Guten Yardening everybody!
Featuring the GreenStalk Vertical Gardens ($10 OFF COUPON CODE: GUTEN)
Today I want to talk to you about a method of growing that we want to suggest that you try this upcoming season. We base any suggestions we make on methods that we've found successful, so we want to suggest to you that you consider trying to see if they work for you. Our focus here is vertical gardening.
If you've had any success in the method that we talk about today, go ahead and let us know about it in the comments, and if there are other gardening methods that you'd like to hear more about, let us know that as well.
One of the elements that makes vertical gardening so special to us, and one of the reasons why we like it so much is because we have a small property to grow on, and, because we're trying to grow as much food as possible, we need to make sure we can allocate enough space to our garden. One way to double or triple your space is to grow vertically instead of just growing in a horizontal pattern.
If we think about this in terms of just plain square footage on the ground we're very limited in that way (under 2000 potential square feet), but if we start talking about growing in that same square footage but now adding the vertical element, every single layer in terms of the height of a plant is an additional bit of square footage that we couldn't take advantage of before, and there are a lot of creative ways, in my opinion, to do vertical garden, and I've seen a lot of really awesome ideas in some of the gardening facebook groups I am a part of. We've also experimented around and had some pretty successful ideas come to fruition as well.
There doesn’t have to be a large cost to begin vertical gardening. We've even gone to the dollar store to buy some inexpensive planters there that we have used for vertical gardening, so it's not like it takes a lot to get into vertical gardening.
I want to repeat one thing. We're not suggesting anything that we haven't tried before or seen success ourselves, so we may mention a few other setups that we've seen and those are fantastic, but when we talk about what we recommend for vertical gardening, these are from positive experiences that we've had ourselves that we know work at least for us. We're not going to make recommendations outside of that.
One of the methods we've done is an inexpensive way of vertical gardening, and we showed this in an earlier video on Guten Yardening. We created, from a grow bag and one of our tomato cages, a vertical gardening space that has worked really well for us growing some of our swiss chard, spinach, and even growing some beans, and this setup was not difficult to put together. It took a little bit of ingenuity, but it wasn't hard. It didn't cost a lot of money because we simply upcycled products we already had in the garden. This is just one example of what vertical gardening can really look like on a simple basis.
There are plenty of ways to approach vertical gardening, and I'm going to say this before I talk about one of our favorites. If you have a vertical gardening setup that works really well for you that you love and you'd like to share we definitely want to hear about it.
Vertical gardening can be as simple as adding to an existing bed. For example, we took one of our raised beds, and we added some trellising, similar to fencing so that our squash grew up instead of out. That was a cost effective method for us. It added vertical height, and we were able to make sure that our squash stayed up off the ground, which also helped to reduce the potential for ground based diseases to impact our fruit. This was a simple way to add vertical gardening to an existing plot where we limited ourselves to potatoes last season, but are now able to expand and maximize the growing space. In an area that was initially not wide enough to easily handle vining crops, we have removed that problem.
On top of that, we also use some really, what I would consider to be non-conventional ways of vertical gardening. This season we grew some of our potatoes in hanging baskets on homemade shepherd’s hooks. What that allowed us to do was to take one tiny little footprint, the bottom of the shepherd's hook (made from a U-post), and grow our vegetables about three feet vertically over an area that's also growing vegetables like our collard greens and kohlrabi. As a result, we were able to support multiple growing layers in a completely inexpensive and customizable way that fit our specific needs for an area that might otherwise be greatly limited.
The vertical gardening setup that we have enjoyed the most success with this season is our GreenStalk vertical garden. This vertical garden is honestly a little bit more expensive than any of the other versions of vertical gardening that we've done, but part of the reason why it's more expensive is the quality of the material in the setup, and quite frankly it has been one of those setups for us that is truly versatile. The GreenStalk is easy to move around, easy to change up (you can use all or some of the tiers), and we've had a great deal of success with it already.
We've been growing in GreenStalk planters now for a full year, and what we've seen is that there's really been little limitation to what we can grow in this setup. We experimented with red, white, and blue potatoes in this vertical setup, and this was our first time trying to grow potatoes this way. We enjoyed the results, and believe that our future vertical potato plantings will be even better. If you're somebody who's interested in growing potatoes or this is something that you've wanted to try but you don't have a ton of space, this is an option that we think opens up a pretty good setup for you. We placed our GreenStalk on our patio and with a linear footprint of just over 3 square feet, we saw immediate space saving benefits.
Additionally, immediately after harvesting the potatoes, we were able to transition over to some of our fall vegetables, kale, chard, and more in this vertical setup, and that succession planting process was very simple, and we didn't take up a lot of space. Now we're sitting there with the opportunity to harvest what we need for a salad or a green smoothie in a space that could be right outside of our door. As long as there's an appropriate amount of sun, you can place your GreenStalk wherever you have even minimal room, and with its ease of access you can take advantage of often unused height.
If you've seen some of our earlier Guten Yardening YouTube content, you might know that we are also attempting to grow sweet potatoes in the GreenStalk. We're trying to push the limits of this vertical garden. We want to see exactly what we can do with this setup, and I think that what we have found so far is that there is plenty of depth and potential for growing most crops.
If you're interested there is a ten dollar coupon available for orders of $75 dollars or more. If you click https://lddy.no/zf6o and enter code: GUTEN at checkout. They now ship to the US and to Canada.
Hopefully, you can see that the potential that comes with vertical gardening, especially for improving the amount that you can grow in a very limited space is really outstanding. We encourage you to take full advantage of your vertical space as often as possible. If there is another topic you would like to hear more about, we would ask you to leave us a message and let us know.
Happy yardening everyone, and remember, when you're with us you are good to grow!
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