DIY Network

Vertical Veggie Garden

Walter Reeves offers suggestions for growing a vegetable garden that is more vertical than horizontal. Beans are one of the easiest choices for growing a vertical veggie garden.

Q: I love to grow vegetables but don't have much room beds. Any suggestions?

A: (from DIY's gardening expert Walter Reeves) There are lots of options for having a garden that mainly grows "up" rather than "out." Even if you have a large yard, not all of the landscape may be suitable for gardening, and you may want to focus on a smaller area.

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• One familiar technique for supporting vegetables in a vertical fashion by building bamboo teepees. Simply stick the bamboo stakes in the ground at the bottom, and tie them at the top (figure A).

• You can then plant several twining-vine plants, such as beans, around the bottom of the teepee. Peas, such as sugar-snap peas, are an excellent choice, as are Kentucky wonder-beans and blue-lake stringless beans. Plant peas in the spring when the soil has just begun to warm up.

• When planting beans, Walter recommends planting three beans at the base of each pole (figure B). Later, if they all germinate, he selects the healthiest of the three, and removes the others. Leaving too many vines growing could cause the teepee to fall over later from excessive weight.

  Figure A

  Figure B

  
  
  
• Simply press each bean-seed just under the soil (figure C) and water.

• When beans germinate into seedlings, the new vines (figure D) don't reach toward the sun as you might expect. Rather, in a phenomenon known as scototropism, the shoots grow toward the shade. (It's essentially the opposite of the more familiar phototropism.) In that way, the daily cycle of the sun moving across the sky is what causes the familiar twining growth of bean vines around a vertical support. This is why bean vines train so easily to a vertical surface such as the bamboo supports of our teepee.

  Figure C

  Figure D

  
  
  
• Tomato cages are the ideal means for getting tomato plants to grow vertically. They come in a variety of shapes and styles. We selected some that fold to a triangular shape and are clipped at the corners to secure them (figure E).

• Stretchable green tape, available at garden centers, is ideal for tying tomato vines to bamboo stakes (figure F) or to cages. The tape is easy to knot and it stretches easily so it won't cut into the stem as the plant grows.

  Figure E

  Figure F

  
  
  
• Similarly, a cucumber trellis (figure G) is perfect for growing cucumber vines. Cucumbers should only be planted late in the season, after the ground has become warm.

  Tip: How do you tell if the ground is warm enough to plant cucumbers? Just sit on it. If you can sit on the ground for several minutes without your derriere beginning to feel cold, then the ground is warm enough for cucumbers.

  There are numerous varieties of cucumber seeds to choose from. The ones we chose included short gherkin, the longer "burpless" and the bush varieties (figure H). As with beans, a good planting strategy with cucumbers is to plant two or three seeds at each trellis, then remove the weaker seedlings later, leaving the healthiest seedling to grow.

  Figure G

  Figure H

  
  

• Use a good mulch for your garden, and water frequently throughout the summer as vegetables require a lot of water to grow well. Avoid letting the soil become completely dry.

• For fertilizer, you may choose to use one of the synthetic chemical varieties (figure J) or an organic fertilizer (figure I), typically made from manure. Check the directions that come with your fertilizer to determine how frequently to use it.

  Figure I

  Figure J