Thursday, August 6, 2009

Wall Me In

I am in love with vertical gardening!
It is possible to grow 10x more plants in the same space that I had 1 planted before.
This is my second year using the square foot gardening method of vertical gardening.
Last year I used zip ties to connect the plastic netting to the metal conduit arches, but this year I stole an idea from my Dad.
I wrapped twine in between the netting holes and around the metal conduit.
It makes the netting taunt, but flexible.


In the back green pole beans - In the front cucumbers
Above: Close up of Tomato wall #2
Below: Tomato wall #2

P.S. The tomato walls are 8 1/2 feet tall!


My First Ripe Tomato!!!
There were 2, but I ate one.......and then I ate the other one too!




Cucumber wall close up.




Green bean wall from the side.
Eggplants and peppers in the front.




Tomato wall #1




Overall garden view: Empty beds - harvested garlic and a finally crop of peas, then I took the vines out.
Guess which Ladies like pea vines?
All of them!


Overall garden view: Grow summer squash! That's Butter Stick summer squash. Very good - makes yummy squash pickles.


Overall garden view.
If you want to see more pics of my garden and directions to make the metal conduit arches
click Here









3 comments:

  1. Hello garden friend! Can you tell me how you held up your tomato wall? What did you use as a frame? Thanks!

    BlueRoseMama @ hotmail.com

    PS I have tried to find bell hangers EVERYWHERE! But the home depots and hardware stores don't have anything like it. I will have to go to a specialty plumbing supply shop on Monday... and I hate waiting for projects! (Dont you?)

    Have a great weekend!

    Val

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  2. Hi Val! I will be doing a tutorial with pics next week explaining how to put together a tomato wall, but this is the basic idea: 2 3/4" 10' EMT conduits (in the electrical dept. NOT the plumbing dept.), 2 3/4" conduit connectors, pipe bender and plastic netting or wire netting.

    Cut one EMT conduitin half to make 2 5' legs.
    Bend the 2nd conduit to make a 5' "top" and 2 2.5' "legs".
    Using the conduit connectors attach the 5' legs to the 2.5' legs.
    Now you should have a 7.5 foot tall and 5 foot wide tomato trellis.
    Attach the netting with zip ties or -better idea- wrap twin in and out and around the netting and the conduit.
    Use T-posts or simlar garden posts to anchor the trellis in your garden.
    Depending on the amount of wind you get in your area, you may want to ALSO hammer a piece of rebar into the ground and slide the trellis over the top, before attaching it to the T-posts.

    I hope this helped! It would be better with pics I know!

    About the bell hangers - I asked at my local Menard's store (like a Home Depot) and they said they didn't have them, but I looked through the whole plumbing section any way. They were there! I pointed it out to the plumbing section people. They didn't really care. So you never know - they might be hiding some where in the store!

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