Having a garden with crops can be demanding labor, and we completely understand that some of you might not have the time or energy to grow your own crops.
But what if we told you there is a method for you to grow just the amount of fruits, herbs, and veggies that your family consumes without having to use too much space, put in too much effort, or consume too many resources in the process. In order to do that, you are going to need a tower garden. If you’re not sure what that is, we are here to show you.
Top 3 Picks
Best Overall: Hydroponics Tower Aquaponics Grow System
This tower garden offers 64 pots to expand the number of plants you can grow, whilst offering a sturdy and intelligent construction to aid in proper harvest results.
Customer’s Choice: Amazing Creation Stackable Planter Vertical Garden
“I just truly love this planter. Very easy to put together and sturdy once the soil and plants go in.” (Customer review)
Best for Indoor Gardening: Aerospring 27-Plant Vertical Hydroponics Indoor Growing System
“Overall I am very pleased with the Aerospring Indoor Hydroponic System and once I get the hang of growing my plants in it successfully, I will definitely order a second one.” (Customer review)
What Is a Tower Garden?
A tower garden is a structure that allows you to grow all kinds of stuff in an eco-friendly and space-saving fashion. With a garden tower, you can grow fruits, vegetables, herbs, and even flowers. A tower garden is an aeroponics growing system that grows your plants whilst eliminating plenty of actual gardening labor. It is a system that doesn’t use dirt and digging, and replies on a special nutrient solution to help your greens grow.
A tower garden can be placed indoors and outside, even on a small apartment balcony. The reason why this is considered an eco-friendly solution is because it doesn’t need as much energy and supplies as a traditional garden does. While your plant growing options are somewhat limited, there are still plenty of things you can grow in a tower garden.
Tower Garden vs. Garden Tower
You might have heard about garden towers and considered them to be the same thing as a tower garden, but they are two very different gardening techniques. A tower garden is a vertical gardening unit that can hold somewhere around 20 plants and doesn’t require any soil for these plants to grow.
A garden tower, on the other hand, depicts a technique that relies on compost placed at the base of the tower to accomplish your vertical gardening goals. Basically, what a garden tower does is to convert organic waste into compost which is located in the compost column. It has the shape of a perforated cylinder and holds compost of various kinds: paper products, green and brown waste, kitchen waste, and composting worms. Thanks to the holes of the cylinder, the composting worms are free to move between the soil and the compost columns, thus creating air and water circulation pathways.
The organic waste inside the garden tower is food for the worms. After they consume it, they leave behind excrements which are known as “worm casting”. These are rich in nutrients and, when you water the soil, the castings are transported to the bottom part of the tower.
If you want, you can eliminate compost from a garden tower, although it is not the most recommended solution. Instead, you can use organic plant food, but using compost will eliminate the need for pesticides and additional fertilizers, which is why it’s recommended by a lot of experts.
Tips for Starting a Tower Garden
While we encourage you to start your own tower garden, we thought that putting together a list of tips to help you make the best out of this experience is needed so that you know what to do and not let anything discourage you from doing so. Here are some things that you should know before starting a tower garden:
- A tower garden is going to need light and water. If you leave the tower outside, make sure it gets about six to eight hours of sunlight exposure. If you place it inside, it should be left under grow lights between 14 and 16 hours every day. In terms of water, it’s clear that a tower garden doesn’t need that much water, but the water you use should not be too soft or filled with chlorine.
- When you’re picking your plants, consider your food preferences. Don’t plant things that you don’t consume. Think about what you buy on your trips to the supermarket and plan accordingly.
- The growing conditions play a major part in determining what you can and can’t plant in a tower garden. Even if there are plants that can thrive in generous temperature ranges, some prefer either cold or hot temperatures. Make sure that you first research what are the growth conditions for whatever it is you want to plant. For indoor growth, the season isn’t all that important.
- You’re going to need a few growing supplies for your tower garden. That includes the seedlings/seeds, some net pots (note that some tower gardens include net pots in the kit), rock wool cubes, and a mineral blend.
Benefits of a Tower Garden
For a long time, people have believed agriculture can only be done in large plots of land, with tremendous effort and resource consumption. While that is partly true, some of you might not have all that space for plant growth available, but still have the desire to consume fresh produce. A tower garden goes a long way in helping make that possible, and some of the benefits of opting for such a system include:
- Using less water. With a tower garden, you can end up consuming 90 percent less water compared to what you would use if you had to water regular crops. This is one of the reasons why tower gardens are an eco-friendly alternative to other forms of agriculture. In fact, did you know that 80 percent of the USA’s water supply is being used in agriculture? Having this statistic in mind, it seems way more convenient for everyone to own tower gardens.
- Having fresh vegetables and fruit. Considering the fact that tower gardens can be used indoors, you can enjoy harvest all year round. If you don’t have enough sunlight for your tower garden, you can always resort to using growth lights. When you place a tower garden indoors, you don’t have to worry about the weather either.
- Faster growth rates. Experts say that when you’re using a tower garden, your crops will grow three times faster compared to the amount of time it takes them to grow in a regular garden. You can harvest more cycles per year because they will be fully grown and ready to harvest in weeks.
- Cleaner operation. With regular gardening, there’s loads of digging to be done and weeds to be removed. None of these two pose a problem when you have a tower garden. Since you won’t be using any soil, you won’t be making any mess either.
- Extra space. One of the greatest benefits of having a tower garden is its vertical design that saves up a lot of floor space. That means that, even if you don’t own a yard, you can still have a tower garden in your house or balcony.
