Urban Gardening for the Rest of Us

From the Organic Consumers Association, a link to a short piece on Grist, Solving the apartment dweller's dilemma: how to have a garden when you're short on space. The answer is container gardening, which is what I always recommend to people just starting out, even people who have yards. You can have as few or as many containers as you want, you can position them in a convenient spot, and the effort involved is fairly minimal, the scale less intimidating than plowing under a section of your lawn. Herbs are great to start with since the payoff is big - so much flavor for so little effort - and the plants, being almost weedy, are pretty forgiving. Many vegetables have dwarf or small varieties suitable for growing in containers (just get large ones), and standard varieties of some plants will work as well. Lettuce and salad greens, tomatoes, peppers, squash, beans, and peas, among others, can all grow in containers.