Save Money by Growing Your Own Vegetables in Your Apartment

Growing your own vegetables in your apartment is possible and it can save you money on groceries. The truth is, you don’t need acres of land to grow a garden, although that’s the ideal situation. You don’t even need access to a backyard, which you may not have if you’re renting an apartment in a building. You do need water, seeds or transplants and containers or wood to build a raised bed garden.

Container Garden

Growing your own vegetables in containers may be your only option. You can make your own containers, find ones for free or buy them. Any container will do, as long as you’re able to drain water out at the bottom. Some examples of containers that other tenants have used to grow their own vegetables successfully are:

1. Wooden boxes (which you can buy or build yourself)
2. Plastic buckets (ask someone in the bakery department at your local supermarket for empty icing buckets)
3. Metal containers
4. Flower pots
5. Ceramic bowls (with holes at the bottom for drainage)
6. Large whiskey barrels (best used on decks or in the yard)
7. Storage tubs

Container gardening is done indoors, outdoors or both. If you plan to grow vegetables inside your apartment, place containers near a south-facing window whenever possible. If you don’t get enough sunlight, you can buy artificial grow lights.

Raised Bed Garden

If you have access to a private backyard, then you have another option for growing your own vegetables. It’s easier to ask your landlord for permission to start a raise bed garden, then it is to ask them to tear up the lawn to grow a garden. In a raised bed garden, you add soil on top of the lawn or soil that’s already there, and you enclose it with wood or brick. The width is often 3 feet wide, and the length depends on the space you have available to use. You can plant many different vegetables in a raised bed garden. Put chicken wire up and around the garden to prevent pets and other animals from eating your plants.

Types of Vegetables to Grow

Saving money by growing your own vegetables is a real alternative to shopping for everything at the supermarket. For example, you can grow an organic garden much cheaper than what organic produce would cost at the store. You won’t be able to grow enough vegetables to feed yourself and your family, but you won’t have to buy as much at the store. Some vegetables you can grow are:

1. Tomatoes (even if you consider it a fruit, include it in your vegetable garden)
2. Radishes
3. Carrots
4. Kale
5. Collard greens
6. Swiss chard
7. Green and hot peppers
8. Peas
9. Spinach

Stay away from bulky vegetables, such as squash. It’s important to maximize the limited space that you have to grow more vegetables.

Buy heirloom, non-hybrid and organic seeds and starter plants to get the best quality vegetables. In addition to saving money, you’ll gain great satisfaction when growing your own vegetables. You’ll know where it came from, and you can grow them free of chemicals if you choose.