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Growing Horizontally
Connor Becz
Posts: 2
I am wondering if there are any gardening experts here who can help me with a question I am having.
I have been brainstorming the idea of growing agricultural plants horizontally out of a vertical surface. Specifically I am wondering if you have a large-sized cube of soil, and you planted seeds around the whole surface of the cube, or what surface was exposed, how successful would you be at growing plants like corn, wheat, rice, and potatoes?
Would they droop too much? Would they stay attached to the plant or would gravity pull them down?
Do you know of anyone who has ever done anything like this, or have you ever done anything yourself like it?
I appreciate your perspective on this matter!
0
Posts
I think you'd find that the roots tend to grow towards gravity and the soil, and the shoots away from gravity and towards light. How you'd keep a ton of soil up in the air is another matter...
It's an experiment that needs doing
Over to you Connor
In the sticks near Peterborough
You'd have problems with the rice on account of the lack of water. Most plants will try to reach the maximum light and will therefore grow vertically so I think this experiment would only work well with low growing plants. Any long stemmed things would try to grow upwards and might droop disasterously without support. If you wanted everything to grow horizontally from the cube you would probably have to rotate the cube on a daily basis.
Oh, so maybe strawberries and little plants like that would work better?
Investigate the methods used in Living Walls - sometimes called Green Walls.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Corn and wheat might grow OK, but they will grow towards the light i.e upwards. Just because they are planted in the side of a block of earth doesn't mean they will grow sideways.
I haven't come across potato seeds, and seed potatoes have to be buried in the soil. They would still grow up towards the light once they broke the surface.