Suzanne Forsling Gutter Garden
When Suzanne Forsling moved to Juneau Alaska from Iowa, she found that it was a little bit harder to get her garden to grow. Frustrated by cold soil, scarce sunlight, hungry slugs, root maggots, porcupines, cats, bears and ravens she got resourceful. She got her crops off the cold ground and into the light by afixing gutters to the wood siding of her house on the sunny side and using them as planters.
This is really a great space saving idea for those with green thumbs and not enough yard to exercise them. Personally I think these would go great along a deck railing or cut down to be mini-window boxes. So next time someone you know replaces their gutters snatch them up and give them a new lives as planters.
Source: Juneau Empire
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Excelente idea!!! thnks!!!
Love this idea!! I posted about this article on HOMEGROWN.org, too – then made my own this past weekend. Will be posting more pictures as seedlings go in.
http://www.homegrown.org/profiles/blogs/repurposed-raingutters-as
Best to avoid using gutters made from lead or lead-coated copper, in light of toxicity.
AWESOME. Thank you for giving me an idea to increase my garden space.
That is so awesome!!!
This is a great post! I love the recycling of cast off items into new things.
uhhh just to clarify… those are horizontal gutters
Just to clarify, the vertical reference meant up the wall, off the ground.
Horizontal gutters are the ones that are open along the length of them to collect the rain. Downspouts would be the complete tube that carries the water to the ground. You would want to use the horizontal gutter sections rather than the downspouts that would require cutting.
It’s the rows that are vertical.
the rows are horizontal…
what’s vertical is the wall, which the gutters are affixed to.
is it really that hard to figure out?
For real. Please explain to me how you would have a garden with the gutters aligned vertically.
This is SUCH a great idea! you are reusing; self-sufficient; growing green things; using less square acreage; saving your knees; do you use less water than an “in-ground” garden?
What a great idea. I have a large shed that could support the old gutters that were taken off my house last year – these could be the perfect solution to my lack of space in the greenhouse for seeds.
That is a very cool idea!
I hope the gutter has 2 sides to it, otherwise you’re going to rot away the side of your house.
Actually, gutters have three sides.
This won’t rot the side of the house any more than gutters do in their normal application.
Rain gutters are designed to go on your house. They are designed to collect water and channel it to the downspout, typically at the corners of the house. My rain gutters are filled with good quality soil, and the soil holds water so the plants can grow. Just go to a local hardware store and you will see how they are designed . We really have no problem with the siding at all. The gutters we chose are plastic and very inexpensive – $6.00 for a 10 foot section, hardware another $5.00.
All that moisture against the wood? Not a smart idea.
It’s exactly like the typical practice of installing a gutter against the wood panel on the soffit of a house.
One advantage of this system is the ease of watering; water is distributed all along the length.
Soil volume is a limitation, but this looks like an ideal way to grow lettuce. Rabbits would be confounded and slugs would be discouraged.
The water typically doesn’t get on the wood. I use a watering wand to water the plants so that the water coming out of our hose is easy to control.
Now that is f-ing GENIUS!!!
Excellent!
Probably a good idea to remember
1) distance to the house/wood to avoid moisture damage, 2) Tox-free (plastic?) gutters if growing food, 3) plants that do not need too much root space
(as has already been pointed out)
Would look great with “hanging” plants or vines!
I’m going to sink a couple of 4X4s into the ground, attach 2X4s to those, and attach plastic gutters to the 2X4s. I wouldn’t want them attached to the house, but it will be very easy to modify this and make it work for me. I’ll need to drill drainage holes every 3 inches or so.
Great Mod idea!
I like this idea. would work well for me in that I am renting, so I can’t attach to the house itself, also I can place the 4×4′s to get optimal sun, and it makes a good alternative to raised beds. I can use treated lumber w/o fear of contamination, and some pvc pipe, 2×4′s, and netting and I can design moveable covers to prevent deer from feasting, as mentioned in another comment. Get some outdoor plastic and that same modular netting becomes a greenhouse/coldframe. I’m really digging this!
The deer in my neighborhood would use as feeding troughs, but the rabbits and groundhogs would be shut out!
