When I moved to a major city over a decade ago and set up shop in a tiny windowless apartment, I surrendered myself to the reality that having a lush edible garden at my fingertips probably wouldn’t happen anytime soon.
However, if you ask Che Cooper, the community horticulturalist and urban agriculturalist for The New York Botanical Garden’s Bronx Green-Up program , creating vegetative green spaces in city dwellings is totally possible and doesn’t require a lot of tools.
Cooper’s mission with the Bronx Green-Up program is to create and beautify shared spaces through greening projects, education and community gardens. This often means growing plants and vegetables in less-than-ideal environments and with limited space or resources.
“Milk crates, grow bags, and planters provide an easy and simple way for individuals to start an edible garden. As long you’re growing in a medium that is nutrient-rich and has adequate pore space and drainage, plants should thrive,” Cooper told HuffPost.
He added that any movable container that can be used season after season is a sufficient starting-off point, whether you’re working with a small indoor space or minimal outdoor area. Just be sure to refrain from growing on fire escapes, which could be a potential safety hazard.
“Balconies and in the home can be perfect places to grow plants. Depending on environmental factors, you will be limited by what you can grow and the rate of growth,” Cooper said.
It can be a culinary luxury to have fresh herbs growing on your window sill or tender bunches of bib lettuce right outside your door. But for Cooper, growing your own sustenance is so much more than feeding your body. It can also feed your soul.
“Gardening is very liberating for the mind,” he said. “The relationship between plants and humans is symbiotic. When actually working with plants, we have the power of life in our hands. We understand [that] we can give or take life and by giving life to plants, plants give us life in return.”
Just ahead you can find more mini-gardening tips from Cooper, plus some essentials and recommendations for plants that grow well in a variety of spaces whether it be a designated corner of your kitchen or a tiny apartment balcony.
Cooper assured us that “you should never be discouraged, as the first person who ever thought to grow plants had few, if any tools.”
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This compact and hand-held set contains six different essential gardening tools at an affordable price. Each tool is fitted with a soft ergonomic handle and high-carbon steel heads that are resistant to rust.
This three-chambered living composter contains two sections that house worms for composting as well as a reservoir base that collects nutrient-dense "compost tea," which is an excellent additive when watering house or garden plants. This durable and UV-resistant composter can tolerate direct sunlight for quicker composting, and features 52 angled migration tunnels for worms to transfer between bases.
This version does require vermicomposters (worms) to break down food scraps, and you can get those on Amazon, too, for $24.95 . You will also need to layer worm bedding ($10.49 at Amazon) prior to adding the worms. Then you sprinkle them with water and gradually add food scraps until the contents have turned to mealy, soil-like fertilizer. You can also collect compost tea using the convenient spout at the base.
Just add water to activate the powerful biologicals created by worms, along with peptides, amino acids and yeast, to create bigger garden yields and increase root mass. One pound of this instant formula can create up to 160 gallons of compost tea.
The base of each pot has a soil separator to maintain air circulation for the roots, as well as drainage holes that allow excess water to trickle down to the plants below them. Altogether, the structure can hold up to 15 different plants and is resistant to cracks and fading so it can be used year after year.
This specially selected salad mix contains seeds that rapidly flourish into four different kinds of microgreens like organic alfalfa, radish and broccoli sprouts. You can also purchase a soil-free sprouting container if you don't want to grow the microgreens traditionally.
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