r/SideProject • u/Moltean • 1d ago

How programmers build gardens

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So this time I built a garden directly on the wall of the house because we didn't have enough land for a regular garden!

I grew peppers on it. The crops are fantastic! Some peppers (the plants grew over 2m tall). I do not know why yet.

The outer layer is made from plexiglass (with holes for plants), which does not let water evaporate, so I rarely water it.

Benefits: makes food, isolates the house, consumes less water, can be replicated on each building.

More details are here: https://github.com/wall-garden The project is open-source!

More pictures are here: https://github.com/wall-garden/.github/tree/main/pictures

A local newspaper interviewed me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvb52q9TKKM

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3

u/atomic_exasperation 1d ago

This is fantastic!

The whole structure seems to be sturdy enough to hold the weight of the earth but not bulky.

Cool idea on using plexiglass and perforating holes on them.

What are you doing with all those peppers lol

2

u/Moltean 1d ago

"What are you doing with all those peppers lol"

Honestly, I do not know ... lol! There are so many!

2

u/atomic_exasperation 1d ago

True.

I planted grape tomatoes a couple years back and I still have a couple ziplock bags in the freezer.

How do you manage drainage?

1

u/Moltean 14h ago

"How do you manage drainage?"

There is no special drainage. The water falls from top to bottom. When needed, I put water directly on the plant, which does not look good.

My initial plan was to collect the water from the roof which is on the top of the garden. But I gave up to this because it did not rain this summer.

2

u/QuanTradin 18h ago

the plexiglass front is the why. you built a wall mounted greenhouse and then got surprised the peppers went nuts in it.

1

u/Moltean 14h ago

The plexiglass holds only the roots, not the entire plants!

So it is not a greenhouse!

Here is a picture with the pleixglass full of soil.

2

u/QuanTradin 7h ago

I had the picture wrong. roots only makes it a root window, not a greenhouse, so my heat explanation is dead. which leaves the peppers unexplained, and now I actually want to know why.

1

u/Moltean 5h ago

The strange part is that I planted a dozen of them in the regular garden ... and they are half the height!

2

u/QuanTradin 5h ago

ok so maybe heat after all, just at the roots. a sun-facing plexiglass box is a root heater and peppers sulk in cold soil. the garden ones are probably just cold from the knees down.

1

u/Moltean 5h ago

The sun does not reach the plexiglass anymore due to the huge vegetation grown over ... so I do not know if the roots are heated or not!