Growing up

Working in a relatively limited growing area, I've been interested in the idea of vertical gardening for a while. The idea is to have plants that grow up, rather than along, and use walls and shelving to create several tiers. Most of the really interesting ideas have been either out of my budget or impractical for my garden due to limited angles of sunlight, however a friend linked me to one that I thought was worth a try, mostly because I had all the raw materials to hand.

So far, I can thoroughly recommend it for people who want to play along at home. All you need is a drainpipe on a wall that doesn't point north, some compost and a lot of plastic bottles.

Did I mention my Diet Coke addiction? Plastic bottles were never going to be the limiting factor.

What you need to do:

• Cut the base off all but two of the bottles and wash them out thoroughly. Remove the labels and throw away all but two of the caps.
• Select one bottle to be the bottom of the tower and screw one of the caps on tightly. Take a small, sharp knife and stab two holes on opposite sides, just above where the bottle curves into the neck. These are drainage holes to make sure it doesn't get water-logged.
• Fill your newly created bottom bottle with compost. Make sure to pack it tightly or the whole thing will go slightly wobbly later. Place it at the bottom of your drainpipe, facing as close to south as you can get it. I put mine in a pot full of compost for extra stability.
• Take a second bottle and wedge it, neck first, into the bottom one. Fill with compost. Repeat until you have only the two uncut bottles left.








• Once you've reached your last two bottles, cut them both in half. Drill/bore with a knife a very small hole in the top of the last remaining cap and screw it to one of the bottles. Put the capped bottle inside the other and wedge it in as hard as it can go. You should have something which looks like this:
  
  


• This is the reservoir. Shove it into the top bottle of compost and then fill it with water. The water should drain through the little hole in the cap, dripping through the clear air created by jamming the two bottle halves together and feed into the compost.
  
  
  
• Strap this tower of bottles to the drainpipe to prevent it from falling over and then start making planting holes.






• The original guide recommends herbs and lettuce, but that's boring. So while I am doing some lettuce and some mint and oregano (thyme and rosemary have their own pots, while parsley is in the spinach patch, keeping the slugs away (in theory)), the top half is now filled with strawberry plants rescued from the runners that tried to escape my straw and weed-ridden bed last year.
  
  

Overall, I'm very pleased with the results. There are several major advantages to growing lettuces and strawberries like this, not least of which is that a lateral bed containing this many plants would be at least 1m² of garden space instead of 1 coke-bottle's-width in a space that wouldn't've been used anyway.

It'll also lift the fruit and leaves away from marauding slugs and woodlice and the top-down watering makes it phenomenally easy to keep the soil moist and add liquid fertiliser when needed. Granted, the plants at the top will get first dibs on the nutrients, but that's why the strawberries are at the top and the less hungry lettuces and indestructible mint are at the bottom. My only concern is that I may have tried to squeeze in too many strawberry plants and they may be too squashed up to produce much. I guess time will tell.

PJW