You have decided to plant a small vegetable garden in an apartment. Are you nervous about whether or not it will survive? You may have been raised on a diet of organically grown fruits and vegetables. You feel confident that you know how to plant a small garden to survive. It may even be a trial and error process. It certainly has worked for many gardeners before you.

Choose carefully the plants you plant in your apartment vegetable garden. It needs to be healthy plants that do not need much extra care during the growing season. The space for planting other vegetables in a small apartment garden is severely limited if you have to have a giant potato or a row of green beans. But even so, you could opt for smaller varieties that are more readable to thrive in small living spaces. Anything with the word “pep”, “baby”, or “dwarf” in the name is an excellent bet.

Start small if you are planting apartment plants in order to give them a psychological boost before moving on to bigger plants. This means you may want to try perennials first. If you grow a plant for at least two years, you will be rewarded with a psychological boost as well as a color for your landscape. Plus, perennial plants help keep pests like deer from killing your garden plants.

Another way to get started with your small vegetable garden is to plant the seeds indoors. When they germinate, the best place to start is inside the house near the windowsill. This will give your apartment windowsill a window image and make it easier to monitor the germination process. Once you have your plants well established, move outside your apartment windowsill and plant your fresh vegetables on the windowsill.

One crop to plant with a small vegetable garden is lettuce. As long as you are able to harvest and enjoy your lettuce fresh, you can take advantage of a plentiful crop each season. One of the great things about lettuce is that it doesn’t go bitter. You can alternate your seasons by harvesting in the fall and winter, and adding more green lettuce during the summer to help with your pest control.

A few crops that are great for apartment gardens are chives and garlic. These two crops don’t require the soil to be as rich as other vegetables and can actually thrive in small apartment spaces. Garlic does best in potted pots, so plant these low maintenance vegetables in Terra cotta pots or bowls on the windowsill. Just be sure to trim away any sprigs or unwanted foliage as this can become a problem down the road. Both chives and garlic do well in a mixed planting, meaning planting them together in groups of three or four and dividing the group into two pots to plant in different locations.

One last way to get started with a small vegetable garden space is to buy some seeds. Many of the seeds you find at the local garden center will work just fine, but you might also try some at your local library, department store, or online. Most seeds for this type of gardening are very high quality and will germinate quickly, taking just a couple of days from the time you buy them. Check out the instructions carefully when you buy your seeds, as you want to plant the seeds as soon as possible. If you are planting these plants in a window, there may be certain times that you won’t get them unless you’re very patient.

Another great thing about small vegetable garden spaces is the fact that they are usually portable. You don’t have to worry about your vegetables becoming old and woody because you move them around often. Because they are small, it can also save you money in the long run because you aren’t constantly having to replace the vegetables. Most of them can be stored either in a container that is the same size as your window sill or in a wooden box that can be nailed into the sill. That means you don’t have to use a special box that expensive foods are stored in – which can save you money!