Andy's Idea Factory

In October we posted when we first got our Tower Garden . Now it's time to share a little about what we've learned! A quick summary and recap: What's a Tower Garden ?  First, it's compact: It's literally a 4 foot tall by 1 foot wide white tower with 20 net pots that sits atop a 1 foot by 3 foot 20 gallon reservoir. Next, it's water and energy efficient: A pump inside the reservoir distributes water with nutrients to the plants' roots that hang from the net pots. In recycling the water every 15 minutes, the Tower Garden uses 10% of the water that traditional gardening does. It's also on a 125 watt timer (included), so it waters the roots every 30 minutes for 15 minutes, meaning no work for you, and costing about $4 per month to run. So on to what we've learned - Chapter 1 Seeds and Lights ... For anyone who says they can't garden - either born without a green thumb, devoid of space (apartment owners), or simply without the time, Tower...

Ever since the first time I saw one of these systems, I thought, "yes, one day you will have one of those."  The day has arrived. That first time was three years ago, when the Juice Plus Company first released The Tower Garden ® as their newest product of their short list of healthy living items, and a friend came in to the Yampa Valley Sustainability Council 's monthly meeting to show it off.  It wasn't just me. Everyone in the room went, "oooooh," "ahhhhh." Granted, this was a warm audience - a room packed with gardeners, local-foodies, and health nuts - but we oooh'd none the less. For lack of space in our previous quaint home, we held off even though the Tower Garden takes up a total of maybe six square feet.  But as soon as we moved into our new home in December I knew, come fall, we'd be putting together our first Tower Garden®.  And we just did. Let me backtrack a little; we love  to garden.  As soon as the snow melted thi...