Successful, vertical, high yield urban gardening for terraces, balconies and lawns
To have a great looking vertical garden and an abundant food supply is not something I get because I'm "lucky" as some neighbors would have it. In fact, if something looks effortless, you can bet that there was a lot of skill, hard work and money behind it. I think that goes for practically everything in life.
Although many gardening websites and YouTube videos employ the typical marketing catch words "easy", "free", "low-cost", "maintenance free" and similar, I will say that there is only one way to start easy-low-cost etc. until you have some more experience and can find the money: Start small!
Maybe find a laundry basket in the house and try it out. I always had a lot of land at my disposal in the past, so when we moved into our small cave house with only a small terrace, I did a test run with our own blue laundry basket first to see how much it would cost me and how much work it would be.
To my surprise it was actually so much easier to plant, because I didn't have to dig any soil or get any weeds out. The reason why I couldn't use local soil was that in the area we live the soil has a goodly quantity of saltpeter in it hence maybe the desert like climate here. So I opted for buying cheap soil and 1 bag of soil would be just enough to fill one laundry basket.
Late fall here is still a good time to do gardening, so I bought a few plants for the top of the blue basket and to plant into the holes on the side, I simply used garlic cloves. I lifted the basket onto a chair and so I could sit in front of the holes filling them with garlic cloves. Punch a hole through the plastic bin liner (or Hessian sack), insert garlic clove, punch a hole, insert garlic clove .... I don't think it took more than 10 minutes to fill in the holes and then I sat there and thought: That was brilliant! No bending down, no backache!
My first blue laundry basket in July - still doing fine with garlic and a young grape vine!
All through January the garlic cloves sprouted and we had garlic greens in winter comfort soups!
February in the south of Spain is already fairly warm and sunny, so I bought 10 white laundry baskets on Ebay as well as some of my favorite seeds, some seabird guano and a packet of AZOMITE. Then off to the garden center to buy 10 sacks of soil, 10 bushes and trees and some flowering plants.
Garden Centers and plant nurseries are my downfall! When I see a sad looking plant I don't care what it is, I want to "rescue" it. Oh well, best make a list of all our favorite foods and buy accordingly.
If you plant bushes and trees into the laundry baskets, there is just one more advantage: Since there are holes all around the baskets, as the trees and bushes grow, naturally "root air pruning" will occur. Which means that there are no roots circling, because when the older roots reach the air, they will die off and a lot of young roots will grow nearer to the center.
I would recommend to take the trees and bushes out of the basket/planter every 2 - 3 years to cut the roots and branches back which will most likely entice them to bear more fruits.
By April I decided that this was going swimmingly and ordered another 10 white laundry baskets from Ebay (the seller probably thought I was mad!). And more soil and some Heritage seeds as I find that the plants that grow from them are much stronger and are actually doing fine now in the Spanish July heat.
The first 10 white laundry baskets with a few buckets of seedlings to go into the holes in the side of the baskets
In May we had a terrible, unexpected heat wave, so we rushed out to buy 4 garden umbrellas with those plastic supports that you can screw into the sand when you are at the beach. Yep, I thought, that's the way to go, screw the support into the soil in the middle of the basket, insert umbrella and be done. We bought 2 red umbrellas and 2 blue ones. Looks really nice like that. And in future we will have grape vines growing over the whole terrace and then the umbrellas won't be needed anymore.
Will the Spanish sun destroy the plastic of the laundry baskets? - I don't know yet, but I thought the plastic is not very exposed to the sun if there are plants growing in all the holes. Time will tell, I certainly want to use them as long as possible even if I have to "repair" them one day.
Umbrellas sheltering the plants in the basket from the midday sun
We do have enough water here which is a bit unusual in this desert like climate. 2 small rivers are uniting just where the village begins. The water is excellent! But, well, it is the law that before they pump the water into the houses, it must be chlorinated. I won't get into a rant now about chlorinated water, it is very, very bad and needs to be filtered at least for drinking.
Seeing that the laundry baskets are planted densely, I have to water a lot and I mean a lot especially in summer. I use a hose without a filter as I couldn't find one yet. I know they are available in the US, so I will see. But, when I use soil amendments like AZOMITE or seabird guano, I use filtered water in a small watering can with the powders mixed in.
Actually, I don't see watering the plants as a chore. It's like the "Zen of Watering", like about 45 minutes of meditating, picking a strawberry or a tomato here or there, pick off some wilted flowers or take away weeds or cut back here and there where a plant might be growing too much.
Yes, the plants are planted together in a very small space, but in a later chapter we can see how companion planting actually helps the plants and enhances them. Nature doesn't support bare soil or monocrops and so I try to imitate nature as much as I can. So this would be the "high density" bit in the title of this series.
Interval gardening means that once the baskets are planted and the plants are growing nicely, I already sprinkle some seeds into the soil underneath them and the little seedlings can grow in the shelter of the bigger plants. Yes, from time to time I cut off a few leave from the bigger plants to give the little ones more space and air. And when the summer crop is finished, the winter crop is already in place.
I don't bother much with seedling trays because I found that seeds have their own intelligence and even if I'm too stupid to know when the correct season is to sow them, they know all by themselves and sprout as and when the time/weather is right for them. All I do really is to let a few seeds drop into the soil every months or so or I stick a few seeds into the holes of the laundry basket - not too deep though. I don't cover them, I just let them do what nature has intended them to do.
Like with every new garden, there is always something to eat in my laundry basket garden, but until everything is up and running perfectly, it might take a few years until everything meshes together. Patience is the key!
Our laundry basket garden mid July 2017:
So there you have it: High Density Interval Gardening and it's a lot of fun and grows an abundance of healthy food even in an urban environment in good times and in bad times! From garden to kitchen in seconds!
Looking forward to your comments and questions!
Love,
Antje