What’s going on, everyone? In today’s episode, I’m going to give you some surefire tips to help you have success planting up vertical planters. Let’s go!
So for today’s episode, we’re going to be planting up a GreenStalk garden planter. Now, not a sponsor, but if you do want to check out GreenStalk, go ahead over to amigardener.com. Every purchase you make does help support the show, so get yourself one. But in today’s episode, we’re going to be talking all about these vertical planters because they can help you grow a ton of food in a small area. I love that. I’ve always said that growing vertically can sometimes be better than growing horizontally because if you have a small space, if you’re in an apartment or a patio, or I mean, even if you have a garden like we do, at a certain point, going out becomes a little bit more difficult than going up, and you can grow a whole lot more food in a lot less space. So I’m going to get these things set up, and then we’re going to go through some success tips to really get your plants off to the races and growing well.
The first success tip I can give you guys when we’re filling this up here is to use good soil. I cannot stress this enough. When you’re going vertically, it really is going to help you out to go with high-quality soil. We’re going to be using Pro-Mix, again, not a sponsor, just the soil that we really have come to know and love. It’s a really great product, has awesome moisture-holding capabilities, but it’s got a lot of perlite for that drainage, and it’s been amended with dolomitic lime, so it’s pH neutral. It’s really going to be awesome for just about anything you’re growing. But one of the biggest mistakes I see gardeners making is they buy these really amazing tools to help them grow a ton of food, but then they skimp out, they cheapen out on the soil. And now, normally, if it was in-ground or growing in raised beds, I would typically say most garden soils are going to be fine. However, if you go with something that’s very heavy or very dense, what’s going to happen is this soil here is, over time, going to really compact. It’s really going to restrict that root development, and the pots themselves are going to really hold onto too much moisture because the water doesn’t have anywhere to go but the bottom little drainage holes here. So, you want the soil to drain very well, you want the roots to develop very fast and move throughout the soil very well, but you also want to make sure that it doesn’t compact because if it does, you’re going to have real problems and the roots won’t be able to breathe and your plants won’t be able to grow. So, we’re, again, we’re going with Pro-Mix here, and we’re going to fill it all the way up to the top. That’s the second mistake I see a lot of gardeners making with these vertical planters is they only fill them up like 25%, 30%, 40% of the way. You’ve got to make sure, and I know right, I know what you’re probably thinking, ‘Luke, it seems like it’s going to take a lot of soil.’ Yes, these are the five-tiered deep Green Stalk, so they are going to take more soil, but the nice thing is the fact that it’s a lot of soil for your plants to grow in. For what we’re planting here, we’re planting strawberries, and if you want your strawberries to survive and thrive, you want to make sure that you fill this up as high as you can, right? Because it’s only going to be as tall as you have soil. The pocket could be eight inches tall, but if you only fill it up four or five inches of soil, that’s all that your roots are going to have to grow in. It doesn’t matter how deep the pocket is if you don’t utilize it. So, make sure you fill it all the way up because over time, the soil will settle a little bit, and also, because you’re growing in a container, the roots can’t leave this space.. Please do that. It’s a big mistake because a lot of gardeners will simply say, ‘I’m going to save a little bit of money and only fill it up halfway.’ Again, it’s kind of the same as cheapening out on your soil. You’re just setting yourself back.
The next success tip I can give you, and I’ve seen this a lot online, is people that are struggling to put them together. Now, they could not be simpler to put together if you put the soil in the containers first. And I know it seems crazy, but once you fill these up with soil, they actually click right in place. They’ve got little notches on the bottom, and they just, they—it could not be simpler. We’re talking like a few seconds. But if they’re empty, it can be really challenging. Also, when it comes to planting, a lot of gardeners will plant them up when they’re separate, and you can do that if you want. I prefer to plant them up all assembled. That’s just my personal preference. You do you. Some people will prefer to put each layer, plant them up individually, and then stack them. I find that the risk of crushing plants is a little bit high, but again, my aversion to risk is really low. If you feel like you’re going to do it okay and not crush plants, you do you. So, I prefer to assemble the whole thing and then plant the plants after that. So then once we’re all filled up here, we’re going to get some plants in. But that leads me to my fourth success tip, and that’s fertilizing.
So, when it comes to fertilizing, hands down—and I think this is probably one of the biggest mistakes I see people making with all container gardens, not just vertical ones, but containers in general—is over-fertilizing. Because of a fear that because they’re in a container, they’re going to be lacking nutrients. Now, true, the soil we’re adding is basically inert. There’s no nutrients in it, so everything the plants are accessing does have to be added through supplemental fertilizer, right? So, there’s no nutrients in the soil that we’re adding, so we’re adding the nutrients. But that doesn’t mean you have to add more than you would normally add. That is really a big distinction I want to make because I see it so frequently where gardeners will double or even triple the amount of fertilizer they add. And all you’re doing is you’re wasting money and you’re over-fertilizing, where the plants are going to be growing far bigger and far healthier than they would had they had just the right amount. If you feed a tomato plant too much, what happens? It gets really green but it doesn’t produce a lot of fruit. What happens when you over-fertilize a carrot? It produces a lot of tops but no roots. As you can see, over-fertilizing,at its face value, seems like a good thing in containers, but the same exact thing will happen in your containers as what happens in your garden, and you’re going to end up with subpar harvests and a lot of wasted time and money. So, I just want you to normally fertilize. Normally fertilize, that’s all you need to do. So in our case here, we’re using Trifecta Plus, and for each, because we’re doing strawberries, we’re doing a quarter cup per pocket, and I’m not doing any more than that. That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change just because we’re doing a vertical planter, just because we’re in a container. You still do the same exact amount as what is recommended.
