Apartment Gardening

Do you long to grow a lush garden, but living in an apartment has you stumped on how to accomplish this without a backyard? Well, it is attainable to have an abundant garden just about anywhere, even when the apartment gardening footprint is small.

While it’s true that apartments have limited space to indulge, there are options to make a productive garden a reality. Check out our tips for bringing your apartment garden to life.

Indoor Gardens for Apartments

As an apartment dweller, you may have dabbled with a few houseplants and had some success. But living in an apartment does not mean that you are limited to only houseplants. Now that you’ve gained some confidence in your capabilities, you can even do more to expand your growing spaces, add diversity to your apartment gardening plant varieties, and increase your crop yields significantly.

Window Apartment Gardens

Use your windows to your advantage. Using indoor window boxes and harnessing the sunlight that beams in through the windowpanes can mimic a greenhouse. While your best chance for success when growing most vegetables takes place outdoors in full sun conditions, windowsills can be a premier spot for plants that require a bit less direct sunlight, such as lettuces, spinaches, and herbs.

Indoor Grow Lights

Indoor grow lights can further expand the growing possibilities for indoor apartment gardening. They provide the light needed to mimic the full-sun growing conditions that many high yielding plants need to be successful. They can be added to a windowsill garden to enable you to grow more sun-loving varieties or supply the UV rays for a stand-alone growing spot in any indoor space where electricity is present.

Shower Watering

Plants growing indoors in containers don’t have the benefit of a good soaking of rain. They rely on their gardeners to supply them with all the hydration that they need. In addition to watering cans, implement shower watering into your routine.

Ensure that your growing containers are manageable enough to move around easily, so they can reap the benefits of a nice deep shower watering. This is like a spa day for your plants and should be added to your apartment gardening care regimen once or twice a month.

A good shower for a few minutes gives plant roots a plentiful drink, clean off their leaves of accumulated dust, and keep the growing process running smoothly. After watering, leave them in the shower for a couple of hours so that any excess water can drain out of the pots and the foliage can adequately dry.

Outdoor Apartment Gardening for Beginners

Many edible plants like fruits and vegetables require full-sun conditions with some space to grow and spread. Unless you want your plants to overtake your indoor living space, you should probably assess any outdoor growing areas that you have available to you if you would like to plant several high-yielding plants.

Rooftop Apartment Gardening

Rooftops are often a viable option for apartment gardening. They can be hidden oases in urban areas that are often overlooked. They also require a myriad of vital considerations before embarking on this apartment gardening option, but they allow gardeners more space for their plants to thrive.

• Always check with your landlord before diving into setting up a rooftop garden. Some important factors come into play with rooftops like accessibility, fire and building height regulations, and structural integrity, to name a few.
• How easily will you be able to bring materials to the roof, and is there any garden hose access on your apartment’s rooftop?
• Are there weight restrictions to your apartment gardening rooftop? Considering the rooftop’s structural integrity before adding the weight of garden soil, water and pots are paramount. The weight of the container materials that you use can make a considerable difference.
• Consider nature’s elements of heat and wind. Heat can be considerable on an apartment rooftop, especially in the city where ambient heat is plentiful. You may have to consider how you will provide some shade for your rooftop plot.
• Watch closely to assess how the sun hits the apartment gardening rooftop plot. Other tall buildings can cast shadows, while the lack of tall buildings in the area may mean its direct sunlight all day. This will affect what kind of plants you plant here.

Apartment Balcony Garden

Use your balcony for outdoor apartment gardening. It is attainable to have a lush garden just about anywhere, even when an area’s footprint is small. A little ingenuity and creativity can go a long way. Look into hanging planters, pots with vine trellises, railing planters, and tiered planters, all of which can maximize space and yields considerably.

Vertical Apartment Gardening

Vertical apartment gardening can also significantly increase your yield, whether you are planting indoors or outdoors in small spaces. Utilizing vertical space means that you are not limited to the small square footage that an apartment balcony or a rooftop garden plot provides. It is a fantastic way for gardeners to use their growing area more efficiently. If done creatively, it can provide a highly sought-after privacy screen, surprisingly more space, lots of personalized charm, but most of all, more productivity.

Succession Planting an Apartment Garden

While it takes some additional planning, succession planting can also profoundly maximize the capabilities of your growing spaces. Succession planting means planting another crop right after a variety has matured. To do this effectively, you need to be aware of maturation dates and practice seed starting techniques at the appropriate times. This practice can be implemented with the same crop repetitiously or can be used to create diversity in the types of things that you can successfully grow in one space.

Apartment Vegetable Garden

Another idea that can yield great success for those embarking on an apartment gardening journey is to plant fewer plants with more production potential. One high-yielding plant can create an ongoing harvest of crops to satisfy your needs.

Try some of these stellar producers that will keep on giving well after their first harvestable yields:

• Leaf lettuce
• Tomatoes
• Cucumbers
• Bush Squash Varieties
• Peas

• Radishes
• Herbs
• Beans
• Peppers
• Eggplant

There is no need to limit yourself when it comes to growing plants while living in an apartment. Try one of these ideas or combine a few to get the most out of your apartment gardening endeavors. Your efforts will be well rewarded with basketfuls of homegrown goodness to sustain you and satisfy your green thumb cravings.

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