The Vertical Vegetable Garden

Being on a sabbatical has some enjoyable perks. Like getting up early to have a small breakfast and see the missus off to work, then taking an early morning nap. Add to this the incapacity associated with a knee operation and things get really interesting. You can't really work hard, even if you want to. Your body just stops. Which of course limits your sailing time.


So then one has to think up new projects that are not too strenuous. Being a food blogger, the idea of a garden comes to mind. But we are living in a duplex flat (“double storey apartment in a building” for my overseas friends), so a normal garden is simply not possible.

A brief search on the internet revealed a multitude of ideas around vertical gardens. Living walls in cities, apartment buildings with large flower pots on every balcony, each complete with a medium sized tree. A living vertical forest. Check more images here.

More ideas came from using two litre soft drink plastic bottles, festooned in various orientations, planted with the flowers or vegetables of choice.


I eventually decided on using a pallet, as I have a suitable courtyard wall to hang it on. Two simple brackets over the single brick wall will do the suspension job just fine. This will also leave me with the option of adding another pallet later and moving the two around to fit aesthetically. No use having an ugly garden!

I chose a pallet with narrow openings between the slats. This gives me some distance between the rows. You don't want too large gaps between the slats of the pallet, otherwise you need a lot more plants from the word go to keep the soil in place. This will drive up the cost of your garden substantially. For example, double the width of the slots will require double the amount of plants and therefore doubling the initial cost of the plants. Which is the biggest part of your expenditure.



The pallet cost me R10 from the local tile shop. The landscaping cloth cost in the region of R15/m and the mesh about R60/m. The soil cost around R25/bag. The plants cost in the region of R500, depending on what and how many you buy. I also bought some soluble organic fertilizer. You will need this as you are not able to spread it as in a normal garden. Brackets for mounting on the wall are reasonably cheap too. You will need to figure out what is required before you start your garden. The garden is too heavy to experiment with once it is assembled.


The construction is relatively simple. And you need the minimum of tools. In this case, I used a strong pair of scissors, a pruning tool and some thick staples. That's it. Simple.

You need sufficient soil to fill the volume of the pallet, so you may need to do some simple calculations.

Materials 

1 pallet, roughly 1m x 1m. That is what fits in my car.
1 running meter landscaping cloth. These are sold in 1m wide strips.
1 running meter plastic mesh. These are also sold in 1m wide strips.
1m x 1m plastic sheeting
2 bags potting soil
1 bag organic mulch
1 bag bone meal

Construction

Start by stapling the landscaping cloth to the underside of the pallet. This will become the back of the garden hanging against the wall. Take care to also cover one open end of the pallet. This will become the  bottom of the garden.

Over this staple the plastic mesh. This mesh will provide the strength at the back to keep the soil inside the pallet. Then over all of this you need to put a cover of plastic sheeting. This will prevent your hanging garden from staining the wall.

Now turn the pallet over so that the top part is facing upwards and fill with your mixture of potting soil, mulch and bonemeal. This is a somewhat tedious job, as you will be filling through the slats of the pallet. Work the soil to the bottom of the pallet. I picked up the open end  of the pallet and gave it a little shake to get the soil lower towards the bottom. But I am strong enough. Be careful, this garden is quite heavy. If you are not strong enough, just work the soil downwards with your hands through the slats. It helps if you have small hands!

Once you have the soil nicely settled in, you can start planting your garden. You want perennial plants, as it is not easy to replant your garden. Of course, you need to decide on a variety, like I did. Rather in an impromptu and haphazard fashion. I forgot to get parsley, which is why I need to make another round of the garden shop.

I opted to plant the lower rows with smaller vegetables and having the larger ones to the top end. I reasoned that this will allow the bigger plants some more space to go while not interfering with the smaller ones.

Space the plants close together and make sure that they are individually tamped down properly. Remember, you are going to tip this lot up to vertical, so there must not be gaps inside for the potting soil to go. And the plants are all that is keeping the soil inside on the front side.

This, incidentally, is also the reason why you need to wait three weeks at least before hanging the garden. The roots need to grow and hold the soil and themselves in place. So you need a good root system, which is why you add generous amounts of bonemeal to the potting soil mix.

The garden can be watered by normal ways when still flat. I propped mine up so that there is an incline. This will hopefully also allow the soil to settle as you water the garden every day. I use a small watering can to water the garden. You don't want to wash the loose soil out of the pallet. Once the garden is hung up, you water only from the top. Add fertilizer once a week or once every two weeks, as per usage instructions.

Some people add a piece of plastic guttering at the bottom of the hanging garden to catch any water coming through, then feeding it back at the top. Makes for much less waste of fertilizer and you get a more effective garden, but at the cost of having a more complicated system. I kept this one simple, as it is my first one and therefore a bit of an experiment.

Voila, you have a garden!

Now the waiting starts. Perhaps I shall be able to harvest some leafy stuff in three weeks' time. An afternoon spent in gainful activity, even though my knee is badgering me.



Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2013-07-03

The New Kitchen Work Top

Ever wanted a decent looking work top in the kitchen? For no specific reason but some itching? Rest assured you are not alone.