Einstein and Edison were brilliant but Suzanne Forsling is way ahead of the bunch with this “groundbreaking” idea.
Well done and thank you, I am going to try the same system in South Africa.
Thanks, Peter, my husband and I are both physicists, so this is quite a compliment!
wow, i never thought that I’d see a great use for reclaimed gutters. This is amazing
A great way to increase your garden space, for sure, man.
I love it! Will totally do this. Thanks for the great idea.
simple but great potential
1 add plastic cover and there is a mini hot house
2 Put perforated sheets in before dirt and could great drainage
3 use a hanger that permits gutter to lift off and you could start seeds inside and move 3 ft gutter sections outside at appropriate time.
4 place them in an off set step manor, then have trailing plants at ends that cascade into the gutter below
Seriously clever idea, that one. I bet it came about Suzanne Forsling was up a ladder, dragging leaves and gunk out of her guttering. Still, it’s a flash of genius.
love this idea
It would be nice if put some technology such automatic temperature/humidity control the garden.
kool idea thank you
No water goes to wast, a fantastic idea!
What a good idea! I regret throwing away all those old gutters last year. I have serious knee problems , so this would help me a lot.
Excellent idea, I’ll be doing this as soon as I can. My addition would be to get the current downpipe and have it run water into each of these troughs, or better yet to a pipe running along behind the trough with holes all way way along so the water can more easily reach the far end.
its really a fantastic idea !!!
Great idea. Definitely will give this a try.
I think it’s a great idea, I just think of something completely different when I read “Vertical Garden”… Cool DIY project!!!
Hi, I love this idea and will definitely try it. One question, do you cap the ends of the guttering or leave them open so excess water can drain away?
You’d probably want to leave the end caps on (so the soil doesn’t dump out the end) and drill holes to drain, but that is going to depend on what you are planting.
Just love all of your great ideas!
wondering what you would grow in these…shallow…lettuce?? its hot in SC so wondering what could grow without actually cooking in them… good idea
Now this is a great idea for garden. This Juneau gardner thought up to give here seedlings a advantage to the cold ground.
Suggestions: Get black gutters, or paint them black, to help warm that soil! Of course some sort of glazing over them makes sense too. Could even mount them over insulating panels… Suppose you could also use water warmed up with a solar collector… For deeper channels, just stack them right on top of each other and cut wide slits into the bottoms of the upper decks for the roots to get through… this would also create narrow ‘shelves’ for planting on each deck, perhaps for strawberries — obviously, make sure the whole thing is well secured! Darn good way to put a south facing wall (in the northern hemisphere) to good use.
we used the same method.
INSIDE a wooden hut.
fitted with slanting gutters, running the length of 3 walls of the wooden hut (3 x 5 m).
we fit full spectrum tube / neon lights, but not slanting, so you have varying angled space between the beginning of a gutter and then end, so you can move the plants.
the plants themselves were planted in seedling trays, which fit snugly into the gutters.
water circulation managed by inter-connecting the levels of gutters, and completing the circuit into a reservoir drum (25 litre container).
used a water feature pump to circulate water, plugged into a cheapish timer, for 15 mins an hour.
also added in an air pump, with 6 lines out, bubbling fresh air into the circuit at various points to aerate the water, and reduce the shnotty residue formed by the wet environment and roots.
strawberries grow like mad things, lettuce, and other leafy herbs.
roots eventually break out of the seedling trays, but it isn’t uncontained enough to entangle other roots much. so you can still harvest without too much trouble.
lazy woman’s hydroponix.
I think it depends on what you plant and how close together you plant them.
The vegetables that I plant in my rain gutters are typically what we think of as “greens”. Things like Simpson Lettuce, Gourmet Lettuce varities, French Breakfast Radishes, Swiss Chard, etc. The root ball for these is not too large and if the plants are thinned properly they will be just fine. The biggest problem is watering them often enough. Where I live this is not much of a problem, but if you get really hot summers you would have to water each day. Again, greens are normally Spring time vegetables so the temperatures aren’t too bad anywhere. The lettuces etc., will bolt once the weather gets hot to produce their seeds.