Apartment Gardening

I've always loved freshly grown fruits and veggies.  I mean, who doesn't?  My parents had a garden when I was growing up, so I was used to having fresh produce.  The stuff from the store is fine, but it really doesn't compare in many cases.  Over the last year or so, I've gotten really into plants, but haven't had the confidence to venture into gardening.  Our apartment doesn't get a lot of natural light, so most of the plants we have are low maintenance & low light plants.  When it comes to herbs and produce, I'm a little intimidated.  

About a month ago, I decided that I wanted to venture into the gardening world, but from a very safe & easy starting ground.  I looked online to find self-watering planters and found an amazing self-watering and self-lighting planter box from Click & Grow.  This sounded like the absolute easiest way to get my feet wet in gardening.  The planter came with 3 basil pods, so we used one of those and bought some peppermint ones as well.  We planted these herbs about 3 1/2 weeks ago, so they still have quite a bit of growing to do.  It's pretty exciting to see the herbs grow from nothing.  I swear, I was watching these plants every day when they started out to wait for them to sprout.  I'll be honest, I may have even talked to them a little bit.  Now that they've sprouted, I notice their growth daily and can't wait until they're big and strong enough to start harvesting.

My parents also gifted Ryan a lime tree for his birthday and we are so excited to see it grow.  It may be a year or two before it starts fruiting, but for now it's a great addition to our balcony.

So don't think that just because you don't have a yard doesn't mean that you can't have a garden!  Once we've been successful with a few of these plants, we're going to branch out into small produce as well.