The Long Walk Back

What all do you grow? and how can I grow stuff in my own apartment if I don’t have access to a yard?

Someone is asking about my garden?????

I have been waiting for this day… for this question!!!!!

Obviously I grow some lettuce, but I’ve planted spinach, rocket, and a mico-lettuce mix as well as normal green/red leaf lettuce.  

Herbs - thyme, basil, parsley, rosemary, mint, oregano, (and have now planted seeds for) dill weed and cilantro. 

Veggies - 2 tomato plants in the corner of the parking lot.  2 cucumber plants, red onions (which I use the green part as chives), garlic…

aaaaaaand I think that’s it this year.  It’s a smaller garden because we’re leaving half way through the summer, so we only planted quick growing veggies.

How did all this get started?  A few things - the balcony is a metal one that let’s sun through.  Our landlord is awesome and let us dig up a corner of the gravel parking lot.  But the big thing that started us was that we couldn’t find a lot of herbs in the grocery stores here… and things got out of control, hehe.  We learned, mostly, from youtube videos on how to grow certain veggies.

I first bought a bunch of plastic bins from a second hand store - the kind you keep in your closet, and I bought old cleaning buckets too.  I melted small holes in the bottom (with a lighter), put a thin layer of gravel (from the parking lot, haha, don’t tell!) in the bottom.  The I biked home bags upon bags of heavy-ass potting soil from the store and mixed them with dirt from the parking lot.  That was the hardest part, and took all of one day (Chris did help though).  Then my “garden” was ready to be planted.  I use a spoon from the kitchen to dig stuff and an old water pitcher to water the plants.  I usually water them every other day, it takes about 15 - 30 mins.

I’d say, for an apartment with a normal balcony, you could get 3 or 4 square pots and still have use of the balcony.  Make sure the spot gets at least 2 hours of sun.  The other thing is, when you water, make sure people’s clothes aren’t hanging outside below you (the water drips down if you don’t have pans under the pots).  Another thing in a big city that might work is the flat roof, if you have access to it.

Seriously, if you can do it - DO IT!!  It turns your apartment into an oasis.  I think the easiest things to grow are herbs, micro-lettuce & red leaf lettuce (spinach in the spring), tomatoes (but they’ll get big), and cucumbers (you might have to tie them along the railing).

Here’s my balcony from last year in the spring, you can see the containers and buckets I used:

And here is what it looks like full grown in the middle of summer (from the other end of the balcony):

And here’s the parking lot garden in the middle of summer last year:

And here’s a “harvest” from the garden (last summer):

OMG, now I’m so excited about this summer!  I wish I had all summer to garden and not just half :(  But one of the things I’m looking for in apartments back home is the same style of balcony, or access to a roof!