Vertical Vegetable Garden

You can plant this kit inside or outside. And, it includes everything you need to grow your own organic salad (as well as a number of my favorite gardening products). The only items needed for this kit that were not included are dirt and water. Also, tweezers are optional.

Inside this kit you will find: A mini Planter's Pride greenhouse with organic coconut fiber growing pods, carrot seeds, lettuce seeds, radish seeds, spinach seeds, cherry tomato seeds, cucumber seeds, basil seeds, and parsley seeds. (All the seeds included in this kit are certified organic, and because they are from Burpee, that means that they are non-GMO. ) Also, you will find a vertical garden bag, gardener's Grime Away hand soap and two bonus presents: pure lye soap and laundry detergent from Grandma's Pure and Natural.

Some of the reasons I really like this grow kit is that not only is it made from recycled plastics, but also it can be recycled when you're done using! And you know how important the environment is to Hometalk! Also, the grow pods aren't made from peat moss, which, because of current high demand, bogs that peat moss grow in are slowly becoming endangered. Instead, it's made out of organic coconut fiber which is much more easily renewable. Woohoo!

To get them to expand completely. I totally covered them with water in the seed tray.

After about just 10 minutes, the seed pods should be all grown. I love that these pods grow so much larger than those from other companies! I lifted up the pods and saw that they had sucked up every drop of water, so I added a little bit more. If there's too much water, you'll see it in between the pods when they're done growing. You can get rid of that excess water by tilting it and letting it run out.

In my humble opinion, now comes the hardest part of the kit: picking which of these amazing seeds I’ll use. There are so many great choices here - they're all organic and grow really well in our grow bag (or if you choose to put it elsewhere, they also grow great in a pot or in the garden)! Burpee makes my favorite seeds because they're a great company whose seeds have a high success rate, meaning little to no dud seeds! And, they provide really great information about all the seeds (I’ll share with you guys the links just click on the name of the plant if it appears in blue) from how deep, to how much water, to when to plant it for your zone. Also, if you're having trouble getting one of their plants to flower, bear fruit, etc., they have really knowledgeable horticulturalists that will quickly answer your email with the exact advice you need to help your plant.

The types I have in my DIY kit are:

Scarlet Nantes Carrot - This carrot has a really yummy flavor.

Tendergreen Cucumber- They are sweet and they don’t need to be peeled.

Salad Bowl Lettuce - This lettuce has really large leaves.

Cherry Belle Radish - Radishes that grow really fast.

Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach - This spinach is a slow grower.

Baxter's Bush Cherry Tomato - My kids eat these tomatoes like candy.

Sweet Basil - My favorite basil for pesto.

Single Italian Parsley - I love this in soup.

Because I’m growing this in the office, I’m going to mostly choose plants that my coworkers will be able to pick off the wall and eat. So I chose four cherry tomatoes because they are so popular, two basil plants, two parsley plants, and two carrots (because why not?).By the way, one of my favorite tips for planting is to use a tweezer, especially on the really tiny seeds like basil.

I like how nicely this seed tray clicks closed, because I’ve used other ones that don’t stay closed at all. Now I’ve got to wait 2 to 5 weeks depending on the seed type to watch it grow. Remember to water it every few days. And if there isn’t condensation on the clear plastic top, then your seeds are too dry.

Some of my seeds are ready to move. I just wait till I see four leaves to transplant them, but you can click on the links for each veggie (above in blue) to learm exactly how long to wait.

In order to ensure that I had a plant in each pod, I put two seeds in each one (because sometimes they fail). But these seeds are such good quality that every single tomato seed I put in the pod sprouted, and I've got to thin them out a little.

Next, I hung up the grow bag. These bags are made from felt and recycled plastic, and they have great drainage. The backing keeps them from getting the wall wet, but if you overwater them, they'll drip on whatever is underneath -- so take care when picking a spot. It's best to find a place where the bag can drip a little underneath and that it gets an appropriate amount of sun for what you're growing.

To hang up the grow bag, you can use screws in the wall. But if you can’t make holes in the wall, then you can use command hooks. Alternatively, you can hang the bag in a pole or rod.

Our kit boxes are compostable. But instead of adding them to my compost bin, I'm going to plant my other seedlings in there and use it as a starter pot. If you're doing this too, remember to pull off the shipping label or rip off the top (or the whole top flap off). The shipping label doesn't use vegetable-based ink, so its not good for your soil or compost bin. All the other stickers included in the kit are fine.

Then, I added enough dirt to the pockets of my bag so that they were almost full, and I tucked my tomato plant inside. I then covered the pod with a little bit of dirt. The pod will totally biodegrade and become great food for the plant -- so need to worry about taking him out! How cool is that???

I'm crazy about how great it looks here! And I'm excited to have fresh herbs and tomatoes to add to my salads at work!!

Now that I'm all done, I'm washing my hands with the gardener's soap. It's lightly exfoliating so it really gets all the dirt off my hands. I love it!!

Happy Gardening!!!

Unfortunately, we no longer offer this kit for purchase, but we hope you were inspired by this tutorial to build your own vertical vegetable garden!