Growing food in a small garden can produce a surprisingly big harvest, whether it’s on an urban balcony, in a tiny yard, or even on a countertop or windowsill.
It feels pretty special to learn and practice the timeless skill of growing your own food and to be able to eat fresh veggies right at home within seconds of picking them. You get to see the full life cycle of it, from seed to seedling, to harvesting and eating. And there’s something deeply comforting and reassuring when you know how to produce food for yourself.
It’s also just a great excuse to spend more time outside, and it gives you a deeper appreciation for all the work that goes into producing the food that we buy and eat every day. But gardening can be a bit intimidating, especially in a small space where you might have limitations on size, sunlight, rules, budget, or even just not knowing how to start.
We’ve been growing food on our urban balcony for the past 3 years and we’ve completely fallen in love with small space gardening. But it has been a steep learning curve and there has been a ton of work, research, and trial and error along the way.
So to give you a head start on your own gardening journey, we’re going to share some of our best tips and advice that we’ve learned so far from our experience, including, things we wish we’d known, how to get started, important things to consider, how to save money as you go, some pros and cons, and more!
When planning a garden, you should start by looking at what type of space you have to grow food, whether it’s a little yard or patch of ground, or maybe a balcony or a sunny windowsill and then you basically need to figure out how much direct sunshine that area gets during the day.
Growing sprouts doesn’t require any sun or soil so it’s definitely the easiest option to start with! They can be grown in glass jars or bowls, or in a dedicated sprouting tray, and you just need a strainer of some kind to be able to rinse and strain them every day. Some popular and tasty seeds for sprouting are broccoli, alfalfa, and mung beans. If you are gardening outside, the next step to think about is your soil! If you’re growing directly in the ground, you will probably want to add some compost to the soil to make sure that your plants have lots of nutrients. And if you’re growing in containers, you’ll want to create your own soil by mixing some outdoor potting mix with a bit of compost or organic fertilizer.
Picking which plants to grow is definitely the most fun part! Try picking a few things that you know you love to eat on a regular basis to make sure that you’ll get the most out of your garden! It’s easy to get carried away with wanting to grow a lot of different veggies but like with most things in life, starting small and simple is a good way to go.
Once you have your seeds or seedlings planted in your sun-drenched, nutrient-rich soil, you just have to water the plants regularly and watch them grow! One of the big questions we’ve been asking ourselves since we started growing food on the balcony is whether it is saving us any money compared to buying food from the grocery store.
The short answer is that in the first 3 years, we think it has cost more to grow our own food at home because we’ve been buying all of the containers and equipment we need, and because we were buying expensive seedlings and soil. Year 4 should be much cheaper! Even though we don’t grow all of our own food, we’ve been surprised by the big harvests that we get even from such a small space.
We shared a full tour of our balcony container garden last year if you want to check it out: • Growing TONS of FOOD in a Super Small Gard…
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