Tower gardening is the latest trend that allows people to grow their own food at home. If you’ve wanted to grow your own fresh produce, but you don’t have a large yard, this is the answer you’ve been looking for.

What Is a Tower Garden?

A tower garden is a type of vertical garden, but you use it to grow food aeroponically. That means that you grow without soil using only air and water to grow your plants.

You can grow a large variety of plants vertically – saving space. You can grow your tower garden on a roof, patio, or balcony without having to haul heavy soil. Even if you have a yard, you can save space by growing a tower garden.

Tower gardens are also attractive and can provide you with a functional way to beautify a small space.

With the price of produce rising and the safety of many commercial farms a concern, a tower garden is an investment that will pay off. This is perfect for the gardener who’s interested in producing organic food for his family.

The Benefits of a Tower Garden

There’s obviously a benefit of being able to grow food in a small space with a tower garden. However, it has many other benefits when it comes to gardening. If you’ve ever grown food in soil, you’ll appreciate the ease of a tower garden.

When growing without soil, you can eliminate most garden pests. Without soil, most insects that would attack your plants are not an issue. You may occasionally have to deal with some insects, but it will be on a much smaller scale.

Weeding is another task that’s much less of a chore when you have a tower garden. It’s not impossible for weeds to find their way to your garden, but you’ll find that there are fewer than you would have in a traditional garden.

Because you’re growing vertically, you’ll also have less bending and stooping than you would have when working with a typical garden bed. This is especially helpful if you have back or knee problems that make gardening difficult.

This is also a cost effective way to grow your own food. You’ll have to make an initial investment in equipment to grow your garden, but you won’t have to spend much after that. And the money you’ll save on produce will more than pay for the cost of the garden.

And another added benefit of tower gardening is that your food will grow to maturity in less time than it would in soil. That’s less time for you to wait before you can begin enjoying the fruits of your labors.

How Does a Tower Garden Work?

A tower garden is made of a large plastic column that has hydroponic net pots placed throughout it. Internally, a pump keeps water moving over the roots of the plants that you grow.

The tower garden also has a reservoir that contains a liquid fertilizer that helps plants get the nutrients they need so that they can continue to grow. You’ll still need to make sure your plants get plenty of sunlight so that they can thrive.

When you purchase a tower garden kit, you have to put it together. The process is simple and easy and usually takes about a half hour. You’ll have to grow your seedlings separately, but tower gardens come with a seed starting kit to help you with that part of it.

Once you have seedlings that are mature enough to be transplanted, you can add them to your tower garden. After that, you’ll have to perform some routine maintenance to care for your plants.

You’ll need to test the water in your tower garden to make sure the pH is correct. You’ll also need to clean the filter that keeps debris out of the pump. You’ll also need to make sure you don’t have any weeds or insect problems, though these are rare.

In a few weeks you’ll be able to harvest vegetables and greens from your garden that you can use right away in your kitchen. Fresh produce will just be a few steps from your back door.

The Cost of a Tower Garden

At this time, there’s one manufacturer of the official tower garden where you can purchase this system. One tower that includes everything you need to get started, including seeds, will cost you around $500.

This tower will give you the space to grow up to 20 different plants. You can also purchase an extension that allows you to plant up to 28 different plants. Starting with one tower is a great way to get started.

But if you have a large family and cook frequently, you may want more than one tower. If you purchase the Tower Garden Family Garden package, you’ll save money by purchasing three towers at once.

You can also purchase supplies separately if you need accessories or replacement items. You can also purchase a heater if you live in a cold climate so that you can still grow in cooler temperatures.

Many people wonder if the garden is worth the upfront costs. If you’ve been to the supermarket lately, you know how much it costs to feed you family fresh produce.

While you’ll have to spend money up front with this system, you’ll save much more than you spend by not having to purchase produce at the market.

What Can I Grow with a Tower Garden?

You may be wondering if a tower garden will really provide you with the types of foods your family eats. The good news is that a tower garden allows you to grow a wide variety of foods.

You can grow vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, eggplant, endive, lettuce, peas, and spinach. You can also grow tomatoes, strawberries, and melons to add sweetness to your garden.

If you love to use fresh herbs, a tower garden can help you enjoy your favorites. When you grow them yourself you get the freshest flavor. Herbs you can grow include basil, chives, cilantro, cumin, dill, lavender, oregano, parsley, sage, and thyme. But you can grow almost any herb.

And if you prefer to grow flowers, or you just want to place a few different flowers in your vegetable garden, there are many flowers that grow well. Some of the most successful varieties are marigolds, salvia, pansies, and sunflowers.

If you love gardening, you’ll be happy to know that you can grow almost anything you would grow in a traditional garden using less space and fewer natural resources. You’ll also get a large crop in less time.

Is Tower Gardening Organic?

