.
Hi Gardening Friends! Any long time readers have heard me talk about vertical gardening many times over the years- vertical this and vertical that- I know, I say the word vertical a lot! But seriously, growing vertically is an incredible way to get the most out of your space.

Over the years our family has done a lot of trellising in our garden to grow vertically and save space, and I’ve loved sharing about our discoveries with you so you can experience abundant harvests in less space too.

Then last year we tried something new to us for vertical gardening, and it was a game-changer! I’ve been so excited to share about this with you, and I’ve been so grateful to the friends who introduced it to me!

So here’s how it all started. I went to a friend’s house one day and saw an interesting vertical planter, different from anything I’d ever seen before. She had so many plants growing in it, and I thought what a cool idea it was. A seed had been planted.

I found out they were GreenStalk vertical garden planters. Then I came across some reviews about them online and later another friend was talking about those same planters and mentioned that they were on sale. Jeff and I looked into them some more. I was really curious about them, and they looked really cool, but I had some hesitations. We like to make things ourselves as much as possible, would we be happy enough with the results to feel good about spending that amount of money? Would we like it?

We finally decided to go for it and purchased our first GreenStalk planter during their Mother’s Day sale last year. We found a spot in the garden for it and liked how easy it was to set up. Our family filled it with some good soil and planted it together.

We marveled at how many plants we could fit in there! (We got the 5 Tier Original with 30 total planting pockets.) We mostly planted it with lettuce, and a few strawberries thrown in. It was easy to water from the top, and the whole system was very cleverly designed.

We love our salads and grow a lot of lettuce each year, but growing it in raised beds takes up a lot of space. We couldn’t believe how much space we saved by planting lettuce in the GreenStalk planter! Holy cow! That space in the raised beds was then available to grow other things- and with limited sunny garden space- we really appreciated that!

The next thing we noticed, once the lettuce had grown, was that it was so easy to harvest and so clean. We’ve done a lot of lettuce washing in our day, and it was the easiest rinsing and cleaning we’d every experienced. That saved a lot of time when getting our salads ready.

And then… the strawberries! Oh my goodness, the strawberries we grew in the GreenStalk were the best ever. Being up off the ground, we didn’t have our usual issues with slugs or with little bugs eating them up. They had good sun exposure in the planter so they ripened beautifully, and they were so prolific! Overall, we were so very pleased that we felt that was how we wanted to grow our strawberries in the future.

We continued to plant lettuce in the GreenStalk all season so we always had fresh lettuce available, and then later planted a bunch more strawberries in it. I couldn’t wait to start experimenting with growing other things as well!

*The picture above shows the results from our very first planting, and you can see how prolific it was! After that picture, we added a lot more strawberries. Funny, when I went to put this post together, I realized I only had one picture of our GreenStalk from last year’s garden season. How is that possible? I wished I had more pictures to share with you, and my first thought was that you could barely see the planter in this picture- BUT that’s a good thing if your harvest is so prolific you can barely see the planter underneath! To see what the GreenStalk planters look like, you can check them out on their website, more on that in a bit.

So, after growing in the GreenStalk for awhile, we all concluded it was awesome.

It saved us so much space, and we loved the results of what we were growing in it.

And what about the cost? We quickly discovered that the GreenStalk planter paid for itself in no time. I’m not sure what the current going rate for lettuce is these days where you are, but if one head of lettuce cost $4, and the planter has 30 pockets, you could grow $120 worth of lettuce in the first planting. (Or let’s say each head of lettuce was $3, that would be $90.) Awesome!

But that’s just lettuce, I wanted to share some lettuce math to give an example… there’s so much more you can grow! I know, that’s a lot of lettuce (we like to succession plant ours so they are ready at different times), but there are so many other things you can plant in the GreenStalk!

We bought the Original that has larger size pockets, but upon learning more found out that the Leaf design with smaller pockets (which has 42 planting pockets with the 7 Tier size) is great for planting strawberries, greens, and herbs. On the site, they say “the Leaf design is good for growing strawberries, leafy greens, herbs, and root veggies, and that the Original design is good for growing large veggies & flowers, strawberries, and herbs.” Basically, they are both great, and both will give bountiful harvests while saving so much space!

Since Jeff and I loved our GreenStalk planter so much, we decided to invest in another one for this year’s gardening season. We’ll be planting lettuce again, we’ll be planting a ton of strawberries (I’m ALL about the strawberries!), and I also want to plant basil, calendula, chamomile, chard, parsley, marigolds, carrots… to name a few. I can’t wait to share the results with you!

I hear from lots of people who are interested in gardening and would like to have a garden, but they don’t feel they have enough space to have a garden, or they’re convinced they don’t have a green thumb. I want to give encouragment to reluctant gardeners. That’s why I’m so excited to share about the GreenStalk planters with everyone because they give you the ability to garden in a small space! Even if you only have a small deck available for gardening, this gives you the ability to produce so much abundance in that space!

Also, if you are a beginning gardener and you feel intimidated, I feel like these planters are such a great way to start. I love how the Greenstalk planters make gardening easily accessible for so many people. Even if you have no experience, you can have great results with these planters and it will give you the confidence you need to delve into the world of gardening. And if you are away from home, it’s much easier to ask a friend or neighbor to water your planting tower (it’s so quick and easy), than to water an entire gardening space.

There are a lot of things to love about the GreenStalk planters- you can save space, save money (I know we all appreciate that with the cost of food these days!), and everything is easy to harvest and easy to water.

I wanted to be sure to write this post during their sale- there is a huge Mother’s Day sale happening right now (through May 15th), and I wanted you to know about it. (I think it’s one of their biggest sales of the year, but if you miss it, they do have other sales periodically.)

I love their product so much, I signed up for their refer-a-friend program. Get $10 off your first order when you use my link!

When you use my link, it gives our family credit to save up for our next planter, which allows us to grow more food in our backyard- and we thank you for that! I am so grateful to the friends who told me about the GreenStalk planters, and I want to pass the word along to others who find it to be a blessing in their gardens too.

Our family is on a mission to share the joy of gardening and good food- and we want to see food in backyards everywhere- the GreenStalk planters are an awesome way of helping make that happen!