How to garden in your apartment

What can you grow in an apartment? It's a fair question. Having lived in one myself for the past five years, I can say that it's certainly nowhere near as easy to grow things here as it was when I lived at a house, or on a farm, or in my car for that matter…

If you're an apartment-dweller like me and you wish you could have more green in your life, here is what I recommend:

1. Read Apartment Gardening: This book is great. It walks through the basics of how to do most things to grow food in your apartment, from sprouting to growing things hanging out the window. My wife has used this book and vouches for the ideas.

2. Look at examples: This Pinterest gallery is one of many focused on the art and challenge of apartment gardening. It can be beautiful and rewarding, and you'll find photos that link to many of the blogs that document what's new in this small but wonderful community.

3. Blog yourself: It's free and easy to start a blog, and it will help motivate you to keep up with and record what you're doing with your efforts. Life on the Balcony is a great example of someone who took their own exploration of apartment gardening and turned it into a business.

4. Get your building involved: At our last apartment, my wife and I left flyers for everyone else in the building asking them to be part of a remake the backyard day. She secured new dirt and mulch from a local farm and set up delivery for it. It worked. We had more than a dozen people out back laying down cardboard, dirt, mulch and eventually planting food that later we all ate. It wouldn't have happened in one day if it weren't for all of us working together.

Image courtesy of Mink via flickr