Most people who grow their own vegetables are interested in the practice of organic gardening because they want to avoid harmful chemicals including fertilizers and pesticides.

Tower gardening is not technically considered organic gardening because it doesn’t use soil – and that’s a key principle of organic gardening. However, you can eliminate the need for herbicides and pesticides by using this garden.

You will have to add a fertilizer solution to the plant roots because they won’t be in soil to get nutrients. Because this type of gardening takes less space and fewer natural resources than traditional gardening, it’s a good alternative that’s eco-friendly and safe for your family.

How Will Produce Taste from a Tower Garden?

If you’ve never had fresh food from a garden, you’ll be surprised when you take your first bite of something you’ve grown. By the time your local supermarket gets the produce grown commercially, it’s been picked for days, weeks, and even months.

Food is often harvested before it’s truly ripened to extend its shelf life. When you eat food from your garden at home, you can pick it when the food is really ripe and you’re able to experience a new level of flavor.

If you enjoy specific flavors in vegetables or fruits, you’ll find those flavors are magnified when you eat homegrown produce. Tomatoes will be sweeter, peppers will have more intense layers of flavor and berries will be juicer.

Once you’ve tasted produce from your own tower garden, you’ll never be satisfied with produce from the grocery store again. If you grow more food than you can eat in a short time, you can freeze, can, or dry it in order to preserve those fresh flavors.

Is the Plastic in a Tower Garden Safe?

One of the greatest concerns people have with the idea of a tower garden is that it’s made from plastic. As you may already know, plastic can leach chemicals into surrounding water and soil if gets heated.

Naturally, you don’t want your food to contain extra chemicals that are dangerous or can cause illness. The good news is that this type of garden is treated with a UV protector that helps keep the plastic from breaking down.

You can rest assured that your garden will grow healthy produce unaffected by chemicals that leach from the plastic because of this protection. The plastic also helps keep the roots of your plants cool and prevents the growth of algae.

Can Children Enjoy a Tower Garden?

One of the best ways you can entice children to eat healthy foods is to allow them to have a role in growing it. Tower gardens are wonderful ways to introduce children to the world of food production.

Many kids who grow up in urban areas have no idea where food really comes from. They simply see it at the store and some even believe that it’s made in factories.

A tower garden is perfect for urban areas to give kids who live in a city the ability to see how food is grown and to enjoy the process. It’s a good idea to let kids choose some different varieties to grow and watch what happens.

This is a great way to bring healthier foods to your table and give your children an education about safe and environmentally responsible food production.

Tower Gardening Is Healthy Gardening

Now that you understand some basics about a tower garden, it’s important to also understand the health benefits for you and your family. Many people don’t consume enough fruits and vegetables. This is sometimes because of the cost, but it’s also about the flavor.

When you grow your own food, you’ll be saving money and you’ll have foods that are better in flavor. You’ll spend less time and energy on grocery shopping and more time enjoying food that grows outside your back door.

You’ll also be able to enjoy food that’s free from toxins. Many researchers suggest that pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers can cause problems with inflammation, weight gain, cancer, and auto-immune diseases.

When you grow your own food, you can eliminate anything that you don’t feel is safe. The fertilizer used for this system comes from minerals, rather than harsh chemicals that can be dangerous.

The time that it takes food to travel from a large farm to a grocery store produce section is time for the nutrition to dwindle. When you eat fresh food from your garden, you’re getting more vitamins and minerals than supermarket produce provides.

You may have thought you could never have a garden because of limited space or the inability to bring in soil, but a tower garden makes it possible to have a garden in any area that receives sunlight. You can also add a grow light if your patio doesn’t get at least four hours of sun each day.

A tower garden is a cost effective way to enjoy fresh produce throughout the year. You’ll enjoy the ease of use, the speed of growth, the fresh flavor and the nutritional quality of the foods you eat.

Gardening offers so many benefits. It can put some extra food on the table, offer nutritious foods for your family’s good health, and it can be a fun hobby, too. Not only can it be a great activity for one person, but it can also be a bonding experience for the whole family to do together.

When you involve your loved ones in gardening, it also lightens the workload of one person having to prepare and care for a garden, and it will give your family time to support each other, offer praise, and share excitement – all in a peaceful setting without the intrusion of electronics.

It’s easy to get your whole family involved in creating and maintaining a sustainable garden. Your spouse and children can help take care of the garden as a whole – with everyone working side by side, or you can split up portions of the garden into different sections and rotate it among family members so that each person spends time helping another person in your family.

Why Gardening Is Good for the Family

Gardening isn’t just a good hobby. You can learn a lot of different things through gardening, including self-sufficiency. When you involve your family in the process of growing their own fruits and vegetables, you’ll be helping them learn many useful things that can benefit them now as well as later on in life.

