Can I grow crops vertically?
- How do I transplant seedlings?
- How do I plant seeds in grow-boxes?
- Can I grow crops vertically?
- How do I make a marker?
- How should I space my plants?
- Should I plant seeds or seedlings?
With Mittleider gardening, you can grow plants both horizontally and vertically. Some plants are normal climbers, for example: pole beans, pole peas, and certain squashes. Other crops can be made to grow vertically. These include tomatoes, cucumbers, and melons.
Growing crops vertically has these advantages:
- More plants can be grown in a small area.
- Better quality crops are produced because of the extra light each plant receives.
- Plants are easy to feed, water, prune, and harvest.
- The fruit does not sunburn and the vines and leaves are not damaged during harvesting.
- The fruit does not mildew, get eaten by bugs and animals, or get stepped on.
There are two ways of growing crops vertically. You can use stakes, or you can use A-frame structures.
Using Stakes
To grow crops vertically using stakes, you need 2" x 2" x 10’ long stakes. These are driven 10 inches into the ground in line with the row of plants. Stakes should be 30 to 36 inches apart in the row. The plants are tied to the stakes.
Tips
Paint your stakes white to improve their appearance and durability.
After the growing season remove the stakes and store them for next year.
Learn More
- Using A-Frames The Mittleider Gardening Course (p. 14)
- Making Mini-A-Frames Gardening by the Foot(pp. 120-123)
- Training Plants to Grow Vertically More Food From Your Garden (pp. 75-78)
- Pruning The Mittleider Gardening Course (pp. 64-66)
- Growing Tomatoes Vertically Let’s Grow Tomatoes(pp. 64-69)
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Tip of the Day
It's Fall and time to prepare your soil for winter! For those of you in the Northern hemisphere who have winters, October, November, and and early December are the time you need to be cleaning up your garden and preparing it for next spring's planting. You can even plant hardy garlic, which will overvegetable crops such as radishes, peas, cabbage and broccoli.
The freeze/tha-winter and get an early spring start. Before snow covers your garden mae sure all old materials are either removed from the garden, or if they are clean of weed seeds and disease, till them into your soil-beds. Also, when it's not too muddy, go in and give everything a good weeding with the 2-way hoe (see Tools). Weeding thoroughly in the Fall helps keep the weeds from getting a big head start on you before you can get into the garden in the spring, and is very important.
If you grew a Mittleider garden this year, your beds will benefit from tilling or digging. You can apply Pre-Plant and Weekly Feed to the bed area now, then till them in, or wait until early spring. Either way after tilling place strings on your stakes, and re-make the beds.
Be sure to re-check the level of each bed accurately, since they may have changed a little. Do not be satisfied with anything more than 1" fall in a 30'-long soil-bed. Good Gardening!
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