In a few years’ time, the population is expected to blow up by another two billion. More people means the need for more food, but with the scarcity of available arable lands, sufficient feeding will be a problem. Because of this, people have been looking for ways to maximize the available space that they have by using the best vertical farming systems.
Growing a vertical garden is an excellent way to grow your greens when you don’t have plenty of space. With a vertical garden, you need to use fences, trellises, or plant boxes to let your plant grow upwards.
While there are various vertical farming techniques you can try, all of these have wonderful benefits in maximizing your garden space. Here are some of them:
Take Full Advantage of Available Space
People living in the cities have tiny spaces for gardens especially if they’re living in rentals. While some of these rentals provide a rooftop for gardening, the space they have is small. This limited space has made city residents grow their gardens vertically. They grow tall climbing plants such as tomatoes and squash. Vertical gardens allow people to enhance plant diversity even if they have small spaces.
Contain the Garden for Easier Care
It can be tiring to care for your plants if your garden has a large area. But if you choose to use vertical farming, you can quickly care for all your plants. This goes without saying that you can still have plenty of plants over a small area. Using the vertical farming technique can also let you experiment on growing various types of plants without having to dig a large land area.
Allows More People to Garden
Many city rentals lack a backyard space where people can plant, which is why they struggle to grow their own greens. However, the use of vertical gardening allows more people to make use of this small space. In the end, many city renters can enjoy the benefits of gardening.
Enliven an Unsightly Place
Creating a vertical garden in a space that’s not so pretty allows you to enjoy the numerous benefits of growing greens while also covering up a space that you’d rather hide. If you are using utility boxes, you can easily hide the surface by growing your plants vertically. While vertical gardens make a plain sight more pleasant, it can also help city dwellers to provide insulation to their buildings.
Encourages Recycling and Conserving Water
There are various vertical farming techniques you can try and all these techniques help promote people to recycle while minimizing the use of precious water.
Hydroponics is a vertical farming technique that uses a nutrient-rich solution instead of soil. This technique uses only 70% less water than regular gardening.
Aeroponics, still a vertical farming technique, uses air to grow plants and uses 90% less water than traditional farming.
Both these techniques can be done using recyclable materials such as empty plastic bottles, baskets, and other unused containers to grow the plants in. also, black water in the cities can be composted to be used later for indoor vertical farming.
Improved Crop Production
Since plants are grown upwards, vertical gardening lets you have more crops from the same area with traditional farming. In fact, you can grow four times more crops in an area compared to conventional gardening.
Grow Crops All Year Round
When you grow an indoor vertical garden, you have total control over its environment. This means that the weather outside can’t affect your plants, so you can keep growing them. Crops grown in fields are affected by flooding, strong winds, and rain, or droughts. But your indoor vertical garden is free from these weather conditions, giving them a greater chance to flourish and bear fruits.
Grow More Organic Crops
Since anyone can use vertical gardening in a small space, the production of organic crops can be greatly enhanced. When you grow your plants indoors, you don’t have to use chemicals to control pests. But you can always use organic fertilizers to help enhance the growth of your plants.
You can enjoy all the health benefits of gardening as well as avoid being exposed to poisonous chemicals. You also don’t destroy animals and trees when you grow your plants indoors.
Overall, vertical farming is a modern technique to produce more crops and take advantage of any space that you have. While there are numerous vertical farming techniques you can follow, all these techniques are environment-friendly – you get to conserve water, recycle materials, grow organic crops, and get more produce from a tiny space. So, if you’re thinking of gardening, try making a vertical garden and enjoy all these benefits.