New System Goes Vertical—

Turning Gardening Conventions On End

By Nancy K. Crevier

If your idea of the perfect vegetable garden is one that is lush and green, located handily to your kitchen, does not suffer from too much or too little water, and provides you with enough organic produce to feed a small family — even year around — it is time to look up, not down.

Four Newtown women are among the “growing” number of people who have invested in a vertical tower garden and are finding the compact garden to be the answer to many issues surrounding a vegetable patch.

Doris Hanley, Lisa Swain, Joanne Keane, and Liz King provided a peek at what they claim is the easiest way to provide fresh produce with minimal time commitment.

The Tower Garden is an aeroponic growing system that allows gardeners to grow 20 or more fruits, vegetables, or herbs, anywhere that an electrical outlet is handy and where the tower garden will receive five to six hours of sunlight a day.

The system is marketed by Juice Plus, a whole food-based supplements program, for which three of these women are distributors. It purchased the rights in 2011 to market the Tower Garden for home use from its inventor, Tim Blank. It became available to the public in April of this year.

 Ms Swain, however, was part of the test market, and has had a Tower Garden since the spring of 2011.

“I teach a class on nutrition and health for children at Naugatuck Valley Community College, I’m on the coalition for healthy kids with Danbury Hospital and United Way of Danbury, and I’m involved in community gardens, so I was eligible to buy one for the test market,” she said. Even getting just two hours a day of sunlight on her patio, Ms Swain found that her Tower Garden flourished. Leaving it behind while on vacation last summer posed no problem, she said. The recirculated water from the 20-gallon base lasted several weeks, and the mineral solution added to it, to feed the plants, seemed sufficient.

She loves that the plants, sprouted in a rock wool pod and then placed in the tower’s cups, are not subject to mold and nutrient problems hydroponic produce experiences, and that it is an environmentally sound and healthy option for gardeners.

“We moved it indoors at the end of August, before that storm hit, and put it under a skylight upstairs,” said Ms Swain. It continued to thrive, and one day in January, Ms Swain discovered that the strawberry plants were producing fruit.

This year, the Tower is outside again and planted with tomatoes, squash, parsley, cucumbers, cilantro, basil, lettuce, beans, peppers, and nasturtiums, some of the plants doubled up in the cups. By mid-June, she had been harvesting greens for weeks already, and beans were ready for harvesting.

“What I like, especially for kids, is that it’s an easy seed-starting process. It grows fast, and kids like the whole system. They’re learning about how things work and then they can harvest it. Hopefully,” said Ms Swain, who will be donating one to St Mark’s Nursery School in New Canaan, where she teaches, “it will help them to be healthier eaters.”

Doris Hanley just planted her Tower Garden the first week of June. “Years ago,” said Ms Hanley, “I saw a commercial, a 20-foot-high tower garden at the Epcot Center. I never thought I’d have one in my own yard.

“I’m not a vegetable gardener,” she admitted. “I wanted a vegetable garden, but a fence cost so much, I just kept delaying putting one in,” she said. Then the Tower Garden became available, and she decided to spend the $550 for one. The tower comes with everything needed to get started, she said. The initial outlay is not inexpensive, but going forward it is just the cost of the rock wool and seeds each year. “It is such simple mechanics; a sump pump with a tube, that even if the pump goes, it is inexpensive to replace,” she said.

Her tower is located next to the back door, convenient for salad harvesting, and safe from deer. It is approximately five feet tall, and while one might imagine a green central tower would be more attractive in the outdoors, it is white.

“Testing proved that a white tower repels bugs and insects,” Ms Hanley said. “You don’t need insecticides or pesticides. Most bugs like warm soil, and the Tower has no soil. I haven’t seen a bug on it,” she said.

In just two weeks, she was ready to harvest her first lettuce. “I like the idea of being able to eat the real thing, right there,” Ms Hanley said.

Ms Hanley’s neighbor, Liz King, has a Tower Garden in addition to her traditional vegetable patch. By mid-June, about six weeks after planting, the produce on the tower was cascading over the top of the tower. Lettuce, kale, Swiss chard, parsley, and squash were harvestable already, and plenty of tomatoes were forming. Many of the cups were double-planted, as Ms Swain plants, and parsley, dill, and other herbs rubbed elbows with the main crops.

“In my other garden, there is the constant battle against bugs. I try to grow organically and not use pesticides, so it’s always a fight. Then there are the deer, and having to add compost every year, not to mention the constant weeding,” said Ms King. “I also have found that growing herbs in my [traditional] garden doesn’t work for me. They are too far away to harvest when I need them in the middle of cooking,” she said.

The idea of having fresh produce and herbs close by, on her back deck; how quickly plants were said to grow; and the ease of maintenance made trying a Tower Garden appealing to her. “It does take a little practice, the placement of plants, so that some don’t shade the others. And there are certain things that don’t do well. You can’t grow root vegetables [in a Tower Garden]. It’s the first year, so we’re learning. Every day, though, I can’t get over what it’s doing,” said Ms King.

Inspired by the success Ms Swain had over-wintering her Tower Garden, Joanne Keane is already anticipating fresh winter vegetables, even as her Tower Garden begins to sprout its summer crops.

Using it mainly for herbs and lettuce, she has also planted cucumbers and tomatoes in her vertical garden, which is in addition to her large, traditional garden on her property.

“It got off to a slow start, because I planted everything during that cold, rainy spell we had the beginning of June,” said Ms Keane, “but I think the lettuce can be harvested now. This is great, but the thing I’m most excited about is that in the winter, I’ll be able to grow lettuce and herbs indoors. To have fresh food in the winter will be amazing,” she said.

A sky light in the laundry room should provide enough light for the Tower Garden to grow in colder months, and while it is a “little chilly” in that room, she believes that lettuce plants will be very happy there.

The only down side to her patio Tower Garden, she said, is that it does use electricity and needs an electrical outlet. “That’s not so bad. I think it is a pretty minimal amount of electricity. It is just so versatile. There are studies showing people growing them on rooftops in the city, and I would think that a garden like this would be perfect for restaurants. They could grow fresh herbs all the time,” said Ms Keane.

Some Tower Garden owners may find the constant sound of running water an annoyance, but as the roots fill in the central section of the tower, the cascading water sound is softened. “We live near a busy road, so the waterfall sound is nice when we’re sitting outside,” Ms Keane said.

“This is exciting. All the nutrition stuff I’ve learned is wonderful, and the minute we start waking up to what fresh food does for our bodies,” she said, “we want to pass it on.”