Grober Green

The Aim:

• to build a low cost vertical garden using as much recycled material as possible.
• to use this information to build something nice indoors for the winter months.
• to make watering and nutrient feeding as automated as possible.
• to make something in the final phase that is visibly attractive, low maintenance, low cost and satisfying in what it can produce either vegetables or just greenery with flowers.

This is a first prototype  of a vertical garden, built with recycled materials. All the wood  and the 2 litre pop bottles were  found at our community garbage.

I choose to use soil rather than a hydroponic medium for this preliminary experiment.

The labels are removed from the pop bottles ( used some green and some clear plastic bottles) and then cut  in half using first a knife to make the first hole and then scissors to get an easy straight cut.

To fasten bottles to wood, it is easiset to start at the bottom and work upwards. I used a 5 inch gap between each horizontal wood strip, so that each bottle would drain into the one below.

I fastened the bottle using one short screw per bottle ( the only non-cycled piece) This was done for convenience as this is a prototype and wanted to be able to move or adjust bottles.

At the bottom of each bottle, I put a large stone to partially block the bottle top hole and then add a few bits of gravel.

The soil used was a good soil mix with vermiculite .

Tried all kinds of seed s to see what would work best. Lettuce, Spinach, Parsley, hot pepper and some other herbs.

Experiment in progress …..

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http://www.livingwallart.com/category/do-it-yourself/ Great Link for Do it yourself Ideas for living walls