No Space Gardening – Grow Upwards

DO you live in the city, confined to an apartment with little space for gardening? Do you want to grow a vegetable garden but feel you cannot because you don’t have room? If so, there is good news for you. Life can be frustrating for the urban gardener, growing a vegetable garden is anything but impossible. When space is a premium and you’ve got nowhere more space, the logical way to garden is to grow upwards. Infact, with a little planning and imagination, vegetable gardens can be grown anywhere, regardless of space. Begin growing upwards.
Vertical Gardening is a boon for the land challenged. Consider growing a vertical garden. A vertical garden may be the perfect solution for you if you have limited space!

Less is more passion flower

You can easily produce the same amount of vegetable without taking up excess space many of those delicious ‘space hogs’ in the vegetable garden can quickly and easily be trained to grow ‘‘up” instead of “out”, taking one-tenth of the space they would otherwise. When planning a traditional backyard vegetable garden, vertical gardening is an easy way to save space in your garden layout.

It allows for tactical food plot management. Vertical garden with trellises for squash, for instance, will allow small garden owners the ability to raise fresh natural fruits for their own use.

It is useful for adding interest to a wall, fence, transforming any wall into a landscaped oasis with vertical gardens. You can get ready-made modules with planters on frames with built-in irrigation system to beautify the home, your office or patio with a colorful range of flowers and functional herb garden.
How to plant a vertical garden?

As long as you have a blank wall or bare fence that needs beautifying, you can tend edibles, annuals, even perennials with vertical gardening ideas which inspires high hopes for successful gardening.
Tips For Vertical Gardening

Vertical garden trellis hanging container

Choose a sunny location for your vertical garden.

A vertical garden is easy to create, it can be grown in containers, a raised bed, or directly in the ground using trellises and hanging containers, shelves and frames, for additional vegetable crops. Training vegetables and ornamentals to grow vertically provides many benefits including:
Saving Space: You can grow and harvest many other vegetables in the space that will otherwise be lost. Easier to Harvest: Many of the vegetables will be easier to reach when harvesting. Better Air Circulation around plants: provides ideal growing conditions for healthy plants. Keeps vegetables off the ground: Prevents mold, soil-borne disease, crawling insects or pests from reaching leaves or fruits.
What is a vertical Vegetable Garden?

Vertical gardening can be anything from training one or two of your vegetable to grow upwards in the garden, to creating elaborate structure with frame and cross shelving to contain an entire garden in a small space, or anything in between.

You can use wooden or metal trellises, hanging baskets, shelves, containers, wood frame, or any combination of these, to create a space-saving vertical garden. Any space available will be better utilized if you take advantage of growing your plants upward instead of outward. This type of gardening is great in urban areas where many homes and apartments have limited outdoor space. A combination of containers trellis, shelves, and hanging baskets works really well on a patio or balcony to create a complete garden.

If you can tackle a project like building a frame with crop supports and shelves built-in, this also works well and can be an attractive feature in your landscape or on the deck or patio.
What location is best?

Patio vegetable garden

As with any type of garden, finding the best location for growing vegetables vertically is most important to your success. The first step is to determine what the conditions are like where you wish to place the vegetable garden, such as on the balcony. The amount of sunlight will be the greatest factor in determining which plants will thrive in your urban environment for example. For instance if you live in an area surrounded by other buildings, balcony or patio may be shaded most of the time; therefore you should choose your plants accordingly.

Most vegetable plants require a minimum of 6 hours of sunlight per day.

Leafy vegetables like lettuce, cabbage and spinach do well with limited sunlight, making good choices for shady area.

It is helpful to locate your garden near a convenient source of water.
Plants that thrive in Vertical Vegetable Gardens

These vegetables are good candidates for space-saving garden either in raised bed gardens, hanging gardens, gardens in-ground gardens, or container gardens on the porch, balcony, patio or deck. Simply plant seeds as usual, installing the support at the time of planting, as to do so later will likely be difficult, causing damage to the plants root system.

Teepee trellis

Climbing Plants:
Cucumber, Squash, Tomato, Green beans, Peas, Lima beans, Pumpkins and other vine crops can be grown as long as the container is deep enough to accommodate their root system and proper staking is available. Fill containers with peat moss and a suitable potting mix amended with compost or manure.
Almost any vegetable grown in a garden will also work well as a container-grown plant.
Non-Climbing Plants: Peppers, Lettuce, Radishes, Onions, Egg plant Potato (regular or sweet Potato in a container), Parsley and more Herbs. These will not need a support system, but can be included in a vertical garden. Nearly any type of container can be used for growing vegetable plants. Old washtubs, wooden crates, five gallon buckets can be implemented for growing crops as long as they provide adequate drainage. Being blessed with abundant of sunshine, your selection of plants will be greater, as vegetables thrive best in full sun. Choose your favorite vegetables for your first vertical garden. It will be more exciting and rewarding to care for plants that you and your family will love to eat.

Courtyard design with pool and vertical ornamental garden

Start small so that you don’t get overwhelmed.

Remember that you can add more plants and varieties next season and season after season. Vertical gardening is a great activity the whole family can enjoy.

Children love helping to plant the seeds and watch them grow, soon the whole family will be involved and they too will enjoy gardening!