Food Sustainability at Home: Urban Gardening in Your Apt or House

Have an apartment? Any kind of place to stay for an extended (more than a few weeks) period of time? 

 

Try growing some of your own food.

 

Some foods are honestly just pleasurable AND expensive, like fresh basil. A few leaves for $4 at a grocery store IF it doesn't have damaged leaves or other issues. Or an entire plant is $4... if you know what to look for at the garden centre so you don't accidentally pick a diseased plant. An increasingly difficult endeavor, it seems! But it's so much cheaper to grow certain things if you have a stable address expected to last 1 year or more. It's also pretty easy to learn tips and start with just one or two plants. 

There is no need for a whole garden. No one is competing for a magazine cover, here.

URBAN GARDENING: Gardening in the City

Protip: some foods aren't worth growing from home. These are your subsidized foods that need a lot of special work for low return, like carrots, potatoes, or corn. It's cheaper to buy them than grow them. Other plants, however, are very expensive compared to how much you might eat! These are your herbs like basil, mint, oregano, green onions, strawberries, etc. 

 

You don't have to start all from seed. Some can be started from cuttings and grocery store scraps.

 

These are some low-cost container ideas you might already have around: plastic waste like food cartons and milk jugs, egg cartons, etc. There's no reason to spend money on pots! And lots of people will give seeds or cuttings for free! Some even come with your usual grocery shopping, like the ends of green onions.

 

Seed starting + containers (link)

 

Growing food from cuttings + grocery scraps (link)

 

There are lots of systems like Aspara and others that have a light, water tank, and auto-watering system that runs on an electric cord and seed pods. Most quality ones run $150-300. They take the guesswork out of indoor herb gardening. 

 

Also, LED plant lights are available right next to other light bulbs at Walmart for around $5-8. My current garden is on shelving units, resting on top of an old shower curtain (to prevent water/dirt from getting on the utility closet ground). Every plant is in pots. 

 

For the cheap black nursery pots, which have large holes, I have found that plastic liners in the bottom is not great for the plants because the pots can't drain anymore or disperse excess water. However, newspaper seems fine AND it prevents dirt from coming out. 

 

Google or search Youtube for "urban gardening", "apartment gardening", or "grow food at home." Related searches might help, too. Many videos now exist for FREE to show you how to do things, and there are downloadable and printable tutorials online to get you started. Don't forget to use your free local library card to check out digital and in-person library books on the subject to help, too.

 

COMMUNITY GARDENS

Don't have space, time, ability, or skills/confidence to garden at home? 

 

Call or message a community garden! (link) Community gardens often trade food for service but may be able to work with you, depending on situation. We have an entire separate post about Community Gardens in Tampa.

Get plants! Trade plants! Volunteer. Learn things. Get help from people who know best!