Two tier gardening

Polytunnels, cold frames, greenhouses, propagators & more. How to get the best out of yours...

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Primrose
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I was looking at Elmigo,s new garden and admiring his determination to make use of every single inch of growing space in it.

This led me to wonder if anybody had ever seriously experimented with two tier gardening where they build some kind of structure over their ground growing area with perhaps an open wire shelving over it on which growing pots were rested to add a second level of growing space.

I realise this would create some shade for the lower level plants, but people have shelving in greenhouses where two layers of plants are grown and I wonder how much extra successful growing space would be created.

I imagine one drawback would be having to access the ground growing areas to plant and weed them.
Colin2016
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Have done similar in green house with toms, chillies & peppers in ground with shelves full of lettuce, basil other small pants being sown or growing on ready for planting out.

After seeing local garden centre grow strawberry in grow bags on stilts gave me the idea of perhaps doing same around edge of a few beds in the future.
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oldherbaceous
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I have never tried it, Primrose but, i would say as long as the top tier is only half as wide as the ground level, it should get enough light...on a slightly different scale, vertical gardening seems to be catching on.
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Primrose
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Ii suppose if you had a lawn you could always invest in one of those low garden centre wire mesh trolleys on wheels you fill with pots and wheel around the grass to catch the sunniest areas and then wheel out of the way when you need to mow the grass.

It seems to me that with the current housing crisis in this country houses and gardens are going to become increasingly smaller and maximising the use of whatever space is available to is going to become an increasing challenge. Round here, many people are already having to sacrifice the growing areas in their front gardens to turn them into car parking spaces.
Last edited by Primrose on Mon Mar 02, 2020 9:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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oldherbaceous
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Your imagination is second to none, Primrose and the more I think about it, it's rather a good idea and could work really well for some people...I will now be watching for a company making a fortune out of your idea... :)
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Don't forget to utilise your fence space as well with guttering as beds & hanging baskets. Still 2 tier but baskets being on hooks away from the wall will allow more light in to the gutters!
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retropants
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I have no growing space at all at the moment, but I grew some cherry basket tomatoes last year in hanging baskets on my shed, either side of the door. They cropped tremendously well, I was taking bowls and bowls of tomatoes into work to share :)
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Primrose
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Retropants - totally agree. These tumbling tomatoes are an ideal prolific plant for people to grow in containers with limited space. I still have a few bags of them in my freezer from last summer.
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Morning(just) I grew some tumbling toms in hanging baskets inside my greenhouse the year before last, they needed watering twice a day, so I didn't do that again, they may well be better outside, but I found keeping up with their thirst rather labour intensive and reverted back to growing them in larger containers.
Been gardening for over 65 years and still learning.
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Primrose
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Yes, that's one of the problem with hanging baskets - they're too time intensive from a watering viewpoint and I've given up growing them now. They're also physically more difficult to deal with trying to water them from a height. Tumbling toms are best grown in a tall pot. I also grow a few in a border but the weight of the fruit means a lot of them always end up on the soil being damaged by slugs.
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