You need a solid informational foundation when starting urban farming. Whether you want to start small or dive right into it and fill your entire garden space with veggies, fruits, and herbs, having the right information is important if you want to do it right.
While urban gardens have become popular, you can only successfully create an urban garden when you have an intricate understanding of what it takes to create and landscape a sustainable garden. Learn 5 of our tried and tested urban gardening success tips and elevate your urban farming to the next level.
What Is Urban Gardening?
Urban gardening or urban farming is the practice of growing food in an urban environment. It involves growing vegetables, fruits and herbs in enclosed spaces in a domestic setting.
5 Tips For Urban Gardening
1). Make Good Use Of Compost
At the core of urban gardening is the concept of organic farming. You should avoid chemical fertilisers as much as possible. The chemicals in the fertilisers leach deep into the soil carried by salts in the fertilisers. Organic fertilisers process the organisms in the soil that break down nutrients and provide them to the plants.
Compost is an excellent means of infusing organic nutrients into your soil for plants to consume. Compost also improves the soil structure, which helps your urban garden grow healthier and stronger.
2). Harvest Rain And Conserve Water
Increasingly, clean water is a scarce resource in urban settings. You should be prudent in using water in your urban garden. Start by harvesting as much rainwater as possible for your garden. A simple system such as a rain barrel will help you harvest water. Watering your garden by hand rather than installing an automated irrigation system to conserve water.
Alternatively, you can implement hydroponics in your urban garden. Hydroponics is growing plants without using soil. All the nutrients your plants need are infused and dissolved in water. Given the closed-loop nature of hydroponics, you will not waste any water.
3). Proper Drainage Is Essential
While watering your plants is an essential component of a thriving urban garden, you also want to avoid drowning your plants in water. When plants sit in water, more often than not, the roots will rot. Unfortunately, overwatering your plants is relatively easy.
With this in mind, choose plant pots and containers with efficient drainage. Include a layer of gravel at the bottom of the pot to enhance water drainage. Additionally, your watering technique should encourage proper drainage and supply ample water. You should soak the plant container in water and later on pour all the water that collects underneath the plant container.
4). Minimise Cost As Much As You Can
Implement the principles of reuse, recycling, and reducing waste as much as possible in your urban garden. Whether you’re creating a private urban garden or participating in a larger community garden, reducing the overall cost of creating and sustaining the garden will influence its long-term success.
Additionally, recycling, repurposing, reusing, and reducing waste will lower the environmental footprint of creating and maintaining your urban farm.
5). Make The Most Of Your Space
If you want to create an urban garden, you should strive to use small spaces economically. If you are have limited horizontal space, take advantage of your vertical space.
This means planting fewer tall plants like beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, and squash. Instead, use stack planters, raised beds, vertical walls planters, railing planters, and hanging baskets to grow vines, air plants, and succulents as part of your vertical gardening strategy.
How To Choose The Right Plants For Urban Gardening
Understand Your Microclimate – Learn about your climatic zone and the variety of plants that can thrive under the prevailing weather patterns. Moreover, you need to consider influencing factors such as the island heat effect, commonly present in most urban centres. Urban areas have a markedly different climate in contrast to their environs. The humidity, ambient temperature, and air movement differ from what you get in suburban areas.
Go For Low Maintenance Plants – When choosing plants for your urban garden, ensure they’re low-maintenance and easy to grow in urban areas. For instance, you can select native plants that have evolved and adapted to the local climatic conditions and weather patterns. Also, consider plants that thrive in containers and indoors – plants with shallow roots such as lettuce, basil, and radishes.
Consider Growing Simple Plants – Plants such as leafy green and herbs like arugula, spinach, and lettuce are easy to grow in urban farming. You don’t have to wait for the plant to grow through its life cycle to consume the plant. You don’t have to wait for the plant to bear fruit and for the fruit to mature to harvest the plants.
Final Thoughts
An urban garden will not only add some green around your home; it can potentially give you access to fresh veggies and herbs to consume regularly. City dwellers can improve their surroundings and improve their health in one go by simply creating and nurturing an urban garden.
Buy Landscaping Rocks
Are you looking into the prospects of growing food around your home? Are you looking for quality supplies to venture into urban agriculture? Rokworx is the ultimate to-got-to supplier of your urban agriculture soil needs. With experience in landscaping rocks and soils, we have the necessary knowledge to provide high-quality gardening soil that will form the basis of your urban gardening success.
Please call us today for more information on 0407 456 045 or leave us a message.
