Apartment Gardening

[Mona HoodStudent]

I live in a small apartment without a yard or patio and would like to grow a variety of herbs, vegetables, etc.  If you are facing this same challenge, or know someone who is, I’d be interested to hear about creative ways you use in your home.

Thanks so much!

[SheilaStudent]

Hi Mona, its nice to hear that you are a brave adventurer and have the interest to take on indoor gardening. I live in an apartment and have about 15 min of sun light a day on my patio. Fortunately, we do have the option to rent small garden lots, so a lot of my growing is done outside.

Some things just do not survive the winters and so the original plan was to move things indoors during the winter.  I quickly learned some things burn just as quickly in the sun, when moved outside. That did not work as planned!

For indoor gardening, lighting options will be the most important first step. I did some research and learned that some LED grow lights were cheaper to use than my existing lighting. As such, they now replace a large portion of what I use, the added benefit is the plants can be added.

Growing vertical will also make good use of space. A lemon tree purchased a year ago has produced lemons for me.  Apparently, lemon tree is easily propagated from cuttings. This will be my winter experiment, this year! While not medicinal, I’ve even experimented with rooting pineapple, which did remarkably well.  Organic ginger will root and grow easily. If you have an old fish tank, that can easily be turned into a nursery or solarium for propagating. I use old, discarded plastic containers for holding plants to keep water from draining all over the apartment. One of the benefits of apartment life, one man’s trash is another’s treasure. And likewise, if the experiment fails, the item can just as easily be returned to the location from which it was found.

A lot of plants will propagate in water and live for a while. I had experimented with growing tomatoes cuttings in water. Surprising they did very well. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to explore what the fertilizer requirements were.  They easily grew tomatoes but I hit a wall and lost the plants at a specific and critical stage in their growth, simply because I just did not take the time to explore this farther. It was just easier to transplant them into the garden.

For the most part, many plants do well with sufficient light. However, with time they seem to wear down for me. I suspect that fertilization and maybe fresh potting soil in a larger pot would go a long way. Lack of water or over watering seems to be my downfall. Over time, scheduling a day of the week for maintenance has gone a long way to keep my indoor garden healthy.

It’s all trail and error, but like anything else, once you own it, it your’s!! Good luck.

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Rebecca Livermore

[Rebecca LivermoreStudent]

Nice to meet you, Sheila and Mona. My husband and I currently live in SoCal, with my 92-year-old mom. We own a condo in Colorado where we plan to move after my mom passes away. The condo does have two small north-facing balconies. Between them being north-facing, and Colorado winters, I don’t expect to be able to do much with the balconies, but I will grow what I can there, in containers. The complex also has a very small community garden (click the link to see a photo) – and I think I’ll only be able to grow a couple of plants there, since multiple people will sign up for garden space.

As such, even though we have a small yard now, I’m focusing on learning how to grow as much as possible indoors. I do a lot of hydroponics, using AeroGarden. Those are pricey, and yet super easy to use. Overtime, I’ve accumulated about 20 AeroGardens of different sizes. They will work well for many herbs, and anything not overly huge, as long as I plan to use just leaves, flowers, etc.  If you decide to go the AeroGarden route, I recommend the Harvest or Harvest XL models as good “all purpose” ones.  Depending on what you plan to grow, they are often sufficient from a height perspective. The Sprout is the smallest model, and not only has a small grow deck, the grow light is weaker, and the grow height is more limited. So unless that is your only option, I recommend skipping that model.

You will save money if you buy your own seeds and sponges, rather than buying their pre-seeded sponges. You will also have more variety that way, and be able to grow all types of plants.

If you don’t want to go the AeroGarden route, you can plant in containers, using grow lights. I don’t have much experience with that, since I’ve just mainly hydroponics.  There are a couple of good Facebook groups focused on indoor gardening that you might want to check out for inspiration and tips.

I believe that where there’s a will, there’s a way, and you can grow a lot indoors if you really put your mind to it.

Oh, one other thing – I do a lot of sprouting. They are the easiest thing to grow in an apartment since they don’t require any special lights or nutrients, and grow super fast. I use them in smoothies, on sandwiches, etc. So I haven’t used them for making tinctures and that sort of thing, but if you simply want to start growing something, sprouts take the least investment and take up the smallest amount of space. While you can use mason jar sprouters, I personally like the Stackable Sprout Garden (it’s green in color), because you can stack up to six trays and grow a lot in a tiny space. I like starting a new tray every day, and I have fresh sprouts to eat each day.

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Dan Skattum

[SharonStudent]

Hi Rebecca – too bad you didn’t purchase a south facing condo.  Our southern exposure here in our part of CO is INTENSE – it literally warms the house!  But for gardening, it’s the bomb.  If it’s doable, and the gardening is really important to you, perhaps you could “swap” your north facing condo for the same or very similar one with south facing.  You would be amazed at how much you could grow then.  Good for you for taking care of mom – more kiddos need to act like that.  We took care of my mom till she left us to be with her maker – and I wouldn’t trade a single day of all those years!

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Rebecca Livermore

[Rebecca LivermoreStudent]

Hi Sharon,

We actually have our eye on one of our neighbor’s condos. It has the south-facing balconies, and is the same size condo as ours. This is significant, because out of the 100 condos in the complex, there are only 6-8 that are the same size as ours. I am glad we bought ours, because they don’t come up very often, due to how rare they are.

The good news is, I have a lot of success with indoor hydroponics, and there is also a community garden in the complex that I definitely plan to sign up for. I will probably start a lot of things indoors to get a jump on things, and then transplant them outdoors in the community garden in June. Also, there are large planters in the courtyard, and I’m going to volunteer to plant some (medicinal) flowers in those. Also, there are sitting areas on each floor, and they are south-facing, with huge windows. They allow people to put plants in those area, as long as they get permission and take care of them. A lot of people were already growing things, but there is room for more. It will take a bit of experimentation to figure out what I can grow there, but I’m thinking herbs/greens will work.

Thankfully, it’s a very friendly community, and I have a lot of ideas for how to use the courtyard and some other community areas to grow things. I think a key will be being friendly, getting to know people, and then asking permission to add in some planters, and that type of thing. It’s a unique community in that people really make it home. As an example, one of my neighbors put up a ton of Christmas decorations in community areas. It was done very nicely, and she was able to do more decorating than she could in her condo. I think I can do the same thing with flowers. My idea is to focus on things that are beautiful, thus the focus on medicinal flowers, rather than something like plantain. 🙂 Done properly, it can be seen as beautifying the community spaces, and thus will likely be seen in a positive way.

I’m glad you were able to take care of you mom. It isn’t always easy, but I know that we’ll definitely be glad we did it.

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