How to Grow Own Food in A Small Space
Introduction
Do you want to grow your own food but have limited space? Do we need a sunny backyard? Luckily it is much easier than you think and it is totally doable in a city apartment. Let’s see how you can start growing your own food at home today!
What you will learn:
- The benefits of growing own food
- How to grow with only a small amount of space
- How to grow own food in different spaces
Growing own food has many benefits
While we can buy ready to eat, washed and cut vegetables in stores, why should we bother growing them ourselves? There’re very fundamental things about lives we tend to forget in our modern life and growing lives can remind these. By realizing that oxygen made by plants is vital to our body, you know what you should do live healthy.
Connect with nature
Growing your own food is a way to connect with nature, a way of being more aware and mindful. You will find yourself looking at the world around you differently. For example, you will notice the connection between the weather, soil quality, and the growth of plants.
It's especially true for children. They tend to be more sensitive to the world around them and care about what happens in a deeper way than most adults do.
If you are growing them outdoor, you will also see many species involved. Bees and other insects come to perinate, worms improve nutrients in the soil, or ladybirds eats little bugs. They work all together to create the natural harmonious process.
Encourage healthy eating habits
Growing your own food is a great way to learn about healthy eating habits. You can start by planting a few herbs or vegetables in a pot, and eventually work up to larger plots or ground.
Growing your own food helps you become more aware of what is going into your meals. And, even if you don’t naturally eat fresh vegetable often, you will eat what you grow because you looked after it and you don’t want to waste it.
Ethical food sources
Do you know where your food came from, how they were grown, and how much resources and efforts were put in? Not many of us know what it’s like to be a farmer nowadays. It is convenient that we don’t need to be a farmer, but we should be interested to know for many reasons. And you will find how unrealistic to have the perfect looking fresh vegetables and fruits all around a year.
There are many reasons why growing your own food is an ethical food source:
- You know exactly where your food comes from – The strawberry you bought from a shop may have been traveled a long distance by air so that you can have it to decorate a cake in winter
- You'll save resources – You might have spent more money to grow a bunch of lettuce that buying from a shop. But you helped a lot to save our resources such as water, soil, and energy. The price of food in stores is cheap because they don’t include a lot of real costs.
- You'll have more control over what you eat – You don’t need to consume pesticides or toxic contaminants. You know what you used to grow the food.
- You'll reduce food waste – Did you know one third of all food produced globally is lost or wasted while there are many people struggling to have enough food? Food thrown in landfills also releases methane that is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
How to grow food in a tiny space
You may not have much space to put a garden bed or big pots. But it is still possible to grow vegetables and fruits in a small indoor space.
Small city apartment without a balcony
To grow healthy produce indoors, water regularly, ventilate well, and make sure plants get enough sunlight. Either too wet and too dry will kill the plant and everyday care is needed.
What you can do:
- Water plants until the soil in their pots or flats feels saturated. Pick them up to feel how heavy they are before and after watering, so you have a sense of when your plant is hydrated enough. If the pot looks powdery, it's too dry!
- Fresh air and natural light are best for ventilation and lighting, of course. But grow lights or rotating fans can also be effective in small spaces—just make sure the plants barely move when you use a fan; set it on low speed or keep it far enough from produce that it doesn't blow leaves around.
Easy plants to glow indoor:
Herbs and fast-growing greens — such as “soft herbs” like basil, chives and cilantro; and greens like lettuce mix, mustard mix, arugula, spinach and chard. Avoid Mediterranean herbs “like rosemary can be a bit tricky indoors as they are more susceptible to root rot from overwatering.”
Urban apartment with a balcony
Apart from the balcony’s weather condition, sun exposure, rules and regulations of your building and other factors you should consider the balcony’s weight limit and size. Whether you have raised beds or large pots, once everything has been watered, it can weigh a lot (one gallon of water weighs just over eight pounds).”
Space is also an issue when it comes to grand many people who garden tend to cram too many plants into their pots or raised beds. This leads them to place crops close together that might quickly outgrow each other (such as summer squashes), thus shading other plants while they're still young
What you can do:
- Make sure you know the size as to which each crop will grow to when figuring out the amount of space you will need
- Make sure when you are picking the container that it is the right size. Plastic pots are light and glazed ones tend to hold in more moisture than others.
- You can use things such as nutrient-rich organic soil mixes for balcony gardens. To improve root growth, pomace to increase drainage and aeration in the soil.
Best plants to glow:
Root crops and greens such as beets, carrots, leeks, onions, radishes and turnips would be the best option here. In the spring, go for sprouting broccoli, green garlic and peas. During summer, you can try cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, summer squash and tomatoes.
Suburban house with a yard
If you maintain a large yard in the suburbs, animal pests and weeds can threaten to undo all the work that it took to keep your garden looking nice. Just as pests can damage your yard, so can weeds. When you don’t get rid of the weeds that are growing in it, they may fight for space and food supply against your plants.
What you can do:- If you are dealing with wild animals like rabbits and foxes fence the growing area, installing hoops over the raised beds and covering them with netting.
- .. It's easier to get rid of weeds when they're small or newly sprouted. Do it more frequently at first—so you don't have to spend hours later on something that would be relatively painless if done right away!
Best plants to grow:
You can choose any plant or food to grow here! It could be winter squashes, melons and corn or fruit trees and berries like blackberries, blueberries and raspberries.
Conclusion
You can reconnect with nature and improve the environment by growing own food. We don’t need complicating science to tell you we need healthy food. And understanding the connection with the environment including the weather is a piece of the puzzle as healthy food production relies on the environment. Growing own food can give you the opportunity to realize this connection in a very realistic way.
Sources
https://www.growveg.com.au/guides/5-great-reasons-to-grow-your-own-food/