Best Tower Gardens
Hydroponics Tower Aquaponics Grow System
Our first suggestion for today is an automated hydroponics tower for beginners, one that is designed to offer you a generous number of pots for plating all kinds of herbs and veggies. There are three sizes to choose from, with the smallest size having 48 pots, the medium-sized one, 64 pots, and the largest option available, 80 pots.
This is a modular and stackable system that’s designed to save space in your garden but bring you all the efficiency that made these tower gardens famous in the first place. The tower is designed to eliminate the unnecessary use of water and promises to help your plants grow three times faster compared to traditional methods.
PVC Vertical Grow Tower Add-on for Hydroponics
Available in a four and five-foot version, this cylindrical tower promises to provide you with sustainable means of having a vertical garden when you don’t have enough space for a regular one. The four-foot version of this tower comes with 16 holes for planting everything you want to grow in this specific system, and you get a bonus of 16 net pots so you won’t have to worry about additional purchases. These pots are made from heavy-duty nets and have a two-inch diameter. The kit includes a galvanized steel chain with an adjustable length, which is made to support up to 20 pounds of hanging weight.
Aerospring 27-Plant Vertical Hydroponic Outdoor Growing System
The Aerospring Store is here to deliver a really helpful outdoor growing system in the shape of a tower garden with 27 slots of growing plants. This tower provides you with a quick and simple assembly process that should take more than 15 minutes and comes with all the parts needed for assembly, eliminating the need to use any kind of tools. What’s really interesting about this option is that it comes with a kit that includes a smart wireless timer to automate the irrigation process and make it really easy to grow plants without having to play a major part in the process yourself.
Amazing Creation Stackable Planter Vertical Garden
This stackable tower garden includes pots distributed across five tiers and offers 15 different slots for you to plant whatever your heart desires and can be grown in a tower garden. It is designed with soil separators that have channels to promote air circulation.
The drainage holes allow water to sip to the tray below, creating a system that doesn’t allow any water to go to waste. There are indentations in the bottom stay to make the structure more stable. The tower is made from heavy-duty polypropylene plastic which is resistant to fade and cracks, meaning it can survive outside in hot and cold weather.
GreenStalk Patented Large 5 Tier Vertical Garden Planter
Another excellent tower garden with pots distributed across five tiers is this one from GreenStalk. It’s made from high-quality polypropylene which is BPA-free and resistant to UV rays. The kit includes the planters, together with a top water reservoir, and four grey watering disks. For every tier in this tower garden you can add one cubic foot of potting mix. There are 12 drainage holes that will eliminate excess water (the company also sells a GreenStalk Mover which is designed to redirect or cap off excess water). The tiers interlock together to keep the tower more stable.
GDSAFS Stand Stacking Planters
Another solution for those of you who fancy stackable tiers of planters is this one delivered by GDSAFS. You can choose between six different color options to create a vivid indoor or outdoor setup based on your own chromatic preferences. The kit comes with five tiers of pots that can be stacked on top of each other, helping you create a vertical garden that doesn’t occupy a lot of floor space. There is a bottom tray that will catch drips and prevent dirty water from making a mess.
Flower Tower AP-FT002 KZART
This absolutely gorgeous tower garden is designed to help you grow some of your favorite colors, adding drops of color both indoors and outside. The tower measures three feet in height and can also work for growing herbs and certain types of fruit. The parts of the towers will easily snap together, meaning you don’t need any tools or too much effort to put everything together. The slots will allow up to 32 nursery-sized plants. The watering tube comes with holes so that you can pour water at the top and have all the plants receive their fair share of hydration.
ANGTUO Vertical Hanging Garden Planter
While this is not exactly a tower garden per se, it works very similarly to one. It is designed with two hooks that allow you to hang the system on the fence or deck railing, providing you with a suitable growing environment for all kinds of natural goods. It comes with six large pockets that allow you to plant more goodies. The system is made with eco-friendly felt materials that promise a lot of breathability for the roots of your plants. Plus, the material is resistant to corrosion.
Aerospring 27-Plant Vertical Hydroponics Indoor Growing System
Aerospring has made one more appearance in today’s list with a product that’s even more impressive than the last. This is a convertible system that allows you to grow up to 24 plants. The kit comes with plenty of accessories that will help you put together the best indoor tower garden. The wheelbase and frame are made from lightweight aluminum with a powder coating that adds more durability to the system. The tent material is made with reflective white panels to redirect the light to the plants for more efficient growth. The system also offers six foldable tri-band LED bars with full-spectrum lighting.
FAQ
How much does the Tower Garden cost?
If you want to purchase a tower garden from the brand with the same name, you will end up paying around $575 for the power alone.
What grows well in a tower garden?
A tower garden is an excellent choice for those of you interested in growing a variety of fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Some of the most common choices for tower gardens include basil, chard, cucumbers, eggplants, lettuce, kale, squash, peppers, tomatoes, and strawberries.
What is the best tower garden?
There is no absolute winner when you compare multiple tower gardens from different brands. Some of the names that come to mind when asked about the best tower gardens are Aerospring, Tower Garden, Juice Plus Tower Garden, and others.
How much sun does a tower garden need?
This really depends on the amount of light required by the potted plants you’re interested in growing. Most plants will need six to eight hours of sun bathing but if you want to grow them indoors or have a shady garden, you can purchase grow light and leave them on for about 14 to 16 hours.
In Conclusion
Even if a tower garden is a little more restrictive in terms of what you can grow when compared to a regular garden, there are still a lot of things you can grow. Some examples include carrots, Brussels sprouts, lemongrass, pumpkins, radishes, strawberries, and even watermelon. A tower garden is excellent solution for those of you who want to grow their own produce but have no space, no time for gardening, and want to use as less resource in the process as possible.
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