Excited about the idea of growing your own spring salad mix, but frustrated by your lack of yard? Well fret no more, because with a little creative ingenuity and flexibility, anyone can have their own vegetable garden!

Say you have a yard? Well then it’s pretty easy. Generally, you’ll want to locate your garden in the portion of the yard that receives the most sun. And where there’ll be little competition for nutrients from the roots of other plants like trees or shrubs. This may mean clearing a section of lawn (but you know that grass just wastes water and doesn’t taste very good anyway!)

What if you just have a small strip of land adjacent to your house or apartment building? Could be perfect. I had a narrow 4 foot wide length of untended earth behind my old apartment building in Berkeley. Turns out the back wall of my apartment faced south and received sun all day long. I grew huge gorgeous tomato plants in this narrow strip with very little effort.

Or check out what these clever apartment dwellers did… they removed the large pieces of concrete stepping stones to reveal the precious soil below, then placed the pieces upright with chunks of colored chalk for friends and neighbors to draw and leave messages on. They call their new plot “Sidewalk Chalk Gardens” and the neighbors love it!

What if you really have no stretch of soil at all? No problem. Container gardening is easy and the options are really endless. Depending on your budget you can use anything from recycled old wooden crates, 5 gallon buckets, plastic bins, wine barrels, bathtubs (I’m serious!), or of course, more conventional planting containers. You can put them just about anywhere, but the ideal place is somewhere that gets lots of sun, and also is relatively close to a water source so you don’t have to carry water too far. Watering will be your primary duty once plants go in the new garden!

Just to give you some ideas of cost: 

• Urban Ore (Salvage yard in Berkeley) has tons of 5 gallon containers and old planters. You can probably pick them up for a buck or two a piece 
• Wine Barrels cut in half make fantastic planters and can be purchased from Oak Barrel on San Pablo for $26. 
• A simple raised planting bed can be built out of brand new rot-resistant wood for about $175 (the perfect raised bed) or out of scrap materials for much cheaper.

Things to keep in mind: 

• Avoid containers or materials previously in contact with chemicals or caustic materials. Remember, plants absorb nutrients from the soil through their roots… whatever you expose to them will ultimately end up in what you plan to eat 
• Drainage is important for plants. Roots that sit in water will rot and cause the plant to die, so any containers you re-purpose (like 5 gallon buckets, plastic bins, wooden crates, etc.) will need to have holes drilled in them. Plan for more & larger holes in larger containers 
• Terra cotta pots dry out quickly because they’re so porous and dark plastic containers absorb heat from the sun and get hot, so these aren’t ideal choices 
• Lastly, don’t blow your whole wad buying/fashioning your containers because you still have to fill them with soil and that is going to cost you some money as well. There are benefits to using fresh uncontaminated potting soil, but it doesn’t come free, unfortunately.

Did you start any seeds last week? Mine are already poking their heads above the soil and it’s only been one week. It’s so exciting.

What kind of city gardening are you doing this season? Share plans and photos, please.

Previous stories in this series:

Get those green thumbs geared up... it's time to start your gardens!
Summer Garden series 1: Sowing the seeds of delicious