Tower Garden Vertical Urban Farming

It’s officially fall. You thinking your Tower Garden growing season is ending? Doesn’t have to be

so! Your Tower Garden is perfect to continue growing even as the temperatures drop and the days become shorter. Extending your growing season is easier than you think. Here are four ways to assure a successful fall growing season and keep a steady supply of fresh produce.

• 1 Grow Cold Weather Crops

Many cold weather crops not only survive low temperatures, they taste better after exposure to a light frost, specifically collards and kale.  Cold weather crops include kale, Swiss Chard, spinach, collards, Butterhead lettuce and about any other lettuce, arugula, chives, small cabbage

varieties, bok choy, and beets just to name a few.  Wait! You can’t grow root vegetables in your Tower Garden! Oh, yeah? I’m growing them because we will eat the tender leaves which, like carrot tops, have more nourishment in the leaves than the roots!

• 2 Cover Up

When a heavy frost is expected, cover up your Tower Garden to

protect it from the frost. Any kind of light weight blanket will help, but if it gets wet it’s ability to insulate is diminished. The best product I have found is the Tower Garden Weather Protection Blanket, which is available to order on my website. An added benefit is that the Weather Protection Blanket can be used to shield your Tower Garden vegetables from midday  heat and stress during the summer. (A few locations in the Pacific Northwest do get enough heat reflecting off decks, walls, pavement, etc. to need a shade cloth and the Weather Protection Blanket is perfect).  Most Plants don’t like leaf temperatures to reach over 85-90 degrees.

• 3 Install A Simple Heater

Install a 150 Watt Glass Reservoir Heater in your Tower Garden tonic reservoir. Set the heater at 65 degrees. This is the ideal growing temperature for the root environment. The temperature around the plant may be colder but as long as the roots are kept above 65 degrees, cold weather plants will still continue to grow.  Just protect them from frost. Click here to read my blog on installing a reservoir heater.

• 4 Insulate the Tower Garden Reservoir

  

Purchase a special commercial grade “bubble wrap” ( the company I use calls it Tek Foil) to encase the reservoir to retain heat.  For a more complete explanation click here to read our prior post.

• 5 Get a Greenhouse

If you live in a harsh, cold winter climate consider buying a greenhouse. Many Tower Gardeners have had success growing year round using

an inexpensive greenhouse from a gardening center or home improvement store. A friend of mine had two Tower Gardens in a small plastic vinyl zip up  greenhouse and grew hardy vegetables all winter long with the aid of the reservoir heater.

Click here to see Doug’s vinyl Tower Garden greenhouse.

To find out how easy it is for you to own a Tower Garden contact me. Easy monthly installment plan. [contact-form][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Website’ type=’url’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]