It does not matter whether you live in an urban high rise, brownstone or suburban-style apartment you can have a wonderful herb garden and reap some of the benefits herbs have to offer. In my first apartment, I started slowly with a couple of herbs in containers mixed in with a few flowers on my front stoop—just your basic kitchen necessities like basil, oregano and parsley.
I also added some herb plants inside my apartment. Congregated around the only southern facing window in the place were a number of other small herb plants like lemongrass and lavender, which smelled fabulous together, and to those I added my outdoor herb plants when winter came..
In a later apartment in the city I had almost no sun because what little I could have had was blocked by an iron grate that covered the whole opening. So I constructed a flower bed made from chicken wire, leaves, newspaper, pine needles, peat and sod to hang outside the grate and I filled it with my kitchen herbs, plus some chamomile and other flowering herbs and some cascading vines. Although it was an inventive solution to the problem, it needed gallons of water every day because of the heat and window reflection.
You can apply a couple of these same principals in your apartment herb garden.
First things first, look around your apartment to find spots where you can cultivate your herb plants. Do you have a suitable indoor or outdoor location where you can get your green thumb on? Do not believe that you need some large elaborate space either. Some herb plants, like chives, only need a pot about the size of a coffee cup to survive and do well.
Check out your lighting to see what can work. The correct amount of lighting is essential to your plants’ growth. Without the right amount of natural light your herbs cannot grow. In an apartment I had in the city many years ago I had 2 windows in the whole spot: one faced east, which meant that it got the full morning sun, but nothing else and the other, a tiny window in the bathroom faced south—which is the best way to face—and that one became my herb garden window. This worked because the window got a lot of southern sun and humidity from the bathroom helped the plants.
Now that you know where you’re going to start your herb garden and you’ve determined what kind of light you’ll have, such as the quality, type and amount of light you will have, you are ready to begin selecting your herb. I could go on for days about which herb plants to select, but the bottom-line comes down to how you plan to use the herbs. Do you want herbs for the aroma, for healing purposes, for cooking or for use in cosmetics or maybe you just want something pretty to look at? No matter what your interest, you’ll have plenty of herbs to select from. Start by flipping through a book on herb gardening and focus on herbs that have the sunshine needs that your space can respond to. Very soon, you will be ready to go!
Good luck with your herb gardening. Be sure to let me know how your herb garden grows.
Here is more information on Windowsill Herb Garden. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Herb Gardens.
Tags: Gardening, growing herbs apartment, herbs, indoor garden, windowsill herb garden
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