Vertical garden diary

[Dave Rennie]

After receiving some great tips from the kind folk on this forum, we finally dipped our toes into a gardening project over the weekend.

I aim to keep this thread fresh with updates, and will keep it photo rich.
Due to the 4 image per post limitation, I’ll spread the first thread out amongst several posts.

We have limited growing options in our garden, so we’ve started off with 2 vertical pocket systems.
The first, an IKEA product that is designed to hold shoes. Not bad for £5.

The pockets are very deep and hold loads of soil (possibly far too much for what we're growing?)

[Dave Rennie]

In this pocket system we planted strawberries, a few tumbling tomatoes, mint, sage & rosemary.

[Dave Rennie]

After a good soaking, the finished system looked like this.





I attached this to the back of the shed door with a few screws and washers.

[Dave Rennie]

We then moved onto the next stage.
An EBay 72 pockets system. £10 delivered.



These pockets are very shallow, and only hold a couple of handfuls of soil.



In the bottom section*we planted alpine strawberries and tumbling tomatoes.

[Dave Rennie]

We planted a variety of seeds straight into the soil.
All edible, mostly salads (lettuce, baby leaf, herbs, spring onions….)

[Dave Rennie]

We topped the pockets off with more soil, then gave each pocket a good drink.

[Dave Rennie]

The finished product looks like this, and is attached to the fence like so.

[Dave Rennie]

Stage 3 was planting seeds in seed trays, incase the seeds don’t germinate in the pockets.

[Dave Rennie]

It was a fun day in the sun, and hopefully it will be successful in providing us with some food.
If it does, I’ll put more effort into expanding the idea with DIY vertical planters with raised beds below.

So far the only movement has been from the magic beans that we swapped the Mrs for

[Jay-ell]

Looks like your family really enjoyed putting these up. Looking forward to the updates.

[Jay22]

Excellent, great idea and love the concentration on the kids faces! Especially love the action shot in post #4 2nd down! Happy growing with your lovely family!

[Yasai]

BRILLIANT! It's great to get kids into gardening. Like Ron Finley says, "If kids grow kale, they eat kale". Love the photos. FYI, I used that compost in my first year of growing. My neighbour asked me, in fascination, what the triffid growing at the end of my raised bed was and was dumbfounded when I told her it was the broccoli plant she had given me. It was taller than me, whilst the ones she planted in regular MPC barely reached my knee. So be prepared for monster-sized plants. Happy gardening...

[Bren In Pots]

Wish you and your family every success looks like everyone enjoyed themselves.

[Dave Rennie]

Thanks for the replies, and again for the initial advise.

I look forward to mammoth sized plants

Does anyone know why I can't upload photos to the forum straight from a phone?
I'm receiving an error message when I try.

[veggiechicken]

There may be a size issue about uploading photos from a phone. Try reducing them and see if that works. This is just what I've read as I don't use a phone for anything!
They certainly won't be the size of the photos you've already posted as they're the largest I've ever seen on here