A crop of vertical mini allotments for city dwellers

Vuelve Carolina in Valencia, Spain.

Vertical mini allotments: What grows up

By Harriot Lane Fox
The Telegraph
05 May 2011

Excerpts:

What could be more metro-horticultural than ushering your dinner guests out onto the balcony and inviting them to pick their perfect salad?

That’s almost what the Michelin-starred chef-patron of Vuelve Carolina in Valencia, Spain, is doing with this chic new restaurant. He has taken the green wall — an eco-cool way to soften new shopping centres, offices and Olympic villages, including London’s — and made it edible. Diners now enjoy garnishes grown right in front of them.

A crop of new products designed to create instant vertical allotments mean that big harvests are possible from the tiniest spaces, particularly if you can harness the heat stored in a south-facing wall.

Vuelve Carolina uses the MiniGarden system, which comes in small kits. The basic version comprises three modules like lidded window boxes that stack up to be 57cm tall and 64cm wide (22.5in by 25in). Hook these up to a micro-irrigation system and you only need to water for 10 seconds every eight hours and the lids channel excess water away. Each module has three planting “mouths”.

Read the complete article here.

See Vuelve Carolina in Valencia, Spain here.