Grow Your Own Din-Din

It doesn’t matter how ugly your tomato is. That tomato is yours, and you grew it from an upside down soda bottle hanging off a fire escape.

We all want to feel the sense of personal accomplishment that swells inside us when we’ve successfully kept a thing alive. But sometimes, situations like living in an apartment building or a space with no yard can feel like insurmountable obstacles on the path to growing your own food.

Luckily, there are plenty of resources around Rhode Island to help you have your own garden in a small space, and it’s not too late in the season to start. Basil, beans, cilantro, collard greens, kale, mustard greens, spinach and swiss chard, can all still be planted in June, along with heartier (but more space consuming) fall fare like beets, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and turnips. Basil and cilantro, which can make you feel fancy by elevating your pizzas and tacos from college grade to straight artisanal, both grow fast. It’s an extra desirable trait if your space is truly limited and you’re looking to get the most return from your garden.

We’re #blessed to live in the age of Pinterest, where we can find inspiration — and detailed instructions — on every small space workaround you could dream of. When planning your garden, first assess your living space: Do you, indeed, have a fire escape or small deck? Would your landlord mind a window box? Is there a wall on the back of the house that gets good sun? Even a fabric over-the-door shoe organizer can easily be transformed into a multi-pocketed herb grower.

If you have a private area on the side of your home where you can place a few containers, your options open up even more. Stay economical and recycle food-grade plastic containers around your house or being ditched by your job. For containers, plastic will do the job — clay pots may be more aesthetically pleasing, but plastic retains moisture better, and your plants aren’t fussy about being decked in terra cotta. If you’re using a container not originally intended for planting, make sure you drill a drainage hole in the bottom.

Don’t forget to look up while you’re checking out your options. It’s easy to ignore vertical opportunities, but hanging pots with herbs and plastic bottles retrofitted for tomatoes and strawberries are both low maintenance ways to take advantage of small spaces. Search outside your house for rails and ledges you can mount a hook to.

If you’re so proud of your balcony harvest that you want to expand — or your home is cast in perpetual shade and darkness, rendering all crops withered and inedible — you may want to try community gardening. Community gardens are public plots, available for rent, where individuals can grow their own vegetables, fruits and flowers. Farm Fresh RI catalogs a directory of community gardens on their website, listing 90 options across the state, with many locations chosen for their residential adjacencies. (These gardens thrive based on their convenience to the plot renters. And they beautify neighborhoods.)

Southside Community Land Trust, which manages 52 community gardens in Providence and Pawtucket, offers anyone who’s interested in learning to grow food in small spaces, but afraid to go public with their green thumb, the opportunity to attend (discrete!) workshops and training. You can register online for their next level one class, Beginning Organic Growing, held Wednesday, June 21, at 6pm in Providence. When you’re confident and ready to impress with your produce, SCLT also offers crash courses on selling at farmer’s markets.

For those in South County, the University of Rhode Island Master Gardeners have an informational kiosk outside the Westerly Library in Wilcox Park on the second and fourth Saturday of the month, from 9am to noon, from now through October. Not only will the Master Gardeners answer any questions you have about gardening practices, if you bring a bag of dirt, they’ll even test the quality of your soil if you can’t figure out why your container of bush beans isn’t taking off.

A garden that’s smaller in scale still needs TLC — hanging and container gardens actually need to be watered more frequently than plants grown in ground — but can be just as bountiful. With a little ingenuity, you too can have a garden worthy of pillaging by squirrels. Good luck!