Kids can create an organic fruit and veggie garden in a small space by using cages, towers, stakes, spiral supports, trellises, and ladders that can be found in all sorts of shapes and sizes. These vertical supports can double the growing space and make the best use of the available sunlight. Many veggies have a trailing or climbing habit that can be trellised and trained upward, like cucumbers, or put in hanging planters to trail over the edge, like cherry tomatoes.
The Garden Tower Project in the picture above is a patio farm where kids can grow 50 plants in four square feet in a self contained easily accessible system, requiring no weeding and containing a vertical vermicomposting system that has red wriggler worms living in a long tube running down the center to provide the best organic fertilizer and soil amendment.
Small urban gardens need to take advantage the air space and use layered heights to capture the most sunlight for each plant. Kids can place the veggie containers on cinderblocks or other boosters to create different heights and put the tallest plants in the back and the shorter ones in front. In a small space garden, kids can interplant the veggies, like planting lettuce in the shady spot near a vertical crop of cucumbers. Hanging planters from the eaves, window ledge, or railing is another way to use vertical space. Kids can plant strawberries that love to trail in grow bags that can be suspended on a wall or fence to create a living wall of luscious fruit.
When the fruit and veggie plants are off the ground, kids can keep their plants clean with good air circulation, which will help keep the plant free of mildew and keep the fruit from rotting. Also the plants can get more light and heat to help them ripen, and kids can easily find the fruits and veggies to harvest them. Kids can grow a vertical organic fruit and veggie garden anywhere and provide fresh organic food for the table right where they live.
Cooking Magic for Kids 