Vertical Gardening 101 | GreenStalk Garden Review

If you're a small space gardener, you might think you can only grow a few plants because you're so limited on space. And in this video, I'm going to show you why that might not be true. Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening, where it's my goal to help you grow a greener thumb. When I first started gardening, I was in a townhouse, it was 2010. I was trying to grow on a covered north-facing balcony and it just really wasn't working. That type of light situation is also known as the indoors. There was almost no light. So I thought I really couldn't grow too much and I had to resort to things like hydroponics or growing in containers, or as you see right here, growing vertically, making use of that Z-axis to cram as many plants as I could in a small space. So in this video, I'm going to talk about my favorite vertical gardening system, the GreenStalk Garden right here. I have another one over there. Long-time viewers, you know I've been using this for years and years and years now and absolutely love it. So I'm going to share why that is some of my best strategies for how to maximize it. And also a little coupon code for you to use that give you a little discount as well as I get a small commission of that. But this is not a sponsored video. I just want you guys to know that. So without further ado, cultivate that Like button. And I will personally bless you with abundant vertical harvests for 25 years. And let's get into the video. By the way, at the end of the video, I will be giving away the GreenStalk Garden system. It's the leaf one. So the one with seven tiers, 42 plants, my own money, not sponsored, just a way to say thank you. Okay, that's going to be at the end. Let's get into how to grow in this. First thing to think about is how does this system actually work on a practical level? What makes it so good? Well, first of all, you have to know how vertical gardening works in general. I've got tiers here. There's a basin up top. So you're going to water from the top, which I'll show you exactly how that works in a second. And then you have these tiers. So this model is the five tier. It's got six growing sites per tier. So you have 30 different sites that you can grow plants, 30 different plants that you can grow in about two by two square feet on the bottom footprint by roughly five foot tall. So if you're a balcony gardener cramped for space on the ground, but you've got plenty of space going up, you can start to see how this makes a ton of sense to grow in. Last year I did beans in this, out of all things. I did bush beans. Many of you have seen that video. I was pulling handfuls of beans off this for my entire summer pretty much. And that was on a concrete patio in my front yard garden at the Old Epic Garden. So let's talk about one of the biggest problems that I've run into in different types of vertical gardening systems. It's really just the watering aspect because the water has to come in through the top and then it filters through the soil. And then maybe you get a little nutrient washout or it just doesn't get to all the levels appropriately. And I want to show you why this one solves that problem. And that's really the biggest concern I've always had with vertical gardening. So you have your basin right here. This is pretty self-explanatory. You just got levels. So if you're using three tiers, you can fill it up to that. If you're using four, you fill it up to that and so on. But you've got something interesting. There's little holes where it's going to spill into each tier. And then there's also this big hole in the middle here that connects to a channel that goes all the way down the green stock garden. So if I was to take off this top tier right here, this beautiful lemongrass that I'm growing, let's take this off. I want to show you what's beneath. So you have these little cups. So what happens is when you fill that top piece all the way up with water, water's going to fall into this middle one and all the way down the column, watering every level at once. That's why it's such a good system in my opinion. It solves that watering problem when you're going from top to bottom. So you don't wash nutrients out of the top layer and then end up with a ton of nutrients down in the bottom layer and vice versa. All these different things that can go wrong when you're watering in this unconventional way where plants are stacked on top of one another. So that is one of my favorite things about this, but I do want to show you how it works in action. So let's fill it all the way up. We're going to go all the way up to this five level right here. And as soon as we go over this, you're going to see, it's going to start dropping water down that column into each of those little plate cups, which I'll show you in just a second. But I do want to fill it up at least a little bit more. I'm probably just going to go up to the three. Cause like I said, I already watered it. So it doesn't quite need that much water. Let's go here. You're going to need a decent amount of spray because of course some of it's falling down, which is lowering the level. But we're up at about three. So let's turn our hose off. Already we can see it watering right there. It's starting to drip into this next layer. So you have a double fault. You've got water can go from one layer to the lower layer, but also it's filling up a cup and watering directly in the center of each layer. So as soon as we filled it up, it threw water into this cup and all the cups down below. And this is slowly seeping into the soil with each of these five holes. So like I said, it waters all at once. Another challenge of growing in a vertical system is the fact that because you're growing upwards, you're by necessity sort of blocking the light from everything behind you. So you want to make sure that you don't put this green stalk or any vertical system in front of something that you really want to grow behind. Like I wouldn't put a tomato behind the green stalk. But it actually brings up another interesting question that, well, you're growing on all sides of the green stalk, so doesn't one side just get neglected? And actually that's true. It would get neglected unless you do something like this. So I put in 12 inch pavers, four of them in a two by two little grid, so that the wheels move easily. And every other day or so, I can just move this in a circle, 180 degrees, just like that. And the other side has access to light. That's something I think is really important when you're growing. Cause you might find that, let's say you're growing sunflowers or, you know, all these flowers like I'm growing, this amaranth. If I was doing that and I just didn't move it for two weeks, the ones on the shady side would be suffering and they'd be in a world of pain and I would think I was bad at gardening. But in fact all I had to do was literally just move it 180 degrees. So light access, very important in the vertical garden. Next thing to think about is soil. How do you change or do you change your soil that you're going to use in a vertical system? Let's think about what we might need to change. Well, it's going to be potentially running out of water a little bit more cause it's draining