I live in the city limits, in a small town home community with what is considered a postage stamp backyard. I grew up always having a huge garden with my dad and before we moved to the city my husband and I always had gardens.
Small Garden Ideas
Living in a postage stamp backyard with limited sun, poor soil, and drainage issues I wondered if we could ever have a garden. Last summer I decided to experiment by buying bags of garden soil and poking holes on the bottom and sides of the bags and ripping open the tops. To my surprise I was actually able to grow some vegetables and herbs.
This spring I decided to try it again, but using some different vegetables than last year. I learned that last year squash and zucchini do not grow well at all in this situation. I could get the plants to grow, but they would never flower no matter what I did. Eventually they shriveled up and died. Our tomatoes actually did the best of anything I planted in the bags and of course I used a couple large red planters to have strawberry plants, herbs, and flowers last year – all did great.
What I planted this year:
I added in a few more strawberry plants as my kids loved picking the strawberries we grew last year and so far we have had seven this year which for two plants is pretty good. I also planted four tomato plants and already have nice large tomatoes growing on my plants. I am trying my hand at green bell pepper plants this time, spinach, swish chard, and spinach. Not sure how well it will all grow, but like I said this is still sort of an experiment since I have only full sunlight in parts of my area for 4-6 hours a day and most of my little backyard is covered in green moss and the earth squishes beneath your feet.
I do believe with a little creativity you can totally grow a small garden. If we were not renting and owned the place I would have built grow beds that rise, but to save cost and make it easy to get rid of I chose to try gardening this way.
Have you tried gardening in a very small space? How did it go and what technique did you use to grow a successful garden?
We have strawberries too. The kids LOVE to find them in the garden. I also do fresh herbs for cooking.Great use of a small space (:
Hey Sara,
How fun! Yeah finding a strawberry and eating it off the plant is always so yummy. Thanks!
This is awesome! We are now in a house with a huge backyard, but I just do not have a green thumb at all, sadly…
Well I could not cook a few years ago so you never know. Try something and fail at it and be okay with the missteps along the way.
What a great idea! I have always wanted to start a garden.. it is on my to do list!
You might be running out of time depending on where you live. I love it though because it is so much fun to watch it grow!
I have NEVER heard of doing this and I’m really intrigued. We have a big yard but I’m not a gardener. I’ve been wanting to try my hand at growing something. This is not intimidating!
I missed having a garden and did not want to put money into a place that is not ours so decided shoot going to try this. When it actually worked last year I decided to try again. I think if I can do this anyone can do something. My bean plants are now four inches tall since that photo which was only a few days ago. 🙂
I just stopped my gardening journey. I had a nice size vegetable garden for years but now I’m just to the point where I want a few container plants and that’s good enough for us. I have a tomato, red-green peppers and a jalepeno, I’d like to try a container with strawberries since I go through a lot of them.
Yeah gardening can be a lot of work, but this is easy you water and grow. No weeding to speak of and kind of like containers just in bags. Sounds like you have some good stuff planted.
When I moved from Northern Ca. to Central Ca. I brought all my plants and they died. The temperature difference was just too much in summer. But, I did grow a great herb garden, also filled with tomatoes, strawberries and green beans. That was over 5 years ago. Now, we’ve been on water rations and drought conditions. But, when we had it we were successful with two raised bed areas under the trees that got morning and late sun. Shaded during full day with the exception of the tomatoes that love sun and heat. I miss having a little garden space for eats. Happy gardening!
Yeah water restrictions stinks. We have not had that issue here man in Maryland all it has done is rain. Wish we could share some with you!