5 Ways To Kick-Start Your Own Urban Vegetable Garden

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When I woke up this morning, it was a scant 12 degrees outside. And my city was one of the warmest in the state! If you’re feeling the wintertime blues, planning a garden can be a great way to remind yourself that warmer weather really is on the way.

But what if you don’t have a huge yard that can be turned over for planting, or what if you’re a renter and your landlord prefers grass to edible greens? Don’t fret, your dreams to be an urban gardener don’t depend on acres of land or decades of farming knowledge.

All you need (as any farmer would tell you) are the right tools and a little bit of patience. Ok, you need a little bit of space too, but not nearly as much as you think.

For this post, we’ve gathered up five of the most useful products to help kick-start your urban gardening efforts. These products are versatile and can be used indoors, on a porch or balcony, or to start seedlings while you wait for the ground to thaw. They range from simple and affordable, to more complex and pricey, but all are made by awesome companies that want to see you eating healthy food you’ve grown yourself.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, so as always, please share your recommendations for other grow-your-own products in the comments!

1. Grow Pillow

The Grow Pillow is a new alternative to container gardening. Its flexible design creates a portable urban garden in the smallest outdoor space, or a productive vegetable and herb garden on any sunny surface. Grow Pillow replaces the expense of plastic and ceramic containers and the bulky rigid frame structure of raised beds with a natural burlap pillow. It allows you to create an organic garden for the family without digging or lugging heavy bags of soil! Watch a video of the Grow Pillow in action, here.

Update: Several Care2 members expressed concern that Grow Pillow includes a plastic bag in the activation kit. I forwarded those concerns to Bill Servick of GrowPillow, and wanted to share his response:

“The disposable mixing bag is included in the kit. Asking customers to find and use an existing/reusable container to expand the coir, mix the ingredients and fill the bag takes the “everything included” aspect away from the product. The mixing bag does not stay in the Pillow, so the activated Pillow is 100% organic – and the bag uses considerably less plastic than a traditional plastic garden pot. I wish we had less plastic involved, but it’s a compromise we had to make in order to bring the product to market. We did deliver our primary goal of offering a 100% organic growing environment! Seems there is always some trade-off.”

>>Up Next: Window Farms