My oversized 2 car garage is the last gardening frontier to be tackled, and I want to turn some wall space into planting space for cool weather crops in winter. Sweet peas, greens and herbs are the priority. It stays around 50-65 degrees all winter and has tall ceilings. Looking for ideas and inspiration. If anyone has converted a wall of their garage to growing plants, please share and post pictures.
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A hydroponic tower system would be the dream. Reality is probably going to be something like a cattle panel tacked to the wall and hanging pots.
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I had a friend make a tower out of pvc pipes (I think!) And it worked well. I would thinkot should be fairly inexpensive as well. I don’t know what plans she may have used, but probay an easy enough search!
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I haven’t tried to grow edible things indoors, but I have a lot of experience growing orchids and carnivorous plants indoors under lights.
Lighting is going to be your biggest challenge. The cheapest and most energy efficient lighting systems like fluorescents and basic LEDs don’t work well with anything grown vertically, since they need to be within a foot or so of the plants. You could hang the lights by their ends and have them shine sideways onto the plants, I guess. In my opinion, it’s easier and more cost-effective to just stick to plants that don’t get super tall.
I use 48 x 24 x 86" chrome wire shelves from Uline. They’re modular and interlocking and let you customize your setup to whatever footprint you want.
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I don’t think it’s going to be worth it because of the light issue. It’s going to be costly to run a hydroponic setup or the plants will be pretty anemic. I think something like this : Growing Greens all Fall-WINTER-Spring has a lot of potential.
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Does the garage have any natural lighting?
An old reliable way to turn an interior room into a grow room is to line the walls with tinfoil and add lights. I live in the emerald triangle. Illicit cash crops have thrived this way for generations. Tenants have neglected to remove it from closets after they saved enough to buy their forever homes lol.. So it works.
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I agree that lighting should be the main focus. Shelving addresses that issue much better than hanging lights from above. But, for a low cost start, I will likely hang from the wall. I was thinking about hanging the lights in a tiered fashion. I already have brackets to hang lights on the wall I want to use as we built them last spring and used briefly when I thought I would keep my nectarines potted and indoors while leafing out. Also considering making a simple stand to mount a light on its side facing the wall.
Not-tall-plants is a good thought. I was thinking of trying more of the bush-type sweet peas/shorter vines than my 6’ outdoor ones! But, I also was thinking some over the top (literally) thoughts like if there was a pretty vining plant that is easy to grow, I could grow it near all of this and overtop with some ceiling lights. I have 11’ ceilings to work with.
@Josh6b there is natural light via two high windows, but certainly not enough without a lot of supplementing. I have wished about 1,000 times that we had put in 2 more windows.
@benthegirl i love his outdoor set up. This might seem weird, but I am in and out of my garage a lot during the day. We recently painted (most of it) and now it feels like another room of the house and its huge walls are challenging me to use them.
@Itchybee interesting you should suggest as I was thinking about that as well. Lots of half formed ideas.
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