By Angela Sweeney
I have a balcony on my apartment. This is the only “land” I have to work with to grow veggies. Because of this a vertical garden on the side of a wall helps to grow on all areas of the balcony. I have used mine to grow salad greens, but you could use it to grow smaller veggies or herbs.
Materials:
Potato sack or old clothes
Sewing machine
Scissors
Pins
Hooks
Plants
Mushroom Compost or nice soil
Method:
I chose a potato sack for a few reasons. Firstly it re-uses something, Secondly it already has the sack look to it which does some of my work for me and lastly the thread in the material is woven loose enough to hold the soil but still pass water through.
1. Mark out where you will sew the sack. I marked it out into 9 equal squares, but you could make them bigger and make 6 squares or 4 squares. I would not go smaller than 9 though.
2. Sew along the pins to sew both pieces of fabric together. It should look like the side of a rubix cube but stretched a little. My boxes were 6 inches by 10 inches.
3. Sew again over the squares but use the zig zag stitch to make it stronger.
4. Sew around the outer seams with zig zag stitch to strengthen them. Just make sure you do not sew the top together.
5. Sew button holes into the back piece of fabric at the top of each box, or as many as you feel it might need. At this point you could also use eyelets. I used 3 button holes at the top of my sack. This was one per pocket since I had 3 pockets at the top. You could do more but I would not do less than 3.
6. Cut the tops of each box to create a pocket. At this point you could hand blanket stitch across the top of each pocket to stop fraying and make it stronger.
7. Use cup hooks to hold it onto your wall or a door. This is what I did, but you could use lots of things to hang it and it depends what you will hang it to. You could use wire, coat hangers, 3M hooks, string.
I read somewhere that planting the plants into Mushroom compost is best so this is what I did. It could be that it holds better in the material as Mushroom Compost is coarser. Might have nothing to do with nutrients. I also used Seedlings. Use seedlings if you are going to plant into Mushroom compost. Otherwise you can plant seeds into nice potting soil.
So far it has seemed to work well. The bag seems to hold the water too to keep the plants moist. I feel like the eyelets would be sturdier but it has not fallen down so far. I have planted it on a wall that gets lots of sun so it should work well.
