Urban Gardening Vegetables in our Organic Nanofarm

Does springtime have you considering trying your hand at urban gardening vegetables? (Mmmm…fresh, home-grown yummy veggies!)  Guess what? You don’t need a large yard. It’s important to realize (and embrace!) that even a teensy space can become your nanofarm!  So here’s our experiences on urban vegetable gardening for beginners. 🙂

Our urban gardening for Beginners backstory

My husband and I and did an organic “urban farming” experiment way back in the summer of 2016, albeit when I say “my husband and I”, I really mean my husband.  Truly, he did all the work. I just told him what crops I wanted and helped picked them when the harvest came. So by comparison, I had the easier job!

Since we were most definitely going the urban vegetable gardening for beginners route, we started a “dip your toes in the water” experiment with a tomato and basil growing test the summer before. We loved the results and bam!  The urban farming bug bit, even if it was just to create a li’l nanofarm. There were so many others who were having success, like the farmer of this balcony vegetable garden. Oh, and veggies are gluten free, so it’s great for us Celiacs!

Our strategy

We plotted and planned the 8.5′ X 10′ patch of dirt in our courtyard, hypothesizing the prime sun real estate in which our crops would thrive. We figured that straight down the center would get sun all day, and that was the sweet spot.

Tomatoes, snow peas, zucchini, onions, Garden of Eden Romano beans, cucumbers, basil, parsley, cilantro, dill, mint, and two kinds of chives (the latter seven in containers) all were planted with hope and expectations in late spring; tiny little seedlings that looked pitifully small against an espresso background of triple-mix soil.

The urban gardening vegetable organic nanofarm was born.

This little, tiny postage-stamp farm yielded an impressive crop for two urban farmers who had almost no idea of what they were doing.

The harvest and our yield

I’d frozen altogether a dozen 1-cup bags of Simple Salsa to tide me over the winter from our tomato harvest, and another two large Ziploc bags of Garden of Eden Romano beans.  You can read about it in this post.

We’d accordingly eaten or gifted cucumbers, and furthermore the basil has been frozen into pucks for use in the winter, and soon both kinds of chives will be cryogenically put to sleep for resurrection in winter dishes. Not a bad yield result when we were doing urban vegetable gardening for beginners!

Urban gardening vegetables: our learnings

• The prime sun real estate wasn’t in the middle of the garden:  it was on the fences. Yeah, we called that wrong!   The middle of the garden was so overshadowed by the other plants, the fences themselves, and the neighboring trees as the sun moved position that the tomatoes did ok, but not exceptionally: the container tomatoes that got most of the sun flourished the most.

• We did not plant nearly enough snow peas even though we thought we had, as only five plants lived. Next year we would plant 30 in almost the same space. The roots take up no room at all, but by the same token the vines are all curly and tangley, and most certainly overlap.

• Zucchini is a huge spreader that takes up a ton of room, but with no bees, and knowing nothing about hand pollination, it yielded nothing but blossoms. Apparently, talented cooks can do stuffed deep-fried zucchini blossoms, which look amazing. But as we know, I am not a talented cook. So super disappointed.

• Onions were a failure.  They didn’t sprout, probably because they were planted in the darkest coupled with the dampest part of the garden.  In essence, we’d have to consider the sacrifice of sun and well-drained soil of another plant balanced against the needs of the onions. Which are by and large are not something that special, so not a repeat.

• We suck at growing cilantro.  This container plant languished until it died.  (We love cilantro, but it didn’t care. It spurned our efforts.) Does anyone want to help me out on what went wrong here?

Our success stories in urban gardening vegetables

• Garden of Eden Romano beans are champs. We planted five plants, and they produce no matter what. Hearty texture, buttery flavor, and abundant yield.

• Tomatoes from your own garden are the best thing ever.  This is not a statement up for debate.  Anyone who loves tomatoes will tell you that this is certainly a fact!

• Those little hot red peppers are the most forgiving plants and add a nice kick to food (and look pretty as well).

• If you put your grocery store green onions in water to root them, you can basically plant them and they keep coming back. (Free green onions…woo hoo!)

• People found the garden in the middle of a crowded city a novelty and peeked curiously over our fence. We met some cool peeps, which led to some great conversations! Our dog, however, felt the need to protect the homestead from these suspicious urban vegetable garden fans. She did her part by barking assertively from the safety of her bed inside the house.

Urban gardening vegetables: it’s addictive!

We have since lived in both cities and small towns, and my husband continues his farming skills with a new garden in every place, no matter what kind of space we had. The nanofarm was good practice!

Wherever where we are, there is a grocery garden of some kind. Even in Florida, we have a little herb and lettuce garden that is fun to “harvest” from daily (The lettuces are so flavorful for yummy turkey-bacon BLTs)!

We now know that a grocery garden can be anything you want it to be and has a reasonable chance of success if you consider your light, heat, garden size, and veggie plants that are suited for the aforementioned.  No matter how tiny your space is, there will be delicious, fresh crops waiting to grow for those of you who keep the faith in urban gardening vegetables.

If you’ve ever created your own tiny garden, feel free to share the best tips that you’d suggest for others interested in urban vegetable gardening for beginners in the comments!

Happy Springtime! x