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Vertical Gardening with Recycled Plastic Bottles
I’m a fan of recycling. I also have a love of thrifty gardening and trying new things. So, when I stumbled across a YouTube video by Willem van Cotthem talking about building a bottle tower garden to grow plants in, I was intrigued. Despite having a much larger garden since the move, I’ve still pretty much managed to fill it already. As a result, space is at a premium, and finding a new way to go up is definitely a good thing. Also, with my lettuces being constantly nibbled on the ground, I’m wondering whether vertical garden will safeguard those tender leaves from an army of slugs and snails (though I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until they discover this cafe in the sky).
The process of building one of these vertical towers is extremely easy. You’ll need several plastic bottles (I found it works better if they’re the same type i.e. all Coke 1.5 litres, or all Evian water…etc), a way to fix them to the wall or fence, soil, scissors and that’s about it.
If you want a quick fix or would prefer to sit back and relax, I posted a Brimwood Farm how-to/new project video. It might make it simpler to understand the assembly of the tower too, though I’ve tried to outline the steps below.
Steps for Building the Tower
- Remove the bottom of a bottle so you’re left with a little saucer about an inch high. Turn the bottle upside down, leave the cap on, and make a small hole just above where the neck begins to funnel. This will be the lowest bottle in the tower. Leaving the cap on and making a hole means a small reservoir of water will always be held, but any extra liquid can seep out to prevent the entire system becoming waterlogged.
- For the second bottle, remove the bottom again and also the cap. Attach the base bottle to the wall, fill with compost, and push the inverted second bottle into the soil so that the neck is firmly embedded in the soil of the bottle below.
- Keep building your tower this way, removing the bottle caps, filling the bottles with soil and tying them into the fence to keep your tower sturdy.
- When it comes to your final bottle (my towers are seven bottles tall), remove the bottom but leave the cap on this time. Make a small hole in the cap before pushing it into the final soil-filled bottle. This is your watering reservoir. Each time you water, fill up this top bottle and the small hole in the cap will allow moisture to slowly seep down through the tower, quenching all the roots as they go.
I’m sure you can plant straight into the tower, but I left mine a few weeks so I could increase the moisture and heat levels. The soil was lovely and warm when I planted the first lettuce plugs yesterday, and they’ve already begun to right themselves to peer up towards the sky.
I’m starting the vertical garden off small-scale; two towers for now.
The first lettuces have already begun to right themselves.
I’m really eager to see if this works properly; and I don’t know how it can’t. As long as I keep the garden well watered, I should be able to watch my lettuces grow at eye level – what a treat!
Have you tried any vertical garden? Or do you recycle plastic bottles in the garden? If so, let me know in the comments!
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