A step by step guide to building a vertical garden in your kitchen
If you are looking to go green and reduce your ecological footprint, you should definitely look into vertical gardening. With more and more people opting for greener spaces and lifestyles, a vertical garden not only makes a style statement but also provides utilitarian value by helping you grow more plants within a limited space. So whether you own a palatial villa in Dubai or are renting a smaller apartment in the city, these vertical gardens can be grown anywhere. Keep reading to learn more about how to install a vertical garden in the kitchen of your Dubai home.
What is vertical gardening?
The simple definition of a vertical garden is a garden that you grow vertically. So instead of spreading your garden out over a large area using pots, you stack up your planters so you can grow more vegetables in a smaller area.
This provides more economy of space, allowing you to grow a multitude of plants in a small area. There are a variety of ways you can incorporate vertical gardening, so your vertical garden is only limited by your resources and your imagination.
- Paves way for fresh vegetables to grow in a compact space.
- Decorates a vacant wall or space.
In fact, having a vertical vegetable garden is one way of incorporating living walls in your Dubai home.
How to install a vertical garden in your kitchen
Choose the spot
When building a vertical kitchen garden, make sure to choose the spot that has maximum exposure to sunlight. In case you are forced to use a place that doesn’t receive direct sunlight, arrange for incandescents, fluorescent lights, high-intensity discharge lamps (HID) and light-emitting diodes (LED). But the best way to make the most of your vertical kitchen garden is choosing a space with access to enough sunshine.
Choose the right planters
To build a vertical garden in your kitchen, evaluate the types of planters that are most suited to your needs. You can go for hanging baskets or pallet planters. While individual hanging baskets will beautify your culinary space, pallet planters with multiple slots are more cost-efficient.
Shelves are also a good way to create a vertical garden in your kitchen. You can add plants in a set of containers and then put those containers on a shelf.
People renting villas in Dubai with larger kitchens can also make a vertical garden wall using a plastic sheet, fabric and a frame.
- Build a frame with a PVC pipe (of around 3-4 inches), four-way joints and elbows.
- Attach a plastic sheet to it. The plastic will support the fabric layer and keep the water away from the wall.
- Add two layers of fabric directly to the frame using steel staples and galvanized screws.
Pick your plants
Not all plants or herbs can grow in your vertical garden. Make sure to pick the right plants in Dubai. Lemon balm, parsley, sage, thyme, basil and cilantro are the best plants to grow in your kitchen garden. If you’re a fan of stronger herbs, rosemary and chives are other great additions to the kitchen garden wall – they add a lot of colour to the space when growing.
You can easily put these plants in containers, pallets or hanging baskets in your kitchen. However, if you have dedicated an entire wall to plant evergreens, you need to add plants into the outer layer of the fabric.
Select the right soil
Plants grown in a vertical garden are already in a controlled environment which means they don’t have adequate supply of air, water or nutrients. So they need the type of soil that helps them overcome these limitations.
While almost all soils (clay, sandy, silty, peaty, chalky) work for a vertical garden but a good quality loamy soil is the most ideal option. It enables drainage which allows the water to pass through and air the roots to absorb more oxygen.
Make sure to also pick the soil that meets the requirements of your plant. For instance, loam and sandy soils work best for tomatoes while loamy soil with a slightly acidic to neutral pH is suitable to grow peas. Keep these factors in mind while making a decision.
Another important thing to remember is, that soil also need to have vermiculite, perlite, bentonite and other such essential minerals. While vermiculite and perlite provide an adequate amount of potassium and magnesium, bentonite offers lightweight arability. You can also add sand in your soil mixture as it enables better drainage.
Use fertiliser
While the right soil an take care of some of the nutritional requirements of the plant, fertilisers are also needed. Liquid fertilizers work best as they give an instant boost. You can sprinkle a liquid fertilizer over the plant from the water can or spray the whole plant so it can absorb all the nutrients immediately. Alternatively, you can attach a fertilizer injector with irrigation valve so it can automatically push fertilizer into the irrigation system.
Water Frequently
Since there is limited growing space in a vertical garden, most plants develop shallow roots. Moreover, they don’t have much soil for plants to retain moisture so they are unable to hold water for any amount of time. Thus, you need to water them quite frequently.
The best way to check whether your plant needs water is by analysing the condition of soil. If the soil is dry, you need to provide water to the plant. In case, you have a large vertical fabric garden wall in your kitchen, you can also think of setting up a water irrigation filter. It will come in handy by providing moisture to the plants throughout the fabric.
Keep extra plants on hand
Since plants have a shallow root system in a vertical garden, many of them will eventually die. Thus, it’s a great idea to grow some extra plants and put them in other containers. This way, when one plant dies, you can pull it out and replace it with a healthy one without damaging the sanctity of your beautiful, little sanctuary!
Things to remember while building a vertical garden to the kitchen
- Make sure to provide constant care to plants since they have shallow root systems
- Since plants have less soil, you’ll have to water them frequently.
- Make sure to choose the right plants; not all work well with the vertical planting style
With that, we wrap our guide on how to build a vertical garden to your kitchen.
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