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'll 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
wash out 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've just got levels. So
if you're using three tiers, you could 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 GreenStalk 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 is 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. So 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 GreenStalk or any vertical system in front of something that
you really want to grow behind. Like I wouldn't put a tomato
behind the GreenStalk. But it actually brings up another
interesting question that, well you're growing on all
sides of the GreenStalk, 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 because 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'd 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 gonna 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 figure 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 because that
means you can just reuse something. They've added some Espoma
Tomato-tone, fantastic fertilizer. Some crab and lobster shell, kelp meal,
sulphur, 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 or on a
tarp and refresh it with some organic fertilizers. And then fill
up the GreenStalk with it. But I do have a couple things you can do
to your soil to help keep that water in and keep the plants healthy. So
there are a couple 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 GardenStraw
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 the things that you should avoid? Are the things that you really should
grow, that work really, really well? Well, I've tried, I'm not gonna 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. 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 seedhead 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've 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 there 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 GreenStalk 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 GreenStalk
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.
