With food prices climbing almost daily, more and more people are turning to home-grown vegetables and herbs to reduce their overall food budgets. It’s a great idea, too; starting your own garden costs relatively little compared to the gains you’ll reap and most of your expense comes in the form of sweat while tending your food plants. Having a garden of your own helps you be more self-sufficient and allows you to insulate yourself, at least partly, from food price inflation.
Unfortunately, not everyone is free to have a garden of your own. For those living in apartments, it’s unlikely you have the right to access the land directly and community gardens are reportedly fully-reserved at least 3 years in advance. And people owning their own homes are sometimes prevented from building a garden of their own by local ordinances or by subdivision covenants. It’s a shame that these people are forced away from the freedom to grow their own food - or so it would seem.
In response to the plight of the apartment dweller or the burdened home owner, some nurseries now stock “dwarf” variants of some of your favorite vegetable plants. These plants have been designed through selective breeding to grow in a sturdy and sometimes self-supporting bush that can be raised in a pot at home. Through the hard work of these growers, now almost everyone is able to grow at least some of their food at home.
Due to some uncertainty about the covenant for our subdivision, I have held off on building my “dream” garden. But that hasn’t kept me from preparing my own small container garden on my deck. At Lowe’s I found a tomato plant and a cucumber plant for just over $5 each earlier this season. When I bought them a month and a half ago they were only a few inches tall and you can clearly see the tremendous growth they have realized in that short time.
My tomato plant started putting out flowers pretty early and it wasn’t long before the first little bulbs of new tomatoes appeared. Now I have three that are of decent size with at least eight more on the way. I suspect, if this plant stays healthy, I’ll probably harvest at least $30 worth of tomatoes this year. I can’t wait until I get to bite into the first BLT this year with a slice of one of my own tomatoes.
My cucumbers, on the other hand, started off a bit slower. The vines grew very fast, producing huge leaves, but I didn’t see a single flower until a week and a half ago. Since then, the flowers have multiplied numerous times and I guess by now there are at least 30 blooms on there waiting to become crunchy cucumbers for my salads. The plant has grown so well that I’ve run out of places for the vines to hang onto. I even had to move it away from the side of my deck because it started to grab onto the rungs of the railing.
Nearly anyone can grow their own mini-garden in containers at home, but there are some concerns you need to be aware of:
Fruit-bearing plants need at least 6 hours a day of full sunlight for best growth. If you don’t have a deck or porch, it may be hard to give the plants as much light as they would like. Keeping these plants indoors would require you to leave your blinds open, which might help your plants but could cost you more in electric bills than what you would gain in food savings.
Plants like cucumbers are always thirsty. If you miss a day of watering, prepare to be greeted with wilting leaves. If you miss a whole weekend, the plant may end up looking like a day-old plate of soggy salad. Containers can’t hold nearly as much water as an in-ground garden, so make sure to ask someone to plant-sit if you’re going to be gone for any longer than a day.
Flowering plants have to be pollinated to produce fruit. If you choose to leave these plants indoors, you’re unlikely to find any insects or wind to do your pollination work for you. That means you’ll have to do the work that nature would have done for you. Shake the plant moderately at least once a day to help move the pollen around. If that doesn’t get your plant producing, gently swirl the inside of each flower with a cotton swab. To replicate the benefits of a light breeze, place a quiet oscillating fan near your plants and set it to low.
Container gardening is an easy way to ease into growing your own food. Whether you’re not comfortable with the effort and expense to build a full-sized garden or if you do not have free access to the land necessary for a garden, a container can be your best food-providing friend. From herbs to tomatoes to apple trees, nearly all your food favorites can be grown at home in containers.
Find your green thumb and get growing!
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I had a container garden for years and loved it. I grew a number of different veggies, but my favorite thing to grow was herbs. There is nothing like walking out on your back deck and picking a bit of fresh basil to put on homegrown tomatoes or chopping some chives to put on farmer’s market potatoes.
You are right about the watering though - my garden always took tons of water, so be sure to look for drought hardy varieties.