Growing food in small spaces can be tough, but it's by no means off the table. By making use of vertical space, you can maximize your garden's capacity, even if all that you have to work with is a balcony or windowsill.

I've run across a few beautiful examples of vertical gardening in action lately, and I thought you guys might dig them, too. Check these out!

Vertical Farm, South Korea

This vertical farm (photo at the top of this post) in South Korea is taking advantage of vertical space to showcase the benefits of vertical gardening. According to Chris Keenan at Planetsave:

The concept behind vertical farming is that it is possible to cultivate plant life on vertically inclined surfaces, and the plants produced in these surfaces would be organic and higher quality plants than through traditional farming methods. While this idea has been around for years, it’s finally come to fruition in Suwon, South Korea where they have been working and producing vegetables in a little three story demonstration project.

The angles allow excess water to run down to the lower levels of the garden. They were also able to grow this lettuce without any pesticides, thanks to this method of vertical farming.

Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by beelaineo

2. IKEA-Hacked Vertical Garden

Antonion Scarponi of Conceptual Devices hacked together a few different IKEA pieces to create this awesome vertical garden. This sucker is more than pretty, it's self sustaining! Here's how it works:

3. Vertical Gardening for Apartment Dwellers

Another IKEA hack, Flickr user mannewaar is using a the KROKEN cutlery stand to grow a vertical garden in his apartment window. He's growing herbs and cherry tomatoes, and using what looks like less than a foot of horizontal space. I can't find the KROKEN on the Ikea-USA website, but you could easily rig up something similar with a vertical rack, some small tins (reused, large tin cans?), and steel wire to attach them.

Have you guys run across any cool vertical gardening solutions? I'd love to hear about them in the comments!