Gardening for Apartment Dwellers

All you need is some soil, fertilizer, containers and natural light to be well on your want to having plants and flowers blooming in your apartment.

The first thing you have to do is to carefully choose the types of plants you want to grow. Some plants are better suited for indoor growing than others and then there are poisonous plants from which children need to be kept away.  Aside from that, you can take advantage of these tips to help you get started:

1.      Use colourful plants. With the wide range of indoor plants, you can grow exotic flowers that do not survive outside of their native climate when grown outdoors.

2.       Marigolds, periwinkles, pansies and snapdragons are just a few examples of colourful plants that grow well in small containers.

3.      Many different herbs are well suited for indoor gardening. These include basil, thyme, parsley, savory, chives, oregano and sage.

4.      If you have a small patio, you can even try your hand at growing tomatoes.

5.      Remember to be practical and try plants that have some other useful purpose. Aloe, for example, is a soothing agent for burns.

Mix and match the plants. It is perfectly acceptable to grow several different kinds of plants in the same container. This will also allow you to create a colourful arrangement.

The size of the containers you use is important. If you choose plants with large root systems, they will not thrive in a small pot. Herbs work well in small containers, but a plant such as the tomato will need a container that is at least 12 inches in depth and diameter.

Make sure the containers you use have adequate drainage. If not all the water you provide for the plants will collect in the bottom and this will cause the roots to rot. This doesn’t mean that you have to spend your time wiping up spills. Use a decorative pot in which you can place your container and any water that drains through the soil will collect in this pot.

The most important part of apartment gardening is the amount of sunlight your plants receive. They will need to have at least six consecutive hours of sunlight each day. A patio is the perfect place for growing plants, but if you don’t have a patio, a large windowsill will do just fine. You can also use a windowbox for your collection of plants.