Having a DIY Vertical Garden for Your Limited-Space Home

There are a lot of reasons on why you should grow your own food. The most common benefit of doing so is you can save money and also you are able to eat healthier foods. There’s also an unmatched pleasure of eating flavorful ripe vegetables and fruits. Most often, they taste better than those being sold in the supermarket.

Growing vegetables and fruits on your own also means that you can eat organic food that’s free from pesticides and other chemical fertilizers. This also gives a sense of accomplishment as you successfully harvest the food that you grew yourself.

However, for those individuals who live in apartments or in houses with limited space, having their own garden may sound impossible. Well, there’s this method that they call as ‘vertical gardening.’ It is an effective way to make the most of your space especially if you have small balconies or patios.

Such concept is not new. Since the dawn of agriculture, the human civilization have already employed this method. One great example is the ancient Mayan culture where they developed a vertical gardening method. What they did was they planted beans next to cornstalks, providing a trellis system in which the bean plants could climb the cornstalks while receiving shade from the corn plant's leaves. Some scholars believe that this facilitated the rise of the grand Mayan civilization that came later.

Vertical gardening on the other hand, simply refers to any planting system that encourages plants to grow vertically. Other types of vertical gardening include shelves, pockets, hanging baskets, and pallets.

You may already have heard of shelves and hanging baskets. But the pocket and pallet may sound unfamiliar. Pockets are those bags made of burlap or other materials containing plants. They are then attached to available walls while the pallet vertical gardening makes use of wooden shipping pallets that are covered on the bottom and sides with landscape fabric. These are then filled with young plants and potting soil. The plants grow in the spaces between the slats and, the pallet will be lifted into a vertical position.

Also, you have to choose the right plants for your vertical garden. Take a look at how much sunlight is available. Take note as well that some plants are better suited to vertical gardening techniques than others.