Growing up: Take your garden a different direction with vertical planters

Packing all the vegetables, fruits and flowers into one yard for gardeners can often prove a challenging task, particularly when space is limited. If the garden boxes are full, it might be a great time to check out vertical gardening containers.

Ekko Nash, of Moses Lake, is a teacher and co-owner of houseplant and cut flower business, Wild + Roots, with her friend Heather Gessele. Nash got her first vertical planter as an early birthday present from Gessele, after her friend couldn’t contain her excitement after purchasing her own.

Nash’s GreenStalk vertical garden planter has five tiers, with six compartment cells on each level.

“I immediately filled it up as my herb garden and then realized I needed another one for my strawberries and ordered another one,” Nash said. “Now, I feel like I need a third one, but I’m not sure for what yet.”

Nash said she has about 14 garden boxes around her yard already and has found those boxes fill up pretty quickly. With no extra space to add more garden boxes, she said the vertical planters have given her a great way to expand her growing variety without the need for too much space.

“I”m limited in size so I can’t build any more garden boxes, but I always want more, there’s always more vegetables I want to get creative and try growing, so it actually gives me the option to be experimental with what I try,” Nash said.

She said her new planters take up a few square-feet of space on her back porch. Nash said she has a mover underneath her planters with wheels so she can move them around and rotate them as needed.

She said she will rotate her planters around every couple of days to ensure all of her plants and vegetables are getting sufficient light. The shade of her back porch is perfect for growing herbs without too much direct sun.

“A lot of herbs don’t need as much sun as Moses Lake has to offer, so being able to put it under my covered porch area and have it limited as much as I want it to be and keep the herbs cool and kept from wilting has been really nice,” Nash said.

The large quantity of separate containers offer the opportunity to grow a wide variety of plants, herbs and flowers in a small space, Nash said. She said she has more than 30 different types of herbs, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries and flowers growing in her two planters.

While every gardener has staples they like to grow every year, Nash said she likes to try new seeds and new varieties all the time. These new planters offer her that opportunity without the need to find a spot for new garden boxes.

Nash said there is a bit of planning that goes into placing certain plants on certain layers. She said she has her sweet peas planted on the bottom, as they’re leafy and will grow out and she doesn’t want them covering up other plants.

“Everything is growing beautifully,” Nash said. “They do sell an arm that extends out if you wanted to grow something long and leafy, it’s almost like a shelf that keeps it from growing out and covering stuff beneath there.”

Nash said she’s hopeful she can have strawberries coming back year to year now that she’s got them started in one of her new vertical planters.

There’s a lot of ease that comes with these vertical planters, too. Nash said the planter has a watering pan on each layer that is connected together through the top of the planter, making watering all 30 containers as easy as just putting the hose up to the top.

“What’s nice is I don’t have to water every individual cell, which would spill soil and take a lot of time,” Nash said. “You just water from the top and it waters all of the cells so that’s really nice and it doesn’t take very long. It’s actually got a drainage tube at the bottom so when that stops dripping I know to stop.”

Nash said she just fills up her vertical planters when she waters the rest of her potted plants every day. Having easy access to her herbs and plants right outside her back door is a nice benefit, too.

“When I’m cooking, I can just pop out the back door and grab whatever I need for cooking,” Nash said. “I’ve already been able to harvest some of my herbs.”

She said she was a little intimidated when she first got the big boxes with her new planters on her doorstep, but the whole setup process only took about 20 minutes. After taking 10 minutes to get everything put together out of the box, she said it was just another 10 minutes filling up each of the containers.

Nash said she liked to plant each “cell” after building each layer, but said her friend Heather Gessele preferred to plant before everything was stacked together.

Nash said she’s had no issues with weeds, either, in her vertical planters.

She said she threw in some petunias to add some color and texture variety to her containers and has been surprised with how beautiful the new planters look after being a little worried they might be ugly.

“It’s beautiful and it’s getting nice and full, so it’s been really nice to have,” Nash said.

Nash said the first question her mother asked when she told her she was sending her a vertical planter was if it could be put inside. While she said she does have some concerns about gnats and having enough window space, Nash said she intends to keep her vertical planters in the greenhouse she has planned.

For a greenhouse where space is typically tight already, she said the vertical planters offer a great way to make the most of a small space while still getting plenty of light for all the plants and vegetables.

Casey McCarthy can be reached via email at cmccarthy@columbiabasinherald.com.