Fifth achievement tip for you depends on the thing you’re planting, where it will go in the grower, since this really can have a gigantic effect. Presently, with these GreenStalks, they have a self-watering system where on the off chance that you water this top repository that sits on top, the water gradually will deplete through the base openings in general, and afterward essentially, you water the top, it waters the layers as a whole. That is fantastic. That aspect of the GreenStalk absolutely excites me. In any case, you need to ask yourself what you’re planting since, in such a case that you plant stuff at the base that likes to be kept drier, it will run into certain issues. The reason for this is that, based on our observations, the plants higher up ought to prefer the drier soil because the top will dry out more quickly than the bottom. And so, what we’re going to do is if we’re planting out something like Mediterranean herbs like thyme or basil, we’re going to plant those up top here, whereas if we’re planting something like cilantro or green onions that like it a little more damp, they like a little more water, those are going to go down at the bottom because, at the end of the day, they’re going to prefer the slightly more damp conditions that are going to happen down lower in the container. And it’s going to give you more success.
Continuing on that tip here, I’ve got another one for you, and that’s based on the size of the plant and where it’s going to go in the container. So, if we were planting something like a pepper plant, pepper plants do really great in these deep containers here. The GreenStalk five-tier has a little bit deeper pockets, and that allows for more soil, which a pepper plant is going to do really well in. We would not put a tall, large pepper plant up top because what happens is, as it gets bigger and as it gets larger, what’s going to happen is it’s going to shade out and create some shade for those lower pockets. So, I prefer to plant out the taller plants at the bottom, and that allows for more sunlight to access more of the container as well as not be so top-heavy. As you know, I’ve never had one fall over, but I also really wouldn’t want one to fall over. And if I had a really tall, giant plant up top here, and the wind was catching it, I could easily see how it could be a little bit top-heavy. So again, I prefer to have more of the weight in the larger plants down lower. So again, smaller plants I prefer to keep up top, bigger plants go down below. Again, just what I have found in my experience for my most success, and I want you guys to have success with these as well because, like I said, they are awesome.
Now, the final thing I was going to mention on planting is, try planting up some of these planters with single crops. So in this one example here, we had some cold-weather stuff. We’re going to be planting up a few of these. One of our GreenStalks here that we’re planting up is going to be all leafy greens, kale, lettuce, Swiss chard, tons of different leafy greens in that same pot, but they’re all kind of different species, whereas this pot here is going to be all strawberries. And that’s great because what it’s going to do is it’s going to all fill out, it’s going to look really uniform and super amazing. And what’s awesome about this is strawberries, they like to kind of drape and trail a little bit. It’s going to be great because it’s going to keep them off the ground, and it’s going to get nice and full. So it’s just kind of a planting idea for you as well because a lot of people ask me, ‘Well, what would go well in a GreenStalk or what would go well in a vertical planter?’ And the answer is just about anything, as long as the pockets are deep enough. If you can plant out single crops like bush beans would be so cool in here. Last year, we planted up herbs. Herbs did so well. We planted up a whole planter of just a bunch of herbs. They did so well. But bush beans would do great as well. I also try to stay away from things that trail, right? I’m not going to do pole beans in here. I’m not going to do like a cucumber would be a little bit difficult in here. But most things that stay kind of compact and bushy do extremely well in these vertical planters.
Alright, in the sixth and final success tip I can give you, and this is—I actually stand corrected—this is probably one of the biggest mistakes I see gardeners making, and it’s the location they put their planters in. Now, just like any other garden, location, sunlight is so key, and where you put it does have to have access to nice, full sun. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the front is going to be the problem. It’s sometimes the back of the raised bed. So, this GreenStalk here is going to get beautiful sun when the sun rises all the way up. As the sun rises in the east, we’re going to get full sun here for probably about 5 to 7 hours, which is wonderful. That’s enough sunlight to grow these strawberries here and just about any crop that you want, no problem at all. 5 to 7 hours is perfect. However, the back is going to be shaded. So what do you have to do? Well, they do make, GreenStalk does make, basically like a turntable, a little lazy Susan. But the nice thing is, they’re also not terribly heavy, even when wet, to rotate. And so what you want to do is you want to rotate them every once in a while. If you have a case where the plants on the back are not going to get access to that sunlight. Now, we’re obviously underneath an awning.. So, obviously, if this was outside and exposed, tall, the sun wouldn’t be a problem.
So, I want to thank you guys so much for reading today’s episode. I hope you all learned something new. I think any time you can grow more food, it’s going to empower you to not only take back food security, but it’s going to save money over time on your grocery bill, and it’s going to allow you to eat a more healthy diet.
