When you live in an apartment without a backyard it can be hard not to have garden envy, especially if you are endowed with a green thumb. Reader and condo dweller Laura didn't let this stop her and instead took a cue from an Apartment Therapy post last year on gutter gardening to grow this gorgeous lettuce.
As Laura can tell you, there's something so satisfying about growing your own food and it seems to taste doubly good. And your kids will love watching lettuce (or herbs or other vegetables) go from seed to sprout to salad. (Young kids, obviously, should be supervised on a balcony).
See more of Laura's gutter garden experiment (including a bump in the road and how she overcame it) at Half a Yard.
(Re-edited from a post originally published on 6.16.2010 - CM)
(Image: Half a Yard)
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This is adorable, but it looks like it would allow for about 1 salad every 45 days. As a practical suggestion, with this method it might be better to plant herbs, so a little would go a long(er) way. Put a few healthy basil plants in there, some parsley, chives, sage, thyme, etc. and you'd have the makings to perk up many dishes with home grown ingredients throughout the growing season. Much more bang for your buck that way....
Genius!
This is brilliant - I totally love it!!!
Wow! Laura, you and M, have an awesome blog! Keep up the amazing work! So much for cleaning out my gutters-- just re-use all that soil for some delicious Farmer's Market produce!
aka Hottie from back in the day:)
I love it! hyzen you would be surprised at how quickly it grows, my son and I cannot eat too much lettuce from the plants we have.
Here is my gutter garden
http://www.redesigndiva.com/2010/05/green-chile.html
We have lots of dif. types of lettuce, and unless you only eat salad for every meal, this is plenty trust me.Besides it makes no waste in our home when it comes to throwing out wilted lettuce or spinach.
Great post, nice blog!
When it rains though, wouldn't the downspout clog up? I feel like this could be a good way to anger a landlord.
Bradical, she repurposed a gutter as a planter on her balcony railing - she's not planting in her actual functional gutters.
@HYZEN, I used to have a tiny patch of lettuce on my deck, and yeah, it basically only provided toppings for batch of burgers every now and then. A salad would have been out of the question.
Unfortunately, my deck is too sunny, and come August, the delicate lettuce got pretty tough. I worry about this little garden since it seems to be on a pretty exposed side of the building.
I did this last year with peas...worked really well, even though I had to water every day. It gave us peas as well as porch privacy :)
@ hyzen - recently my family grew 5 big lettuces which we would pluck as needed. Those lettuces fed us for over two months and we are a family of 6! (given we didnt eat salad every day more like 2-3 times a week with plenty of other things added to stretch it. My neighbour also plucked a leaf for her sandwiches every few days. They can go a long way. This is a great idea I might try.
Glad to see this. We found weeds growing in our real gutters today. Now we know it can look good if we do it on purpose attached to our deck.
Gutters have a purpose - now you are blocking the purpose. How moronic are you?
@GREENWOODGAL, not as moronic as you, it would seem. She bought a piece of gutter at a hardware store and hung it from her balcony railing specifically for planting -- it is not one of the building's function gutters.
facepalm
This is a gutter re-purposed. It is not being used as a gutter. The lettuce is what the author chose to grow, it is not mandatory. The idea is brilliant. I can see strawberries, herbs, spinach or just flowers, any of which would look stunning.
http://www.ahahomeandgarden.com/garden/how-to-make-a-hanging-gutter-garden/
LOL! Look at the picture! The gutter is not being used as an actual water gutter.
However, the weight of the soil, plants and feeding water adds up. I do hope it's mounted securely.
And, while it may be a nice touch from the point of view from within the apartment, I doubt it looks good from the street. Have you ever seen gutters full of plant growth? It's not acceptable.
I certainly understand wanting to have a garden! And I give the poster high marks for creativity and execution
My preference would be to fashion a proper lightweight planter box to hang from the railing that matches the style/decor of the building. It could be made/assembled fairly cheaply from low cost materials found at the local hardware/home store. Plastic, narrow planter boxes that could be used in this application are readily available.
@TECHNUT, while it may be a nice touch from the point of view from within the apartment, I doubt it looks good from the street. Have you ever seen gutters full of plant growth? It's not acceptable.
I can't imagine that it looks much different from any other planting boxes that hang from balcony railings.