a compact vertical garden with a smart watering system
let's take a look at the greenstalk vertical planter
this is a sponsored review and the product was sent to me however
this video review is an honest opinion of what i think
of the greenstalk system and now let's look at the contents
this is the top water reservoir and then we have the base now i highly
recommend that you order the base and we'll shortly get into the positives
of getting the base these are the watering discs there's one
for each tier and this is a five tier system these are
the wheels for the base so you can move your
greenstalk planter around
so you get one watering disk per chamber except the top one which has the water
reservoir
this is a very nice user guide and the company was generous enough to send me
some earthworm castings and some seeds as well and here are some pictures
and usage guides
and these are the plant supports now the plant supports are optional
and i will show you how to use the plant supports in this video
but if you're planning to grow mostly herbs and non-binding plants
the plant supports are not needed and finally these are the containers the
five containers that are part of this five-tier planter
you can even buy a four-tier which will give you four of these
this particular system has five tiers there's a five-tier
greenstalk vertical planter so here are all the parts
laid out this is the base we have the watering dust
the top reservoir the casters which go on the base
and then we have the instruction manual and finally all the
tiers all the planters and these planters are extremely high quality
they're very well built now let's begin with the product assembly
now i highly recommend that you get a base and there's a huge benefit of
getting the base and it's not about moving your planter
around you definitely can do that if you get the base with the casters
and there's a little drain pipe that's available
as well but the main reason for getting the base is if you're planning to put
your greenstalk planter on a paved surface or
any kind of hard surface like tile concrete pavers
the base will be a great help because it holds
water that drips from the system just like that here you can see the
area where all the water stays with the drain pipe
and this is a huge benefit especially if you're keeping your green stock planter
on a paved surface now you can also use a stopper to stop
the water in the base but i don't really see any
use of doing that i would rather use the drain pipe
our next step is to add the potting mix now you can actually use any kind of
potting mix most garden centers will have a bagged
potting mix like what you see here this is a moisture control potting mix
and it also has added fertilizer that will feed your plants for about
three months and this is how it looks like
any kind of potting mix will have either peat moss or coco coir
as the first ingredient and if you're using back potting mixes
just fill it up like you see here just add the potting mix and then
compact it a little bit and fill it all the way to the top
and i personally don't use bagged potting mixes i assembled this for
someone i know and they wanted to have a maintenance free system where they add
in the potting mix and they don't have to worry about adding fertilizers or
amendments for the life cycle of the plant
so you can see how we are compacting the soil it's very important that you
compact the soil lightly and that way the plants settle down much
better in the potting mix you don't have to do it too much but
just make sure that you have potting soil all the way to the top now
if you do not compact your soil the level of the soil will keep going
down as you water your plants and that's not a pretty sight
the recommendation is to fill all the way to the top
so once you fill all the way to the top you're done with adding the potting mix
and we are using a custom potting mix so the
custom potting mix that we are using for the bottom tier
is a mix of 50 compost 50 soil and some perlite and we mix it all in
and the reason why i chose this mix for the bottom tier is to
make the planter a little heavy so that it's bottom heavy and it won't
move much even during times of winds for example
and this is a very well draining potting mix remember that you need to add either
perlite or vermiculite or pumice or any kind of substance that
will help the container drain water quickly
and we are now going to set it up on the base as you can see it's quite easy to
set up the first tier on the base and this is going
to be our heaviest tier
now you can use any kind of potting mix you can even use a standard potting mix
of peat moss perlite and vermiculite for the tiers 2 and 4 we're going to be
using these cocoa chips from vermistera and
mix it in with worm castings now this is again a very good product to
use for potting mixes because you don't need to add perlite cocoa
chips are naturally aerating they hold a lot of moisture and the worm
castings that are mixed in will provide adequate
nutrients to your plants as they grow so if you're using cocoa
chips you don't really need to add a lot of
amendments this is good to go just one coco brick will give you
enough soil for one planter and then you just put it in
and just compact it a little bit
now i've found roots to grow better and coco chips
like this kind of a mix it provides a lot of air
a lot of room for the roots to grow so this is a good choice
you can buy this from vermisterra.com and use coupon code cag to get 10 off your
order and we are done with our container mix
for tiers 2 and 4. and for tiers 1 and 3 three we're going
to be using a mix of peat moss perlite and compost
and this is a standard potting mix that most of us should be using
it's a great potting mix that will help you grow really good plants in your
greenstalk planter now let's get into planting so for
planting your plants you can either do it before you start
tiering up your vertical planter or like i am doing here
you just plant one tier at a time and then just keep adding up the tears
and i just found this to be easier than planting individual plants
so all you do is take your plants and then
plant them at each slot now there are six slots in each planter
you want to plant one plant in each that way the plant is growing out now i
plant my seedlings at around a 45 degree angle
as you can see they're not like upright they're not straight at 90 degrees
and i just think this is a better idea than planting them straight up
because the little angle lets you set up the tears in a much easier way
than if the plants were planted at 90 degrees
but you can't go much wrong in this either ways as long as you plant your
seedlings or your plants correctly in these pockets you should be good to go
so we planted a lot of different plants in this tier you can see
pepper cilantro now at this time you can mix in an organic fertilizer
into the soil however in our case we are not adding any fertilizer to this
potting mix but rather we will be using a liquid
fertilizer later on to provide nutrition to the plants
now you can go with a slow release fertilizer you can use an organic
fertilizer or a salt-based fertilizer that's slow release
it just depends on how much maintenance you want to do for your plants
but i will show you both the methods at this time you can mix in a granular
