Have you ever grown a pumpkin plant? Or a cucumber? Tomatoes?
Then you know how wild these plants can be if left to their own devices. One day you have a nice little squash plant minding its own business, then seemingly overnight that nice little squash plant has completely overwhelmed the entire garden.
Not only does this look messy, but it makes things a lot more difficult when you want to pick some beans and can’t even see the plants.
I used to garden this way and just let the plants decide how and where to grow, but when you raise a lot of vining plants (winter squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peas…), this can get pretty ugly pretty fast. So when we moved to our new place a few years ago and I got to start with a clean garden template, I decided to try my hand at vertical gardening. I’ve changed some things along the way, but there will be no going back to the old method for me: growing vertically is here to stay, and here are a few reasons why.