out the bottom and there are small little cells here that hold just maybe a little bit of soil. Maybe we have to add more coconut coir. But what has really worked well? Well I've tried a couple different mixes over the course of three, four years now from fresh out of the bag potting soil, like something from Espoma or something that you can find locally. But I want to read off exactly what they recommend at GreenStalk. I figured go to the source. They've tested this the most out of anyone else out there. So let's figure out what they use. And it turns out it's something that's actually pretty easy to find. So I'm reading this off straight from the horse's mouth. They say it's a blend of old potting soils. That's a fantastic thing cause that means you can just reuse something. They've added some Espoma tomato tone, fantastic fertilizer, some crab and lobster shell, kelp meal, sulfur, worm castings and gypsum. Just little bits and bobs of that. I did a whole video actually on how to replenish old potting soil. So you could probably just refer to that video, grab all the potting soil from your containers or grow bags, mix it into a wheelbarrow on a tarp and refresh it with some organic fertilizers and then fill up the GreenStalk with it. But I do have a couple of things you can do to your soil to help keep that water in and keep the plants healthy. So there are a couple of things you can do. Number one is to not follow my example here. Oh my gosh, there's a hummingbird right there. There's a hummingbird right there guys. Is it, did you see it? Hopefully it's in frame, but I just freaked out. We're going to let that be and we're going to keep moving on with our lives, but cherish every moment in our lives because we're only living once. Here we go. So we've got a little bit low soil here, just a little bit too low. I would probably bring this up maybe another half inch or so in this one right here. And then of course we've got some mulch. So I'm using the shredded straw. This is the garden straw stuff that I really like. It will be available on our store pretty soon, but we're just dealing with some shipping delays. You're going to want to mulch these because it's a small container. Now it is connected all together, as you can see. So there's, it's not like you're just dealing with one little pocket. So if there's water elsewhere in the mix, it will wick into each of these little cells, but you still want to mulch it. I don't think you really have to mulch where it's covered. So you can conserve your mulch, but you do want to use mulch and you do want to bring that soil level up just a little bit. Get that mulch to about, I don't know, a quarter inch below the lip here. Next thing to think about is what can you actually grow in a vertical system? Are the cells too small to grow certain crops? Are there things that you should avoid? Are there things that you really should grow that work really, really well? Well, I've tried, I'm not going to say everything, but I've tried certainly more things than your average gardener in this vertical system. Just by looking at this right here, you can see some unconventional stuff. So for example, herbs. I have lemongrass growing up top and it's doing perfectly fine. It kind of likes a little bit more water, hence why it's up top. Right here we have cosmos. These are doing fantastic. I come through, I deadhead them every so often, but they're bringing bees in directly next to all these other edibles in the garden, which is exactly what I wanted them to do. Look at this. I mean, this is really sort of random. I've got some amaranth here. This is red garnet amaranth. You can actually save the seed head as a grain. So not only am I growing herbs, flowers and grains, but you can grow some other more common stuff, which I'll show you in the leaf system over there. Right here in front of me, one of the most quintessential vertical crops, which would be strawberries. Even commercial growers will grow strawberries vertically. Typically hydroponically, but still they work really well. So I've got some everbearing strawberries right here. These are some juicy, juicy boys. This one's actually almost ready to eat. I could have taste tested it for you if it was tomorrow morning. But needless to say, strawberries do fantastically in these little cells here, especially on the leaf one because they're shallow rooted. They don't need to go that deep. These, you get seven tiers, but the sacrifice that you make is they're a little bit less deep, which is perfectly fine for strawberries. So this works really well. I've actually seen people do, and I'm surprised I haven't done it, potatoes. You can put potatoes in, just put one seed potato per section. So six per tier. And then you can harvest them as new potatoes. So when you start seeing the potato flowers, harvest them out. Because typically they want to be growing in a little bit more space than this. But if you want those gourmet new potatoes, those work really, really well. Of course you can grow lettuce, herbs, greens, things like that. And they actually have this extender kit, which I don't have. I haven't used it yet. So I don't really want to talk about it too much from my own experience, but I do know that they have it. And it's basically a sort of trellis support structure that comes out like this laterally and you can hang stuff on it. So that unlocks things like squash, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, all that kind of stuff that might droop a little bit in a system like this. So it's a new day and I've got a couple more tips for you on these greenstock towers and a lot of different vertical gardening systems in general. So number one, you really want to watch your watering. Make sure that it's not drying out. If it is, the smaller the pocket, the more it's going to dry out, the quicker the roots die, the sadder you'll be. Number two, really experiment with the type of plants that you can grow. We mentioned a couple just a little bit ago, but even since we last talked, I put in some tiny Tim tomatoes, some very small container tomatoes that will grow to complete fruition in about this much space, which is exactly how much I have on each of these sides right here. So as far as the systems themselves, extremely well-made, what I'm going to end up doing is in the description and pinned in the comments, I'm actually using my own money. Again, this is not a sponsored video, but I'm going to buy a greenstock garden leaf with every accessory for one of you down in the comments. So check that out. And then if you like the other one, so remember seven tiers over here, five tiers over here. If you like the five-tier system, at the time of release of this video, this is on the craziest sale that it's ever been on, which is $109. It's usually much more expensive than that. So if you do like the classic five-tier, I've done plenty of videos on that. Grab that. But anyways, I just wanted to say thank you guys for supporting the channel. So I like to do these little fun little giveaways and hopefully this inspires you to get a balcony or apartment garden going. You can grow no matter where you live. That's the mantra of Epic Gardening. Until next time, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.