Vertical Gardening

So I get a lot of ideas of creative ways to grow stuff.  Last October I got the chance to go to Disney World with my husband and I'd have to say my favorite part was the Epcot greenhouse dome.  It was INCREDIBLE!  They had lemons the size of your head.  They had pumpkins growing overhead on metal frames with big pumpkins hanging from it.   They had a Tomato "Tree" with hundreds of tomato vines growing from a hole in the floor, twisting around each other to form a trunk, and reaching up to an overhead trellis, where they spread out and created a canopy of tomatoes.  I saw lettuce growing out of hydroponic pvc tubes, and veggitables growing on top of Tilapia fishtanks, where the plants feed the fish and purified the water, and the fish provide nutrients for the plants.  It was incredible.  Suddenly I was wanting to grow watermellons from my ceiling or strawberries out of hanging shoe organizers.  I wanted to turn my basement into a jungle!  Fruits and veggies growing indoors year round!

But I didn't have a lot of space.  Or money.  So I had to be selective and try to be economical with my experiments.
I needed pots.  Lots of pots.  I started collecting anything plastic that could hold a plant.  Soda bottles, milk jugs, tupperware, pudding cups, yogurt cups.  The idea was to use stuff we had already used for something else.  Sure I could go out and buy a packet of dixie cups for a few bucks, but where's the fun in THAT?  I wanted to try some of those hip hydroponic window gardens made from old soda bottles, but they were expensive and looked hard to set up.  Plus if something went wrong, what a mess!  And I also liked the idea of creating a living wall, to save on space as well as creating a pretty wall hanging.  But again, they required me making an expensive purchase or building one on my own.  If I couldn't make it out of things I already had in 10 minutes or less, I wasn't interested.

This is a mountain dew bottle converted into a topsy-turvey style hanging planter.  I cot off the bottom of the bottle, inverted the top of the bottle so it created a domelike area inside, allowing for extra water to drain and collect in the outer ring of the bottle.  I put a coffee filter over top of the bulge and cut a tiny hole in the middle and threaded my little pea seedling through it.  Then I stuffed the opening around the stem with seran wrap to keep extra water from dripping out onto my windowsill and ultimately, my white carpet.  Then I filled it with dirt and threaded string to hang the whole thing from the top of my window.

After a day the plant had switched growing directions.  It was like it knew it was upside down, and angled itself upward.

Some of my other planter contraptions.  These don't hang, but they are easily portable and you can re-use the water that drains out of them for the next watering.  Which conserves water and nutrients that may have drained with the water!  This set up is functional, but pretty ugly.

In these little planters I planted peas and watermellon.  The upside-down pea lived for a long time, with limited root space and infrequent waterings.  The thing actually valiantly produced a pea pod with a single proud little pea.  Despite my efforts to keep it water-proof, the thing still dripped.  So I cleverly positioned the other upside-down planters underneath to catch the drips.  But that was awkward and took careful repositioning every time I watered.  Once the plant successfully made a pea pod, I retired the project.  (Sorry little pea plant!  It was too much trouble to keep you alive!)

This is how it looks now.  Out of respect for it, I let it keep its pea pod.(Its over there by my thumb in the photo)

My next vertical gardening experiment is called side-planting.  I got the idea from a book I got from home depot about growing attractive veggie-flower container compositions.  Anyway the idea is you cut holes in upside-down hanging baskets and pull the plants through.  That way you get more planting space out of your planters by using the sides as well as planting stuff in the top.  Once the plants are mature you should have a solid cannon-ball of plants with no visible basket.  A magical flying plant-ball!  How cool.  The only thing cooler than a magical flying plant-ball is a magical flying plant-ball you can eat!  So I planted strawberries in mine.  All-Star strawberries from Stark Bros.  It shall rain strawberries!

Here is an update on the hanging baskets.  They haven't gotten much green growth, but they are all starting to flower!  These things dry out very quickly, and need watering every two days or so.  When I do water, it seems like all the water drains right out the bottoms, or through the planting holes.  Pretty annoying.  I try to put some of my other plants below them to catch the extra water to not be wasteful.  I probably look very goofy precariously perched on the patio wall with my little watering can.  Its kind of fun, actually :P.  With my cat-like agility I should join the circus!

 

Looking at these, I wonder if I should have planted more plants in these baskets.  They aren't very big, compared to the ones I have in pots they are pretty dainty.  I think I'm going to try using some miracle gro fertilizer.  Maybe the soil's nutrients are depleted since every time I water all the water pours right out.

This is a close-up of the Starkcrimson dwarf cherry tree I have planted in a pot with some mixed flowers and strawberry plants.  As you can see, the whole thing is really lush and everything in the pot is doing pretty well.