Vertical Vegetables & Fruit: Creative Gardening Techniques for Growing Up in Small Spaces Author: Rhonda Massingham Hart | Language: English | ISBN:
1603429980 | Format: PDF
Vertical Vegetables & Fruit: Creative Gardening Techniques for Growing Up in Small Spaces Description
From the Back Cover
Limited Space and Little Time to Garden? Try Growing Your Food Up
In a very small footprint, you can take advantage of vertical acreage by planting vegetables and fruit that climb, ramble, and twine toward the sun. Small, contained spaces also minimize weeding and pest control and maximize your harvest.
Begin with peas and beans, the stars of climbing vines, and then explore the vertical possibilities of other popular garden foods:
* Grow tomatoes in a hanging planter; pick them off the dangling vines
* Train cucumbers along the sloping sides of an A-frame trellis
* Tie melon vines to a fence and use slings to cradle the heavy fruit
* Weave sweet potato vines through a trellis; enjoy the foliage as a decorative plant and dig the potatoes for dinner
* Confine sprawling squash plants to a tepee instead of having them take over valuable garden space
About the Author
Rhonda Massingham Hart is a master gardener and the author of Vertical Vegetables & Fruit, The Dirt-Cheap Green Thumb, Deerproofing Your Yard & Garden, and Squirrel Proofing Your Home & Garden. She has written articles for a variety of magazines, including Flower & Garden, Woman’s Day, and Fine Gardening. She writes extensively on organic gardening techniques and lives in Washington State.
- Paperback: 176 pages
- Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC (November 16, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1603429980
- ISBN-13: 978-1603429986
- Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.4 x 0.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Vertical Vegatables and Fruit : Creative Gardening Techniques for Growing Up In Small Spaces by Rhonda Massingham Hart is a nice addition to a gardening library for people who are considering growing a lot more of their own food in limited space.
This is best for people who have at least a small yard, however there are some ideas for people who only have a balcony or a sunny window as well.
It starts with good reasons to think vertically for your garden. How it helps plants take advantage of sunlight better to create more food, it cuts down on weeding since your plants have a smaller footprint, and allows a lot more to be planted.
Then the author explains the best materials to use for building supports and trellises, and how to build some popular structures like trellises, cages and teepees. She gives some suggestions for good container plants with minimum depth and spacing suggestions and a chart about how much soils and soil mixes weigh for hanging planters.
The rest of the chapters are on different types of plants. Each plant has planting and seed recommendations. These helped me a lot with planning my garden. I live in a Zone 3 area, which means that my options are pretty limited. Recommendations for varieties include zone hardiness.
My favorite chapters are the one about sweet potatoes which explains how to make your own slips to plant in following years, strawberries, raspberries and espalier trees. I grow strawberries and raspberries already. Using the methods explained in this book will make it easier to really help them grow more abundantly, and get enough extra to pass some on to friends. My family loves sweet potatoes, and making slips and training the plants will be good practice for my son.
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