Easy How-to for Urban Gardening of Healthy Organic Vegetables

Many people who live in an urban setting think that they cannot take advantage of the benefits of having their own vegetable garden due to space concerns. This is a common misconception. All it requires is a little planning and creativeness to have the same types of healthy organic vegetables your friends who live in the suburbs grow.

Tomato plants are perfect for urban gardening in containers and all that is required is decent 5 gallon bucket with holes punched in the bottom for drainage. You then place good-sized rocks in the bottom for additional help in drainage, fill with a good potting soil, and place your tomato plant in it. It should be placed where it can get full sun, but remember to water these plants on an almost daily basis as tomato plants are easily affected by a lack of water.

The next vegetable plants that do extraordinarily well in containers (that same type of 5 gallon bucket) are peas and green beans. It is the same basic procedure for setting up the holes, rocks, and dirt but you will also put a support in the middle of the bucket for the pea and green bean plants to climb.

These plants have runners that they send up obstacles in their way to pull themselves up. There are a number of stakes or small trellises that you can find at local gardening centers that would be more than adequate.

Instead of planting the plants, you will put seeds in as it does not take long for these seeds to germinate and grow. You will make two mounds, one on each side of the bucket and plant 2 or 3 seeds in each mound. Make sure to keep watered and soon the new plants will start to grow and within 4-6 weeks you will be enjoying fresh peas and green beans from your own garden!

You are only limited on what you can plant in containers by how much time you want to invest in maintaining them. You can plant lettuce and radishes in long, shallow containers that you can have stretch out in front of window or along the front of a balcony. Lettuce and radishes are nice to grow as you can constantly reseed as you harvest so that it continues to provide you with salad mix.

Many varieties of peppers can also be grown in containers so that you can harvest them with your tomatoes and possibly some green onion that you also planted in a long, shallow container for a nice salsa.

The greatest advantage of container gardening is that you are not pulling near as many weeds as you would in a standard garden, though you will find an occasional one here and there. Another advantage is that the containers can be elevated so that those with limited mobility can easily garden without have to crawl around on the ground.

Root vegetables may be harder to get to grow as they require space to grow down, such as in the case of carrots, but it can be done with patience and creativity. Many people use those 13 gallon storage tubs to grow root vegetables, because they are quite deep and will provide adequate growing room for the vegetables.

Just remember that water and nice natural fertilizer to make sure your plants have everything to grow are all that needs to really be maintained and soon you will be harvesting and enjoying your own home grown, healthy organic vegetables from your garden!