Refreshing My Tower Garden

By Greg Peterson

I have said it before…I LOVE my Tower Garden.  Just what is a Tower Garden?  It is an uber cool hydroponic growing system by Juice Plus that I stumbled across two years ago and had to have one.

So I dove in and have been playing ever since.  In a nutshell, it is a tower about 6 feet tall with a basin at the bottom that holds 20 gallons of water and about two cups of nutrients.  The water is pumped to the top of the tower and the water trickles down the inside delivering moisture and nutrients to the roots of the plants in the tower.  Interested in more information or to purchase a tower garden?  Click HERE.

My Tower Garden has 28 growing holes that I regularly install 2 or 3 plants in.  Primarily my Tower Garden grows a variety of different kinds of greens such as kale, chard, lettuce & parsley.

This spring I am also going to try some tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and watermelon.  But in the meantime there is plenty of growing time left in this season so I purchased a couple of 9 packs of kale and refreshed my Tower Garden.

There are two ways to get plants growing in your Tower Garden: either plant them from seed or transplant them from already established plant.  I like the latter as it seems to be simplest to me.  I have transplanted tomatoes, peppers and many kinds of herbs and greens from dirt directly into the Tower Garden.
The concept it actually quite simple, acquire your plants and delicately rinse the soil from the roots.  I do this by alternately running water over the roots and swishing them in a pan of water – both done very gently.  This is done over a few minutes and typically removes 90+% of the soil.

The final resting place for the roots of the plants are small pieces of rock wool that are tightly wrapped around the roots and secured with a rubber band.

From my 9 pack of kale I quickly do the math and decide that each Tower Garden hole is big enough to hold 3 of the 9 plants.  That means with the 18 plants I have with 3 plants per hole I will be filling 6 vacancies in my Tower Garden.  The cool thing is that each cell will grow 3 full-sized plants for at least 5 months, giving me dozens of green leaves for juicing and sautéing.

Once I have bundled my kale bounty in rock wool and placed them in the baskets that fit in the tower garden it is time to put them in the Tower Garden.

Want to love a Tower Garden as much as I love mine?  Click HERE for more information or to purchase one.