Garden Notes --- Vertical Lettuce Garden

My spring garden experiment this year is a vertical lettuce garden.  I saw this idea earlier this year while surfing the web here, and this seemed like a great idea -- both for growing lettuce off of the ground, and for making it easier on my aching back! Less bending over.  

I followed part of the method that Dr. Van Cotthem used in his video, but chose not to do the "filling bottle", I'll just spray the entire tower since I made a larger cut out in each bottle.  If they don't stay watered enough, I'll add a filling bottle later.

I saved 6 soda/water bottles for each tower.  Cut the bottom off and remove the cap.  Wash the bottles well.  I cut a swoop out of the front of each bottle from the bottom like you see in the photo. 

 Next I drilled two small holes in each cap and then screwed them back on their bottles.

 Fill each bottle to just barely below the bottom of your cut out. I laid the lettuce seeds (I put a small seed mat that I had made with three seeds in each one) on the soil and then top with about 1/4" of fine soil.

John mounted some old wood 2" x 2" boards to the fence and then we screwed the bottles (starting at the bottom bottle), then mount the next bottle so that the cap is just inside the bottle below it. They will all drain water down to the bottle below them. I could see these being screwed directly in to a wooden fence, too, if that's what you have.

And there you have it! Now the waiting to see how the lettuce will do in these towers.  We'll check back with them in a few weeks!