Container Gardening in Apartments

Just because you live in an apartment doesn't mean you can't have freshly grown vegetables...Container gardening is fast becoming quite popular with people who live in apartments.

There are some vegetables that work better then others, so here's a list of vegetables that are easy apartment growers...

Vegetables for Containers

1. Beets - Fresh beets have a whole different taste than pickled ones. These can be grown in as little space as a cake pan and are better picked small and tender, about the size of a silver dollar.
2. Spinach – Fresh spinach is good both cooked and raw and it is another vegetable that can be grown in a small container. The leaves are best picked young and tender. One of the best things about spinach is that it doesn’t have to grow fruit so it doesn’t need a large container to support it. This is a cool weather plant and does not like hot summer days.
3. Leaf Lettuce - Like spinach, leaf lettuce can be grown in a small container and doesn’t need hot summer days to mature. Pick when leaves are young and tender. Start pots at different times so you have a continuous supply.
4. Patio Tomatoes – They are coming up with more and more types of tomatoes that are suited to container growing. Traditional tomatoes take a huge amount of dirt and grow to be 3 or 4 feet tall and wide if not supported. Patio tomatoes are more compact and were bred to retain a small size and be grown in a pot.
5. Radishes – Like beets, radishes don’t need a huge pot to grow and mature fairly quickly. These are fun to grow and make a great addition to any salad.
6. Green Peppers – These take a fairly good size pot and are definitely warm weather plants but they are not difficult to grow. They can be used in a variety of dishes and freeze well. If you are feeling a bit experimental, there is a new variety of mini peppers that you can buy. They are small and colorful.
7. Green Beans – While I would normally not recommend growing green beans in a container, they have come up with several varieties of dwarf green beans that are recommended and actually as you can plant 16 green bean plants in a square foot I would imagine these would do fairly well in a container.
8. Eggplant – Eggplant is a mainstay in Mediterranean cooking. It’s compact size makes it an ideal choice for container growing.
9. Garlic Chives – This is one of my favorites. It’s a beautiful flower and every part of the plant is edible.
10. Swiss Chard – Fresh Swiss Chard has a sweet buttery flavor that is delicious. The grocery store variety loses SO much of the flavor that it barely resembles the garden variety. Try it fresh and sauted in a bit of olive oil with a hint of garlic.
11. A pot of Herbs - You can mix and match herbs in a container. Basil, thyme, sage, tarragon, rosemary will all grow fine. My choices to put together would be basil, thyme and sage. Basil is an upright annual plant while sage is kind of sprawly. Thyme is a low grower so the three together make an interesting potted arrangement. All but basil are perennial.

So depending on how much space you have and time you have to spend on it, you could grow quite a little vegetable garden in pots...Even if you just want fresh tomatoes, why not try it and see what happens...next year you might find that you want to try tomatoes and lettuce...