When your family gardens, everyone will have to learn which fruits and vegetables are best grown in the spring and summer, and which ones are best grown in the fall. You can give everyone a lesson on planting zones and how to choose which produce grows best in your area.

You also learn how weather can affect plants, how water and sunshine help the plant to grow, and what bugs are attracted to certain plants. These facts will interest teens as well as younger kids.

You can learn more than just the facts and benefits of plants for food. When you garden with your family, you can learn other uses for a plant. For instance, some of them have been used in history to treat certain health issues.

Teach them that the basil they’re growing can help treat headaches. Let them know that the lavender they see sprouting up is something that can help calm and soothe them after a stressful day, even helping them sleep better at night!

As you work with your family to plant and care for a garden, let them learn which fruits and vegetables work best with certain dishes and which ones they like most. You don’t want to plant something you’ll never eat.

Gardening is also a great way to explore and learn new foods to try that you’ll like. If you’re first starting out, use fruits and vegetables that are easy to grow, such as beets, carrots, cucumbers, snap peas, and blackberries.

Once you’ve been gardening for awhile, don’t be afraid to experiment with different fruits and vegetables. Mix up your garden to create some color and variety. Have fun letting others in your family choose what to plant in the garden.

Teens and younger kids will especially enjoy having this choice. Another benefit of gardening is getting to watch your kids become self-confident when they learn to grow a vegetable or fruit on their own.

You’ll also get to see your child become more responsible as they take care to water the plants and pull weeds to help the garden grow. Let your family members each be responsible for their own fruits and vegetables.

Allow them to learn and to research the care that different types of plants need. Gardening can also help open up communication. If you have older kids and teenagers, it can be hard to communicate with them.

If you have them help you in the garden, it creates a time you can spend with them one on one – without friends texting them or the TV blaring in the background. Sometimes, all it takes is doing an activity together to help strengthen family bonds.

Not only does gardening help with communication, but it also opens your family up to having something they all share. It helps bring the family together and adds closeness.
This works the same with your spouse.

If you both work, time with each other can be limited. But having something that you both take care of together can offer a time for communication as well as a fun hobby. Just keep in mind that different family members will enjoy certain tasks more.

While you might enjoy pulling weeds, another family member might not be so thrilled with it. Make sure to split up the tasks so no one gets stuck doing something he or she hates.

Getting the Kids Involved

It isn’t always easy to get the kids to help around the house or work outside. Gardening can be a great way to change that. Let your entire family be involved from start to finish. If you’re starting a garden from scratch, it’s a good idea to include your family members when picking a spot for the garden.

This will help them feel needed in the garden and will get them excited at the thought of planting. Make sure you involve the kids when you’re picking out most of the fruits and vegetables to grow.

While you may choose something more useful, or a vegetable everyone in the family will eat, younger kids will enjoy a variety of plants. Some kids can have fun picking brightly colored fruits and vegetables.

Bell peppers are great for small children because they’re some of the easiest vegetables to grow. Radishes are also very easy to grow and brightly colored. Snow peas are another great crop to garden with kids.

Both radishes and snow peas grow during the cool seasons. Kids tend to enjoy fruits more than vegetables, so strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries are great choices. Others may like getting fruits and vegetables that are more unique and that they aren’t used to seeing daily.

Also, you can look into miniature vegetables, like baby carrots and potatoes, baby cauliflower, and baby lettuce. These are perfect for little hands and they come in a variety of colors.

Baby vegetables are perfect for helping your child feel more confident when working in the garden because they’re easier. You don’t want to overwhelm him or her by starting with large fruits and vegetables that may be more difficult to care for.

Be careful that you don’t overwhelm your family if you’re someone who’s been gardening for awhile. Keep in mind that a medium sized garden to you can seem huge to a child and a large garden can seem like it’s a daunting task to someone who isn’t used to it.

If your children are very young, you can assign them each their own “spots” or “plants” in the garden. This way, you can look over them, but they’ll be learning how to water and care for a vegetable or fruit on their own.

As your children get older, you can expand their garden spaces so they’re growing more plants. Make sure as the space expands, your children know how to grow a wide variety of fruits and vegetables.

You can also broaden their cultural knowledge by planting fruits and vegetables that are used in different ethnic meals. You can introduce your family to several different vegetables when growing them.

Experimenting with different dishes is a great way to have some fun with your family. Your kids will enjoy picking out new dinners based on the foods that were grown in the garden.

Aside from picking out the seeds to plant, your family can help with the preparation. Kids especially like this part. Most kids would love to help with getting the soil ready for planting.

Digging is usually a kid’s favorite part of working outside, but don’t limit him to just working in the dirt. Kids are very resourceful and will enjoy learning about and working in all parts of the garden.

If your children are very young, make sure to let them know they’re doing a great job whenever they’re working. It will help them feel more confident about what they’re doing.