fertilizer which will feed your plants for about
three months or so or you can follow the liquid fertilizer
method that i will shortly demonstrate our next
step is to attach the watering disc and this is very important this is the
watering disc that will actually water each tier and this is a very clever
design extremely nice design where you just water from
the top and then the water goes through all
these stairs and then comes into this watering disc
where it waters each tear individually and this is a big relief because you
don't need to worry about over watering or under watering
and you just keep the next tier on top of the first tier
and you can see how nicely it locks into place
and now let's look at all the wonderful plants we planted in
the rest of the tiers
[music]
now remember that this greenstalk
planter can be moved around and that's another benefit of ordering
the casters or the base is that you can rotate this planter so
that your shade loving plants are towards
shade and then the plants that need more sun can be
exposed to sunlight and if you're not getting a lot of sunlight this is even
more critical because plants like tomatoes and peppers
and corn need sunlight and by using the casters
you can move the slots around and that way you
provide enough sunlight to all your plants
now you can plant almost any type of vegetable
herb flowers anything that you want in this planter
each of these tiers has a lot of space there's a lot of potting mix in each
tier so you can pretty much plant almost
anything in these planters and they'll grow well
and i've planted everything from small plants like cilantro to
huge plants like tomatoes and peppers and eggplants
and plants like strawberries which grow excellent in these kind of vertical
containers and you can harvest the fruits without
them getting dirty or being attacked by insects and then you
finally attach the top water reservoir and the top water
reservoir will hold the water and then water each individual disk
now in the top tier i planted tomatoes and the reason for planting that in the
top tier is i wanted the tomatoes to grow from top
to the bottom they not only look pretty they also grow
quite well this is how our greenstalk planter
looks like once it's fully assembled as you can see it hardly takes up any space
and it lets you grow a lot of plants in a very compact and small space
and for watering you just take a water hose and then fill in the top
water reservoir completely and you need to stop after you water for
some time and i didn't realize this and when the
first time i tried watering the water gushed out from the bottom
tier and i had a lot of water in the bottom
and that's because i didn't realize that i was over watering the green stock
planter i reached out to ashley in customer
service and i received a prompt reply on how to
address my issue so five stars for the customer support i
think the customer support is excellent and this is what you get when you buy a
product from a reputable company you get not only a great quality product
but also excellent customer service and the fix to my problem was simple i
just was over watering it i had to stop watering
after some time and a good way to gauge that is to just watch the
drain pipe and as soon as the drain pipe starts dripping you need to stop
watering now let's look at how to add fertilizer
to your plants since we didn't add any fertilizer
during planting we are using this organic
liquid fertilizer and this is a very unique
product where you just pump in a few times into this
watering can once you're ready with your liquid fertilizer solution
just add it to the reservoir on top and the solution will then be delivered to
all the tiers equally and there are markers here to show you
how much water you need to add for three four and five tiered planters now greenstalk
recommends only adding water through the water and tears however if
you use a fertilizer that doesn't contain salt
like the one that we have used here it should be fine in my opinion however
if you're doubtful about it just use water in the
top tier and then add granular fertilizer to your
plants as they grow or mix it into the top soil
so that it keeps feeding the plants and here you can see the drip in action
each watering disc will provide a water source to the tier
by dripping into that tier just like you see here
and again there's a very clever design a great engineering example of how
you can solve the problem of watering each tier so very well done on this
front greenstalk and let's look at the plant supports now
so the plant supports are optional we did get a set of plant support so i
can show you how we use the plant supports and how
they can be assembled and used and these are the instructions so you
can see the attachment here one part goes to the
planter and then the other side goes to the actual
ring or the supports that go around the plant
now once again look at the design it's it's a pretty clever design
all you do is push this into the notch and then bend it over
and it secures and locks in place and the design is so
unique that you can't really go wrong in assembling this
there's only one way you can assemble this look at the notch
just slide the other piece in and then bend it down
and then push it into place that's it and what is also unique is that once you
assemble all these pieces they sit quite well onto your planter
now remember that you cannot install the supports without removing
the planters so you will be assembling the plant
supports first just like you see here on the sides of
the greenstalk planter these pieces lock into place and they
won't come out so it's a good design here as well with
the plant supports so you add in one for each of these
notches between each container in the tier and i found this kind of
assembly to be easier once this is done you then assemble the ring
that you formed in the previous step
and here is the ring you just take the ring and find the
round slots or round notches that you see here to push them into place
and i found this kind of assembly to be a lot easier
and now you just replace the top tier back to where it was
and here you can see how the plants are using the plant supports
now our tomato plant had grown far too big we should have actually installed
these supports a little earlier so it's best to install these supports
once you've assembled your green stock planter
you can do it later as well i think it's a lot more helpful if you
just add the plant supports while you plant your seedlings
and here you can see the fully assembled greenstalk planter with the plant
supports even with the plant supports it doesn't
take up a huge amount of space so my overall conclusion after reviewing
the greenstalk vertical planter for several weeks is that it is a very
well built product and lets you grow lots of plants in a
small space so there we have it folks that was our
episode on the greenstalkplanter review
if you like this planter please buy this planter from our
affiliate link which i'll post in the video description and the comment below
you can use coupon code cag to get 10 off your order as well and if you have
any questions comments or suggestions do let us know in the comments box below
we'll see you again soon happy gardening