Further adventures in vertical gardening

Another thing I've been doing over the last week or two is trying to resurrect my vertical garden that I made out of a tower of coke bottles. Last year was mostly a failure - the strawberries died very quickly, the coriander died slowly, the mint had a brief flourish and died and the lettuce was a roaring success, hampered only by the fact that I don't eat much lettuce.

I came back to it a fortnight ago to find that the death throes of the plants had sucked all the water and goodness out of the soil and left it a desert.

This may be a redundant question, but has anyone ever tried to water soil that has utterly rejected the concept of water? It's happened to me a couple of times in the past when I failed at indoor pot plants - once is reaches a certain level of dessication, the soil decides that it never liked water anyway and is better off with that bitch out of its life. So you try and bring soil and water back together and the soil is all, "Nu-uh - you broke my heart, but I don't need you anymore. I'm stronger without you and I'm happy with my new girlfriend, DeadLettuce."

So, I spent the better part of a day trying to convince soil that it did want water back in its life, which was mostly accomplished by trying to drown it. If there's a water shortage in Bath in the next couple of weeks, then sorry - that was me, emptying an entire reservoir's worth into a tower of plastic bottles.

If we're taking that metaphor to its logical conclusion, then I kidnapped and tortured the soil until it agreed to get back together with water. Also, please note the skeleton of the mint plant at the bottom. I tried removing it - it considered removing me instead. We've called a truce.

So, I finally have a moist tower once more and will be trying to grow things in it. The only inhabitants currently are two strawberry plants - I live forever in hope that, one day, they will be able to thrive here. Or at least produce one lousy strawberry between them. I've also got some lettuce growing under the artificial sun with the hope that, one day, I might eat some lettuce.

In other news, all but one of the "Swift" bags of potatoes have now shown signs of green bits. I don't fancy my chances of getting potatoes next week, as I was promised, but at least they may produce something at some time.

Far more interesting is that my Purple Majesty potatoes are showing signs of life. Actually, they may have been producing leaves for a while and just escaped my notice - the leaves are a very dark purple, which is very, very cool. Hopefully this bodes well for the purpleness of the potatoes themselves.

I've also managed to plant out some of the better seedlings into their beds inside the brassica cages. We now officially have 2 brussels sprouts and 3 broccoli.

I have once again used old coke bottles as home-made bell cloches to protect the vulnerable seedlings from wind, cold and the depredations of the local wildlife. This was my best trick last year and it's saved me a lot of stress and lost plants.

In looking up that link, I came across a picture of how big my seedlings were at the end of April last year. I'm definitely getting better at this game!

27th April 2014

12th April 2015

I've since had to remove the bell cloche off that one because the seedling was already pressing up against the top of the bottle. The difference is likely the improved artificial sun that my wife built me and that I outfitted with a more powerful bulb. God knows what it's doing to our electricity bills, but it's certainly improving my gardening.

There's also the first signs of mange tout coming up, which is promising. With any luck, it'll survive the pests this year. I plan on putting egg-shells around the more vulnerable ones and praying.

Not slug food. Please.

PJW

Glory or scurvy awaits!

Last day where I can buy vegetables and I'm cooking a roast tonight to use up the last of everything in the house. It's a little bit worrying, as the garden is yet to conclusively be providing. I see salads in my future, as the lettuces are the only things producing reliably.

Windowsill lettuce! You are my only friend.

There is the promise of carrots, but I've had the promise of carrots before, only to discover that the massive great green heads are there because no energy has gone into growing the tasty orange bit. I'll be pulling them up tomorrow to either be elated at the bounties of the eart or distraught at the prospect of a month of pasta bakes and rice-based meals served with needle-thin carrottettes.

Schrodinger's Carrots - the cat is both alive and dead at the same time until it is pulled from the earth by its green leafy tops

Aside from that*, I'm vegetableless. The cauliflowers and cabbages haven't grown as quickly as expected and the mangetout that should be producing now is instead recovering from being mostly eaten by slugs. This month, I are to be mostly eating carrots.

I did have a few tempting thoughts of delaying the challenge for another month, or even calling the whole thing off with some comments about how silly I was being. However, I've put quite a bit of work and planning into this and I refuse to be thwarted in the first month. Needle-thin carrots for dinner it is, every night!

On the bright side, the new daylight bulb and reflector is working great. Due to the dim weather of late, the latest set of seedlings has been pretty much solely under artificial light and they're doing great. Much better than under the old system.

This is especially important as these are swedes for Oct/Nov, purple sprouting broccoli for Feb/Apr, chard for Nov-Jan, and kale and spinach for Jan-May. And pumpkins, just cause I can. Basically, this is the seed tray to make sure I'm not suffering from deficiency diseases** at the start of next year, even if I will be a bit tired of leafy green winter vegetables.

I'm off to go cook my last broccoli for 2 months and my last parsnips for 4 months and I guess we'll see the state of the carrots tomorrow. Wish me luck.

PJW

*Well, there's some new potatoes that won't get used tonight, which is kinda cheating, but I'm not going to throw them away on an arbitrary rule!
** On a side note, my daughter's food will be separate from this challenge if I do run short of vegetables!

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