Rental Property Gardening

[Krys Kagan]

Many a time I have heard people say, "I can't garden because I rent."  What is stopping you?  All the landlords I have had don't care what you do in your backyard when it comes to plants, flowers, and gardening.  When we rented a house, we had a garden.  And now that we are in a duplex we are gardening again.  We have started our Spring garden, planting three seperate beds:   A tomato bed(3 types), a potato bed(4 types), and a various greens and vegetables bed (over 10 kinds of veggies). 

 

When it comes to backyard rental property gardening, it is easier than you think.  Just check your soil.  For us, we were lucky and had nice rich soil, we just bought a few bags of turkey compost, some worm casings, and mulch.  Since this is our second year gardening in this place, the soil is rich, we just added more mulch and rotated vegetables. 

 

For the vegetable plants, we saved money by buying seed packets and growing our own seedlings as well as harvesting seeds from our vegetables.  It was fun and also educational for our two mini gardeners.  Our sons ages 4 and 2. They love the garden and thanks to it, they have a love for vegetables of all kinds. 

 

For those of you who live in apartments with a balcony, you too can garden. There is an awesome guy named Mike who gardens and eats his meals from his balcony.  Check out his site:   http://www.urbanorganicgardener.com/  He has done some amazing things with the vegetable plants from his balcony.

 

If you rent a place with a small backyard, talk to a friend who is into gardening and work out a vegetable exchange.  It is fun and you are getting free veggies.  You can barter, trade, etc.  We have done that too.

 

Remember gardening is not only fun, but also therapeutic and the end result is always worth it.  Happy gardening and enjoy those vegetables.

 

Our litte guy enjoying broccoli from the garden.  This was from last year's Spring garden.