Children can also help plant the seeds and water the fruits and vegetables as they grow. If your children are little, you can purchase tiny plastic watering cans so they’re able to water the plants along with you.

You can also keep a small corner of the garden for growing flowers along with the food items that your family chooses to use. Marigolds are great for gardens because they’re low maintenance and easy to care for.

Whatever flower you decide on, make sure it’s non-toxic if you’re gardening with small kids. When planting and caring for a garden, remember that while you know better, if you’re working with younger ones, they might not realize that they can’t put things into their mouth from the garden.

Some vegetable tops can make a child sick. So make sure they understand the importance of not eating out of the garden unless it’s an appropriate food item and has been washed first.

Have the Family Help with Every Step

It may seem easier to do some of the harder steps by yourself – especially if you’ve had some experience gardening and can get it done faster. However, it’s important that the others in your family also know how to do all of the steps.

They’re more likely to appreciate the end result more when they’ve been involved every step of the way. Also, if they only know the easy steps, they won’t know everything they need to know to begin their own garden.

By letting your family help in every step, they learn all the basics of gardening. They also learn the tips like when the best time is to plant certain seeds and what type of fruits and vegetables are the easiest to grow.

They’ll learn how to prepare the soil and how to test it to make sure that it’s ready for growing things. Your family will enjoy telling friends that they know how to garden. Many of the fruits and vegetables can be harvested and then canned or frozen.

You can share them that way or in their fresh from the garden state with family or friends. Giving a basket full of freshly grown food to someone can also teach your family about the importance of sharing and giving.

When the family is working in the garden, especially when it’s gardening with children, you want to make sure that they’re actually working in the gardening that time. You want to check on them, but you also want to make sure that you’re giving them the freedom to learn and make discoveries on their own.

It can be easy to hover over them and tell them what to do every step of the way. However, that should only be done the first few times you work in the garden together.
If you continually hover, your child won’t learn how to work on his own and his accomplishment at having grown fruits and vegetables won’t be “just his.”

It’s important that you teach your child every step, make sure he or she understands, and then let him work on his own. If you’re worried that your child won’t remember to do certain things in the garden, you can make a colorful calendar for him.

Mark the days when he needs to water the plants or pull weeds. This way, you don’t have to continually remind him and he feels as though he’s accomplishing something on his own.

If you’re working in the garden with your husband or wife, remember that everyone has a way they like to do things. This can bring a fun and unique twist to gardening as a family.

Keep in mind that even though the garden might be hard work, it should still be something that all of you find fun and enjoy doing together. One of the ways that you can make sure your family enjoys gardening is to make sure that you do what you can to have fun.

Make It Fun

Composting can be a fun project with a garden for adults or kids. Even though it does require some patience and effort, it’s something that kids will enjoy getting to help with. If you have depleted soil, you can give it back vitality by using compost.

You can make compost at home, and it’s a good thing to use in the soil you’re using to grow fruits and vegetables. You can get everyone involved in helping save the household waste that can go into the composting pile instead of into the garbage can.

Your family can learn how composting helps the garden by helping the soil retain moisture so that plants get the water that they need. Kids can learn how to tell when a compost pile is ready and which containers are best or easiest to use when creating a compost pile.

Gardening can be a fun family project when you allow your children to decorate their designated spaces in the garden. They can decorate with little plastic butterflies or birds.

You can let your child plant a fairy garden somewhere in their garden, and there are kits to help you do this. They can also use small decorative lights in the garden. Just make sure they’re placed far enough away from the plants so nothing hinders their growth.

Another fun thing that you can do is to make sure that every family member has his or her own gardening tools. Kids especially love this idea. You can even get a gardening bag that’s monogrammed with his or her name on it.

Child sized rakes, shovels, watering cans and hoes are good items to get, especially if the children are small – because they won’t be able to use many of the standard gardening tools.

When they have their own tools, they’ll feel more involved in the process. Plus, child size gardening tools also come in fun colors, which will help make it more interesting for your child.

They’re also much safer for small children to use than standard adult size gardening tools. Encourage your child to learn how to take care of his tools. How to clean them and then keep them safely stored with yours until the next time they’re needed.

By teaching your child about the joy of gardening, they’re more likely to enjoy healthier food later in life. Gardening will also open your child up to a variety of different fruits and vegetables to choose from when it comes to eating.

Instead of having to eat standard vegetables, your child can try more exotic and unique ones. This is a good way to get your child to eat vegetables. Many times kids don’t like standard vegetables like Brussel sprouts and corn, but if you introduce them to different ones, they may be more open to eating them.

The fun doesn’t have to stop when the garden items are harvested, either. You can teach your child how to make their favorite dishes with the vegetables and fruits that they grew.

If you have a lot of berries, you can also teach your child how to make jam. Or tasty smoothies using fresh fruit from the garden. Not only can gardening help create time together, but you’ll also be eating healthier as a family.