Building a vertical garden is a great way to utilize the limited space in your home to grow vegetables and fruit for your kitchen. If correctly done, such a garden also makes your house aesthetically pleasing. Even if you already have a traditional garden, you can still build one as an extension to your existing garden. The first thing is to get help. If you can spare some time to search the web, it shouldn’t be that difficult find vertical garden ideas from the experts in the field. Using an image search is also a great way to get inspiration. And of course there are many books about vertical gardening. But for now, here are some tips for making your living wall.
The next thing to do is to select the site. Conduct a tour of your house to see which wall of your house gets six to eight hours of sunlight every day. Most vegetable plants need that much sunlight to grow well. Also, make sure that the space will allow the plants to get plenty of fresh air, over crowding your plants can increase the risk of plant disease. Take a few days to observe and make notes if necessary.
Once you have selected the place, decide what method you will use. There are several ways to build a vertical garden. Here are some options:
The Living Wall:
Here is a method in which planters are fixed in one or more rows against the wall. This is called the ‘living wall’. You will need planters, an electric drill, a saw, a screwdriver, a hammer and one or two packets of screw or concrete nails.
- Draw a horizontal line across the length of the wall three feet above the ground. Draw another horizontal line three feet above that. In this way, you can draw as many lines as you want as long as the height of the ceiling allows it.
- Mark the spots along each line where you want to screw or nail the planters or gutter.
- Screw or nail the planters at the marked spots along each line. If it is a concrete wall, you will have to use concrete nails.
- Drill holes into the bottom of the planters to aid drainage, and prevent your vegetable plants from developing root rot, and to allow water to drip down to the plants below.
- Fill the planter with garden soil, add compost or organic fertilizer if necessary, and sow seeds or transplant saplings of the vegetable you have selected. Make sure it’s the right vegetable for your climate and the current season. Do not forget to water the plants regularly.
Other Methods:
Other vertical garden ideas include hydroponic garden, which involves growing plants in water containers without the use of soil. You can also make a vertical garden the easy way by simply placing the planters on the balcony or on the window sill. You may also do it the traditional way by allowing climbers, such as cucumber plant, to grow up against the wall, arched trellis or another upright plant. Sustainable Suburbia has more ideas for vertical gardening, plus information on how to grow container vegetables, see for example their article on Growing Tomatoes in Pots. Tomatoes can grow like a vine, up against the wall, with herbs growing at their feet. There are also patented systems that you can buy for your living wall, such as Grow Wall, Zipgrow towers and Arista Caseto.
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