

A common practice is to place a water capturing barrel underneath the rain gutters – which prevents excess storm drainage problems in urban areas. Then you can use all the fresh rainwater to keep your garden healthy if there’s a dry spell!

How Many Plants Can You Grow?

The design of your vertical garden is what determines how many plants you’ll be able to grow. It’s important that you utilize as much of the available space as possible – don’t leave any area untouched. For instance, you can hang plants on the walls and grow them in corners and rows throughout the garden space.

The great thing about vertical gardening is that you get to be creative and you can always change things, add new layers and experiment with different designs and types of plants.

The supplies for setting up your vertical garden are fairly cheap as well. You can try being creative and using items that you find around your home or you can go with eco-friendly vertical gardens that you can buy with easy assembly.

You’d be surprised at what you can use that’s already lying around your house. There’s a lot of competition for vertical gardening materials, so you shouldn’t have a problem finding great deals for vertical garden setups. You should go for materials that are made from biodegradable and recyclable materials. And if you’re going to use plastics when growing food crops, I recommend food-grade safe plastic to prevent leaching of potentially harmful chemicals into the plants.

So why do people create vertical gardens?

Overall, they are ideal for urbanites and suburbanites, and they’re perfect for people who care about the environment. It won’t break your bank account to start and maintain a vertical garden – and you’ll find the abundance of fresh food will cut down on your grocery bills significantly.

The benefits of vertical gardening in terms of environmental friendliness, expense and output far outweigh those of traditional gardens, making them a must-have for many. You’d be surprised to know that even people who have sufficient land to garden are turning to vertical gardening methods to make maximum usage of their acreage because they can get better yields growing vertically.

In fact, Dickson Despommier, one of the pioneers in vertical gardening, says

“Vertical Gardening could be the only way to feed the world’s growing population without destroying more rainforest for farmland.”

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Planning out your vertical garden can be a very fun endeavor that you should be a good bit of thought into. If you’re a beginner at gardening, then you will find this information to be very beneficial.

Otherwise, planning a vertical garden is very similar to planning a traditional garden except that you may need to use some different supplies and landscape design to help your garden grow vertically.

You can use the tips below to help plan your vertical garden project.

Choosing a Site for Your Vertical Garden

The first thing you’ll need to do is find an area that can be used for your vertical garden. The location of your vertical garden is very crucial. Having sufficient sunlight for your garden is a given, so make sure to time how much sunlight your plants would get per day.

If there isn’t enough sunlight throughout the day for the types of plants you want to grow, then you should try to find a different location or consider using artificial lighting if there are no other options. Most balconies and patios receive lots of sunlight throughout the day, unless there is a tall adjacent building or structure that blocks morning and afternoon sunlight.

Keep in mind that some plants can grow to be large (especially plants that live all year round), casting shadows over the other plants below them. Try to make a pyramid from biggest to smallest, so that all of your plants are able to receive equal sunlight. Of course, there are some plants that love shadows, so use this knowledge to plan out which plants will be where in your vertical garden.

Make sure to plan space in your gardening location and design for foot paths so that you can walk around your garden and tend to it once it’s up and producing. If you’re planning to grow in a tight area, such as a balcony, rooftop or small space in your yard, then you will need to design your vertical garden in a way that will allow you easy access.

Sounds obvious, I know, but I’ve seen people “wall off” parts of their yard with huge tomato plants or cucumber vines and then have to rip them out and start over with a better design. Just a little bit of thought ahead of time can save you a lot of money, time and effort once your garden is growing!

Vertical Gardening Tip:
You might want to draw a simple picture of your vertical garden design. It doesn’t need to be fancy at all, but just get the dimensions of your space and choose which plants you want to plant where. Drawing it out can help make the planning process a whole lot easier!

Inside Your Home

Indoor plants have always been popular with nature lovers. Why not try vertical gardening inside of your home?

It’s already a growing trend throughout the world, simply because it gives more room for plants and you can keep animals and bugs away from your vegetables, herbs, fruits and flowers. The only thing you need to do to ensure their survival is to choose a location in your home that receives lots of sunlight.