Container gardening is a great way for city dwellers to have their own home-grown food source in a small space. All you need is a deck, a roof garden, or a tiny patch of well-lit space to start your own small garden. To learn the basics, we attended a session with Merill Smith, from Chicago's City Farm. Get ready for growing season!
What You Need
Materials
- The planters Merrill uses are made from recycled 2x4s with a plastic screen lining the bottom. She lines the screen with newspaper or burlap, so the soil doesn't fall through. A wine crate is another great option.
- For herbs and lettuce, a planter with a larger surface area and shallow roots in about 2-4 inches of soil will create a higher yield. Tomatoes require a deeper planter. (Merrill uses a plastic bucket lined with burlap and filled with compost.)
- The materials for Merrill's planters came from the ReBuilding Exchange, an organization that works with contractors to recycle materials from demolitions and renovations.
- The compost Merrill uses comes from City Farm, a sustainable vegetable farm between the Gold Coast and Cabrini Green. They sell compost to the public for $5 per bucket.
- The seeds and sprouts shown above also came from City Farm.
- Merrill sells her Green Box (the large version shown above) through City Farm for $75, $50 of which goes to the farm.
Tools:
- Planter that provides aeration for roots
- 2-4 inches of good soil (high-quality compost is best)
- Seeds or sprouts
- Sunlight (most herbs and vegetables require a couple hours of full sun per day)
- Water
- Hand-held garden cultivator (claw)
Instructions
- Choose what you're going to grow. Good options for container gardening include herbs such as basil, sage, and mint; red and green lettuce; and tomatoes.
- Purchase or build your container. For herbs and lettuce, it should be a shallow container with a large surface area and a screened bottom that allows the roots to aerate. For tomatoes, use a deeper container, such as a bucket. (See "resources" above for details.)
- Find a sunny spot for your herbs and vegetables. Herbs and lettuce need at least a couple hours of good sun per day; tomatoes need full sun.
- Fill the container with 2-4 inches of compost soil. If you're planting sprouts, make sure to give them a few inches of space around the roots. If you're planting seeds, scatter the seeds evenly across the planter.
- Keep a couple of containers of each plant going at once, so that when you've clipped one plant, you have another one ready for your next meal.
- Water your plants regularly. Herbs should have somewhat damp soil—don't let your shallow planters dry out. Tomatoes, on the other hand, are easy to over-water. Feel the soil before you water them. If it's moist, wait until it's dry before watering. Water around the base of the plant, rather than through the leaves.
- Use a hand-held garden cultivator (a claw) to aerate the surface soil without disturbing the roots too much.
- Herbs and lettuce take about 2-3 weeks to grow from a sprout into enough to cook with. If you keep a couple of containers going, you can cultivate/reseed/replant every 2 weeks to keep a constant supply going.
- To harvest your plants, use scissors to snip the leaves or vegetables. Snip the leaves around the base of the plant first, so that it will continue to grow and fill out.
- At the end of the growing season, you can store your compost soil. Next year, turn your soil over and reseed it for a new crop.
Tips for Herbs, Lettuce, and Tomatoes:
- Lettuce: Lettuce is a good cool-weather crop; its growing season lasts until the end of October. Lettuce goes through a sweet phase before it turns bitter. Before you clip it, try a little to make sure it tastes good.
- Tomatoes: Tomatoes need full sun and a deep pot. They don't like lots of rain or over-watering. For a strong tomato, you want to see full leaves before the tomatoes sprout. (See above sections for more details.)
- Basil: Basil is a fairly easy herb to grow. Space the sprouts/seeds evenly when you plant it to give it enough room (see photo #1 for an example). As it grows, clip any "flowers" before the plant goes to seed.
- Cilantro: Like basil, cilantro "flowers" should be clipped before the plant goes to seed. It requires plenty of drainage for the roots.
- Mint: Mint grows like a weed, and should be planted in its own, separate container so that it doesn't overtake other plants.
- Arugula: Arugula does better in cool areas than most herbs or vegetables. It works well on a shadier porch, but it still needs some full sun every day.
Additional Notes:
- For more information about City Farm (at Clybourne and Division), click here.
- For more about the Green Grocer (at Grand and Noble), click here.
- For more about ReBuilding Exchange (3335 West 47th), click here.
