Grow Your Own In Urban Window Boxes

If you live in an urban area and only have a tiny backyard or a couple of balconies, you can still enjoy growing your own food. You'll be surprised at how much of a veggy garden you can get into a window box or two. Read on to discover what you can achieve by growing your own in a really small space.

Window boxes will brighten up your home and add visual interest to an otherwise bland window still. Aesthetic properties aside, your window box will prove a practical and cheap way to grow your own fresh food.

Window boxes are pretty cheap to buy as are packets of seeds. You'll find that most seed packets have so many seeds that you won't be able to use them all in one season, so you'll have loads left over for next year too, at no extra cost! As you can see, your initial costs will be small. Bags of compost are inexpensive too and you can often avail of special offers of two for one and so on, so shop around. Save more by making your own compost from organic waste, start composting now and you'll have rich homemade compost ready for next years garden.

Urban gardening is expremely popular these days. Maybe because so many tv programmes shows ways to grow your own, and because many people want to recycle and reuse, as well as save money on their food budget (you could be surprised how much money you will save over time.) Besides all that, another reason urban gardening is on the increase is because growing your own food is fun and you know exactly what has gone into your food. And there is nothing that compares to eating your own fruit and veg straight from your own garden.

What to grow?
Tomatoes are another popular home-grown fruit. They need to be kept watered but besides that these though plants will do their best to produce as much fruit as possible. Only give them additional feed after they have flowered and this will encourage the fruit to fill out for you.

Lettuce is easy to grow and you don't need loads as you can pinch off the leaves you want for a meal and the plant will continue to grow more. I have a small box with about six plants and they got our family through most of the summer.

Most herbs are easy to grown, and the aroma from many is a real pleasure (particularly for someone like me who suffers from pollen). Again, pick them as you need them and add them to stews, pasta, and pretty much any meal to add a bit more flavor.

Peas are another easy crop. I prefer the varieties that grow no higher than 30 – 40 cm as they don't need steaks to grow up. Peas really are an easy crop to grow and there really is nothing like snapping those fat pods open in August/September and eating the sweat fresh peas uncooked. My kids love these too and will munch through as many as they can in a sitting.

Potatoes grow bag kits are now available to urban households. Basically buy the kit which includes everything thing you need, add the compost to the black bag, add the potato seeds and keep watered and increase the soil level as they grow. My mother and sister have both had great success with a few of these grow bags each, and they were very tasty potatoes too.

Well there you go, it's not difficult or expensive to get started with growing food in your own backyard garden or window boxes. And even though you live in a city you too can still grow your own!