Urban Gardening: Going Vertical

We have two plots in our Community Garden. We're not supposed to. We're only supposed to have one. We have two. And each of them is 10' wide by 20' deep.

In our initial plot, we're currently growing tomatoes, onions, shallots, herbs, berries, peas, bush beans and some romaine lettuce. While this sounds like a lot, we have plenty of room for the additional herbs and peppers we'll be putting down after next Saturday's plant sale.

The front half of our additional plot is full of potatoes. We have three varieties planted in two rows. They've been mounded a couple of times, and are currently about 18" to 24" deep. In the back half of the plot, we've seeded some cucumbers, pole beans, spaghetti squash and cantaloupe, and we've planted two varieties of sweet potato.

You would think that the two plots could contain all of that. Based on our experience in the garden last year, however, we know that it cannot and will not. The squash and cantaloupe will spread all over the second bed and prevent us from planting other varieties of squash or any watermelon. Since we already have twice as much space as we're supposed to (from a square foot perspective), we have to build up.

After consulting several books on vertical gardening, we spent last Saturday and Sunday creating room for plants from thin air.

The first order of business was to hook some netting to the chain link fence that borders our additional plot on the east side. This should provide the cucumbers we seeded with plenty of room for growth. We then built an eight-foot-tall trellis that we hope will hold the weight of the cantaloupe and spaghetti squash. It's a fairly simple design of two posts (buried two feet deep) and two crossbeams. We then hooked some wire that we found to that frame.

Granted, the melons and squash may become so heavy that we need to support them with slings or hammocks. We'll figure that bit out as we go along. Right now, we're just thrilled that by thinking vertically (down and then up in the case of potatoes and up in the case of melons) we've added another dimension to our gardens. 

So now we have two plots that are 10' x 20' x h. And that equals unlimited possibilites.