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I made 3 container boxes this year and my lettuce and arugula has already bolted! I've heard a good tip is to put cool-weather crops (like the arugula/lettuce) in between a trellis so they're shaded and it keeps them from bolting longer. But I'll have to give that a try next year!
i always suggest these on these threads, and not trying to sound like an advertisement, but i recommend agardenpatch.com
i bought one, and have grown for 2 years in it. It is big, i have 2 tomatoes, basil, red pepper, and a trellis full of peas in it.
It is self watering. it has a 4 gallon reservoir in the bottom. Even with al of that planted, and even though the tomatoes are 3' high (even being container variety), it still takes a few days to use it's water. Plus you can leave on a trip and not worry.
You just have to use a potting mix, not soil, so that it wicks the water better.
it works amazing. my wife is a vegetarian and i grow a ton of her food this way. Right now just waiting for things to ripen, tons of toms and peppers waiting for their time.
University of Maryland Cooperative Extension has great publication with diagrams and directions for building and planting 'salad tables' that are similar to the above: http://www.hgic.umd.edu/_media/documents/hg601.pdf
Can the lettuce and herbs grown indoors? What suggestions are there for tackling this task and also what precautions should be made for water overflow? Thank you for your tips!
side note: if you're using wooden containers, you should line the inside with plastic so that the repeated watering doesn't cause the wood to warp or rot.
alys fowler's garden anywhere is such an awesome resource for the beginning gardener (it's also beautifully designed!), and it pointed that out before i planted all my window boxes. do i ever appreciate it! now they are around for another season rather than breaking up in soggy pieces.
Good tip, happyfarmr.
I have been to a lecture by master gardeners associated with the Extension, they actually built a salad table and some other easy to do projects.
What other veggies might I be able to grow, besides lettuce and tomatoes?
I'm moving to an apartment with a sunroom and I'd like to take advantage of it. Are bell peppers difficult to grow? What about carrots? Onions or shallots?
Any tips would be appreciated.
thank you so much for this.
Check out instructables.com or a ton of container gardening ideas....also, neglect not old gutters- for they can make a great green wall-container garden. I've also seen them used as a summer shade for a porch when fully grown.
I did this last year in San Francisco with 3 large pots from Ikea. I invested about 75 bucks in materials and then a few minutes a day tending to things. I planted french onions, beets, carrots, radishes, buttercrunch lettuce and little gems lettuce. I got a few dozen amazing radishes out of it. The lettuce was too cramped so I got a few salads out of the thinnings before it succumbed to rot. The beets and carrots never really became full size beets and carrots but I ate the little miniature guys anyway - full of flavor. I have no clue how big the onions were supposed to get - they were small, like miniature green onions, but purple.
The big lesson I learned is to give the plants space. I started from seed and it was exciting to imagine the bounty when planting those tiny seeds and go overboard. That is fine with seeds but be prepared to pull out more than half your "babies" once the sprouts have established themselves. It's painful, but much less painful that pulling out your whole crop that never matured or rotted.
@saltpoint,
I grew orange bell peppers last summer in a container. They were pretty low maintenance. Just make sure you stake them or they'll fall over when they get bigger.
@saltpoint,
you can basically grow anything inside as long as you stick to these 5 basic rules:
1. water regularly
2. plants get enough sun (at least 4 hours)
3. make sure they get enough nutrients from the soil
4. the roots have enough room (depth of pot/container)
5. the leaves have enough room (width)
If you google container veg gardening or soemthing similar you'll find loads of ideas, from potatoes in old garbage containers, to tomatoes in boots and vertical veg gardening in guttering!
Too funny, I think AT can read my mind--I just started my container garden this weekend using random containers from our backyard and a few big rubbermaid roughneck bins and potting mix. I also bought an aerogarden and one of those mini greenhouse seed-starter sets to start my seedlings inside. I hope they work!
Basil loves sun and warmth, and gets trickier to grown in northern climates, like here in Minnesota. Large bunches of basil are sold at Farmer's Market's for $2-3, so I never thought it worth the trouble. But I love having a rosemary plant. Just brushing the leaves with the tips of my fingers gives off a soothing aroma.
Check out the Urban Worm's UrBin Grower. It's a really great container garden perfect for apartment dwellers. And super easy to use with a self watering method. Enjoy!
www.theurbanworm.com