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Have you been thinking about starting an urban garden but you’re not sure where to start? I’m sure this guide will help you on your journey to achieving your sustainable urban garden!
Vertical urban gardens
There are many option’s when it come’s to a vertical garden. You will need to determine which option is best for you!
First you’ll need to determine where you want to place your vertical garden, outside or inside? there are different application’s you can use for both.
If you’re going to be placing it inside you’ll need to make sure the area gets ample sunlight. If sunlight is unavailable for the area that you want, you can always go with UV lighting.
You can use old pallet’s by taking apart the pallet and using the plank’s to mount to the wall, then attach your bucket’s or pot’s to the plank.
You can also use 2 Liter pop bottle’s, by cutting out a horizontal section in the middle of the bottle, you can place soil in the bottle and mount the bottle sideways on the wall.
If you’re going to build your vertical garden outside, you can easily cover up a wall that is just an eye sore. You’ll want to build a frame and mount it to the side of the wall, then using bucket’s or pot’s, attach those to the frame and then you have a pleasant view to look at.
Raised bed’s are another great way to set up your garden. You can either buy a frame that you can just assemble, or you can build your own like in the picture below.
Photo taken by Kerstin Namuth
Indoor gardening ideas
If you have wide window sill’s, that would be the perfect spot to place your plant’s. You can use small wide planters like in the picture above, or use a planter.
If your window sill’s are very slim, you can make your own shelf to place at the window. You can pick up the part’s to do that very cheap. All you need is a board that is the length of your window by about a foot in width, two or three sturdy shelf support bracket’s and some screw’s. You can use just about any screw, but I love using deck screw’s for everything, they hold up very well.
Make sure that you measure the length of your window so you’ll know just how long you need the board cut. When you are mounting the shelf support bracket’s to the wall, be sure to place them over the stud’s. You can pick up a stud finder that also check’s for electrical wiring for fairly cheap. Of course you can always just use the old method of knocking on the wall.
For those that don’t know that method, you basically just know on the wall, going down the length of the wall and listening for the sound. If you hearing a hollow sound, then the stud isn’t there. You will hear a distinct sound and the wall will feel solid. Now using this method isn’t always accurate especially if you’re trying to center the stud, and of course you will not know if there are any electrical wires that you’re about to drill into. So a stud finder
is great to have.
You can also use the 2 liter bottle method I mentioned before, but instead of hanging them up, you can simply cut them out the same in the middle and just use the bottom of the bottle for the soil and just have the bottles upright.
Mason jar’s are great to use as well. Although if you’re going to be canning what you produce, you might not want to waste your jar’s for this purpose.
Apartment balcony garden
If the only place you have to set up a garden is your balcony, then you’re in luck! Depending on the size of your balcony, you can do a small raised bed garden, terrabox planter, or regular clay pot’s to use.
If you have a lot of wind you might need to put something up to block the wind, but not block the sun.
You can also go with a vertical garden or hanging planter’s!
One design I found looked almost like a step-ladder, it would just lean against the wall. You would slide the flower bin’s down into groove’s that matched up with the bin’s to center them. It was quite intriguing!
I will be going more in depth on gardening in the future and explain why you should go with heirloom seed’s. If you have found this information helpful, don’t forget to share it, also if you want to receive our Newsletter, you can sign up by clicking the Newsletter button at the top of the page!