Apartment Gardening

For years I have tried to grow things in an apartment and failed. Usually small herb gardens in little pots that die halfway through the summer because they're not getting enough light or I forget to water them...or earwigs eat them in the night (yuck).

This year we are very lucky to live somewhere with a community garden. We got our plot rented and weeded and last weekend spent the afternoon planting the many fruits and vegetables that we acquired the day before. I even splurged for the frost protecting fabric because, as we are in Michigan, a frost or two in late April is bound to happen.

We ran into a snag though. In the excitement to be growing our own food and hungry bellies anticipating future fresh veggies and berries, we had far too many plants for a plot that became full fast. And we had bought seeds too, so there was no room for the seedlings. Alas! What shall we do?


Well we do in fact have a large deck, a happy feature of our humble abode three stories in the sky. So potted plants again, it seems. This year, however, we get full sun all day long. Previous apartments only got partial sun or none at all. Or we didn't even have a deck. So, this will be the year!

I still ran out of space after I found room for the remaining plants. A little online research and a trip to the dollar store later I had more pots and a plan to create my own upside-down planters for our extra tomato and strawberry plants. Just in time, it would seem, for the tomatoes, because they were not looking very happy in the pots I had them in originally but after just a day upside down they are already starting to fill out nicely.

To create the planters I bought some 12" already rigged pots with strings attached. I used a box cutter to cut a 2" square hole out of the bottom of the pot. I would have used a drill bit for a large hole but our drill's charger has gone missing. Luckily the cheaper plastic was easy to cut through. Using the gauzy frost-saving fabric I had left over I cut large squares and then slit a hole in the center of them and threaded the leaves of the plants through. After hanging the pots where I wanted them I threaded the plants upside-down through the hole, using the fabric to line the bottom of the planter. The point of the fabric is to prevent the soil from washing out of the hole.

After I had my upside-down plants set I filled the pot with soil and planted other plants on top. I'm experimenting with a few jalapeños in two, okra in another, and the fourth is cat grass and lavender (when it sprouts).