And the itch is not something to sneeze at, no pun intended. It is part of those things in life where you just know something is not quite right, but you can't put your finger on it. There are tomes written on this in the academia, with reference to businesses and so on. I like to think that this is part of your sixth sense telling you that, aesthetically, something is wrong.

Enough of philosophy, how does one get a new work top for very little money? The answer lies in doing it yourself. And with a little planning up front it becomes a relatively easy task.

The existing work top in our kitchen is a post-formed top made of chipboard covered in melamine. An ugly speckled one to boot. Small things lose themselves immediately on contact with the top. Like your car keys, as a prime example. After a short research effort on the internet, I decided on a wooden work top. My choice was confirmed when I saw such a top at our local kitchen cupboard supplier, where they have some examples of kitchen layouts.

The choice of wood versus other materials can be quite disconcerting, with lots of pros and cons each way. I made my choice on the basis of aesthetics, cost and the ability to do it myself, thereby saving much overheads in the form of labour cost. This project is something one can do in the span of a week's worth of evenings if you are a working person.

I visited my local exotic wood supplier, which is Rare Woods in the Cape Town area. In the Gauteng area Silverton Timber Merchants will stand a visit. The internet is a wonderful place, full of handy information right under your nose.

So, I duly rocked up at the shop, where the salesperson enquired after my needs. I replied that I was looking to buy a plank. Which raised no end of giggles, but he assured me that he would do his utmost to help. I actually made contact with another human being, forsooth!

After a short discussion, I settled on a 3.6m x 38mm x 320mm mahogany plank. We selected a reasonably straight one without cracks. The wood was then nicely planed and cut to my specifications for a small additional cost. Three days later I went to fetch my plank, which was now reduced to three pieces of the proper dimensions of 1.10m x 310mm x 32mm. The thickness corresponds with the thickness of the existing top, so I don't have to worry about filling the gap between the existing wall tiles and the new top. The length also corresponds with the existing work top.

All that remained for me to do was to glue the three planks together to complete the top. I had some fun and games with a clamping system, until I remembered that one can just bind the planks together by winding thick string around the two planks. I did this in two steps because I did not have clamps. You need ten or more windings and preferably one at each end of the planks to get good clamping. For the second gluing I went and hired long clamps, which of course made the work a lot easier.

Then the sanding started, which of course takes a lot more beer than one anticipates! Jokes aside, this is also something one can do by hand as I did. You don't need electric machines, although they reduce this job to one of an afternoon. I started with coarse sandpaper, around 120 grit, then worked down in two more steps to a 400 grit. After sanding the board, wipe it with a dry cloth to get rid of the dust, then wipe it with a wet cloth to make the grain stand up. When the wood's grain stands up, you give it the once over with your used sandpaper before going to the next finer grit.

The mahogany has a nice grain, but is a bit on the grey side to my tastes. Also, I could not afford a teak plank. So I bought some high quality wood stain. I chose a cherry wood stain, which gave me a nice dark hue with a red tint. The wood goes darker too with application of boiled linseed oil, which is my choice of oil for the initial finish.

The wood sucked up two coats of the stain, giving me a very nice dark auburn finish. This was topped with another two coats of boiled linseed oil, applied copiously on all sides and allowed to dry for two days between coats. The wood also absorbed all of this.

The top was now basically ready for installation.  Installation was a cinch because of my little bit of planning in the beginning. I had to screw out five screws to remove the old top, slide the new one in, then redo the five screws. It took me longer to refit the cupboard doors than to install the work top. There is a dirty part, which is the sealing of the top around the edges, using silicone sealant. My kitchen was in dire need of this anyway.

The new top still needs a light coat of oil once a week for the next four months or so. Until the oil starts to congeal on top. The wood will then be reasonably sealed.

On the topic of the use of wood and its finishes in a food-environment, there is much ado. I had a long conversation with my local pharmacist, which was quite enlightening. The wood in itself is not toxic, unless of course you choose a toxic wood. Bacteria may enter the pores, yes. They don't like the natural oils in the wood and probably will not survive. And the oils that you use to seal the wood has an added detrimental effect to their longevity.

Enter the next factor, which is the use of mineral oil. As far as I could find out, bacteria do not like mineral oils either and will die promptly in such an environment. Good news. Then I went in search of food grade mineral oil. I found it after a lengthy search, sitting pretty on the shelf at the upmarket furniture shop, complete with an upmarket price to match.
Getafix is a proper name for the character from the Asterix stories. My local pharmacist could have a nickname like that. I went to him with my lamentations and, lo and behold, I got a fix.

Food grade mineral oil comes with many names, not the least of which is liquid paraffin. Which is obtainable from your local pharmacy without a prescription, nogal. And in decent quantities as well. It is a by-product of the oil refinery process and is readily available. So I promptly bought half a litre of the stuff. End of hygiene and maintenance problems in the kitchen. This stuff also works for your favourite cutting board and butcher's block. It blocks odours as well as tastes .

Voila! Now my kitchen is aesthetically more pleasing. And the cost of all of this was just over R1000. The plank cost me R780 which included the planing and cutting to size. The stain was R89, the boiled linseed oil R80 and the glue R60. Add a few Rand for the sandpaper to complete the budget.

Well worth the effort, don't you think?


Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2013-06-26