Indoor Vegetable Gardens: Tips Gardening in an Apartment.
Apartment dwelling has its advantages, but one of the major disadvantages
that apartment dwellers often bemoan is the lack of a yard for gardening.
For those who like to live green by growing their own vegetables, living in
an apartment seems especially difficult.
But apartment dwellers ought not fear: there are still plenty of creative ways to grow
a vegetable garden inside an apartment.
Growing on the Apartment.
Patio If the apartment has a patio that gets at least four or five hours of direct
sunlight per day, the apartment patio will be the best place to get a garden started.
Apartment patios usually have some sort of railing around them, as well, which makes
them great for growing vegetables that need a little structural help – tomatoes, pole
beans, and cucumbers can all utilize the railings and trellises of the patio to grow.
By utilizing the patio railings for the necessary structural support for these
vegetables, the need for a supporting cage is eliminated and using the
space already available is maximized.
Creative Vegetable “Pots”.
Since growing vegetables in an apartment require containers anyway, save money on
pots and use materials already available.
The creative gardener sees large empty juice bottles, empty milk jugs, and
clamshell pre-washed salad containers as opportunities for growing vegetables.
By cutting off the top and punching a few small holes in the bottoms
of these containers for drainage, they immediately become excellent
containers for growing vegetables.
Grow Salad Greens in Salad Containers.
Clamshell pre-washed salad containers, for example, are the perfect size
and shape for growing salad greens.
To transform these rectangular plastic boxes into lettuce pots, make gashes in
the bottom for drainage (or punch small holes), then put in two inches of soil
and sprinkle in about 25 lettuce seeds.
The seeds should be barely covered by the soil, and once they’ve been planted,
give them a generous amount of water.
Put the salad box lid back on, and put the containers under a grow light
or in a sunny spot in the apartment.
When the sprouts start to break the surface of the soil, remove the lid
and place it underneath the boxes to serve as a drainage container.
If using a grow light, give the salad about twelve hours of light per day.
Grow Sprouts in the Kitchen.
Another creative container for indoor gardens is a hemp bag for growing sprouts.
All sorts of sprouts – from alfalfa sprouts to adzuki bean sprouts – can
be grown quite easily and in just a few days, right on the kitchen counter.
To use a hemp bag for growing sprouts, thoroughly soak the seeds first,
then dump them into a wet hemp bag.
Hang the bag somewhere to drain and dry.
If glass jars are more readily available, soak the seeds and place them in the
jar, and cover the jar with cheesecloth.
In just a few days, the will be ready to eat.
Herbs Are Easy to Grow Indoors.
A good place to start with indoor vegetable garden is herbs.
Herbs don’t need much space in terms of their containers, and they are
happy to grow inside in a windowsill.
While popular indoor vegetable garden herbs include chives, basil, and
rosemary, garlic and cilantro are both relatively easy to grow, too.
Herbs need containers that are about six inches in diameter, and when
planting more than one herb plant in a container, make sure they are
planted at least an inch apart.
Using Grow Lights.
What to do if the apartment simply doesn’t get enough sunlight to
grow an indoor vegetable garden.
When the apartment windows just don’t face the right way, or the sunlight
they do let in isn’t strong enough, an indoor vegetable garden can still
be accomplished by using grow lights.
What is a grow light.
A grow light is a high-output light bulb that provides plants with enough
warmth and light to imitate the sun.
While using a grow light for an indoor vegetable garden is definitely second
choice after the sun, in some apartments using a grow light is the only possibility.
Grow lights can be found at hardware stores or can be purchased
online from a variety of vendors.
LED grow lights, which use less electricity, are becoming increasingly popular for
the green-conscious, but overall the reviews on these lights are not as good as
traditional metal halide grow light bulbs.
Using No Light At All.
Another “vegetable” that is easy to grow indoors and requires no
light at all is the mushroom.
Mushrooms, including shiitake mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, and reiki mushrooms,
are fairly low-maintenance once they get started, and can easily be grown inside
in room temperature with very little light – in fact, mushrooms are happiest
when they don’t have too much light.
With a log “planted” with mushrooms, some moisture, and a shady spot indoors,
gourmet mushrooms can be grown at a fraction of the expense they cost to buy.
Apartment dwellers don’t have live without a vegetable garden.
In fact, the creativity required for growing an indoor vegetable
garden can be lots of fun for the gardener who is up to the challenge.