Gardening doesn’t always require the extensive land, time, and resources to harvest vegetables for your family each year. Gardening certainly can be a big project, and the results will mean a lot of vegetables. But that’s shouldn’t stop you if you’re short on space and time—or if you live alone and don’t need all that produce. And you can experience all the fun of traditional, bigger-plant gardening with just a few feet of ground. Or even a few pots.
Here are a few of your best options on how to start a garden in a small space.
Urban Farming
If you live in a city and find yourself with a small yard, or no yard at all, you can still garden each year. But you’ll need to be a little creative about your available resources.
The two elements you’ll want to think about when scouting out a spot for a garden are light and rain sources. With skyscrapers or high rises as your neighboring buildings—and with narrow streets and building overhangs—finding good sources of light and rain can be difficult. If you live in an apartment building, talk to your landlord or the building owner to see if you can get access to the roof. On the roof, of course there’s no soil—but you can build garden boxes.
However, be careful about harmful exposure to weather. Too much exposure can be just as bad as too little, so you’ll want to pay close attention to the weather and base your watering on rain, humidity, and sunlight changes.
Also, most major cities will have public garden areas where you can rent out space for your produce. These are usually inexpensive. But make sure you fertilize your gardening space before the season to ensure that the soil is good.
Small Space Gardening
If you’re gardening a small plot like you’ll find in public garden areas, your two main concerns are root growth and watershed. Different plants will require different root allowances and different amounts of water. I find it’s best to make a ranking system—largest roots to smallest, most required water to less—and spread out your plants according to this system. That way no plant will affect another.
The other option to combat this problem is to consider using gardening pots rather than open soil. This way, each plant is contained, and you can control exactly the amount of water each plant should receive.
In a small gardening plot, insect defense will be more important than at a larger garden because a small amount of insects can cause huge damage to your plan life. Inspect often.
The Loyal Herb Garden
In the smallest of places, the herb garden is your best bet to gardening in urban areas. Even if you don’t have any access to a yard or a public gardening area—or even a porch—you can develop an herb garden with large windows that are exposed to sunlight. Lettuce, basil, mint, thyme, and oregano—among a host of others—don’t require much space, and these are great additions to your normal meals, adding freshness to the meal like clean water from the 5231JA2002A filter provides sound mind to your drinking water.
Check out the herb garden beginners kit that will provide you with soil and seeds already potted and fertilized if you’re late in the season for gardening. These work well and many already have been started.
Whatever your urban situation, you’ll find options for gardening. Your garden might not be the biggest and might not provide the most produce, but just the act itself is a joy.
