After a year of tracking 100% of what was grown on six garden towers (except for deer browse and insect loses), we made a quick followup video. All the data is available and will be posted in a blog update soon.

Previous Blog Entry: https://gardentowerproject.com/food-freedom-experiment-garden-tower2-really-work/

This is a high quality, independent growth study underway by Fable Farms Indiana using multiple Garden Tower 2’s. Read the blog entry below:

(Abridged excerpt from the blog:) With seeds of hope and dreams of food abundance, my wife, Andrea, and I purchased a 4.5 acre homestead, in south-central Indiana, this Spring. For fun, we’ve gardened together a few times before, at the apartments we’ve lived in and at our city-house (where we were the neighborhood weirdos, killing our grass to build garden beds). But most of our days were spent as research-academics and science-writers (I’m a political-economist and Andrea’s a neuroscientist), so jumping onto acreage has been a real eye-opener about just how hard it can be, to try to grow our own food. But why would we try to do that, in the first place?

So, sure, we’re aware of Tesla’s latest innovations in electric cars, home battery banks, and solar roofing tiles. And we both lead grassroots nonprofits that fight for community rights and community decisionmaking power: Andrea, as president of the Center for Sustainable Living, and me, as chair of the Bloomington Food Policy Council. We’re still, clearly, all-hopped-up on hope that humanity will turn this ship around, get itself together, and make a future we can all live in…But, as critically-minded people and data-driven scientists, we’re not exactly holding our breath, that’s for sure.

Why try to homestead and grow our own food? Well…we have a handful reasons. How did we get a homestead, with meager means? Well, we have some steady income right now and interest rates on mortgages still make some sense. So why not go for it? Anyway…As fate would have it, the “perfect property,” just outside of town, came-up in an email listserv we belong to, so we “carpe”-ed the “diem” and took the plunge. After a month-long scramble to schlep our stuff to the small limestone house and seemingly-endless (4.5!) acres, we could finally get our food game going…But we were a little too late, in more ways than one.

We knew we needed plant-starts and we wanted to learn the whole process, so we kicked-off with some seed-germination. As green shoots popped through the loose potting mix, we knew it was time to prepare the crop-rows, both in the back-field and the greenhouse near the house. But, Holy Basil! We were in for a shock: the greenhouse hadn’t been used for years, so the soil had mineralized…and the watering system for the row-crop field had been shredded by a tractor and long-since grown-over with weedy grasses…all while the farm-tools, kindly left by the previous owners, were mostly rusted or busted. Our dreams were decimated and our game was gone, before we’d really begun. Fail! Panic! Chaos!

What to do?

……….(Abridged, see full blog article!!! Link Below)…………It was a win-win: Garden Tower Project would donate some Garden Tower 2.0’s, if we would agree to share all the data from our experiments. Hence, we got 6 Garden Tower 2.0’s and the first adventures of Fable Farms Indiana (the name we gave our homestead) truly began: 2 towers for 100 veggies, 2 towers for 100 artisanal herbs, and 2 towers for 100 of those irresistible summer-strawberries…and we’ll be measuring all the produce that comes off of them, right down to the gram!

And, thus, our Food Freedom Experiment was born…and Fable Farms Indiana got a fresh start.

I can’t pretend to know what’s next, but I can promise to let you know how it goes. I’m no Garden Tower expert, so if you’re just starting out, like me, we’re bound to make some similar mistakes and learn some lessons together. And for you folks who are still deciding whether or not to take the Garden Tower plunge, I hope the data from my experiment can be useful to you. If the rumors are true, we’ll be rolling in produce and cutting-back our grocery bill.

Who can say, for sure? All I know, right now, is that my towers are off to a good start: blooming with greens and herbs and berries…But I’m also hunting-down cabbage-beetles on my kales, deterring berry-stealin’ deer, bushing-out the bolting basils, and navigating local nurseries to be sure I keep our towers full, budding, and blooming, now and for months to come!

So, if you want to see what a Garden Tower can do in the hands of an amateur homesteader, then join me on the great adventure of my Food Freedom Experiment!
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Video Rating: / 5

One year review of growing organic produce in garden towers (garden tower 2), payback period