My son (4.5) desperately wants to have a garden. We live in an apartment with a small deck that faces northeast. We have tall pine trees out there, so we get some dappled sunlight in the morning and shade in the afternoon.
Is there any way we could plant some cherry (or otherwise miniature) tomatoes and have them grow in a container out there? Is there a specific kind that would work best? If not, is there something else - preferably edible - that we could grow?
I have minimal plant experience. If someone gives me a plant and tells me where to put it, I can keep it alive (we had roses at our last house that flourished), but I don’t really know what works best where.
You don’t have enough sun for tomatoes, which need at least six, and preferably eight or more, hours of full sun every day.
Greens (lettuce, spinach) will do okay with less light – or you might try radishes – but I think you’d do better with a grow light than the amount of sun you’ve got.
One that’s not on the official list: sweet potatoes. I’ve got a massive sweet potato plant growing indoors in a pot sitting at a northeast facing window. It’s quite happy there. We had a grocery store sweet potato get lost in a dark drawer and it sprouted quite admirably. I couldn’t bear to throw it out, it was trying so hard! So we planted it with a prayer and an apology to the plant (as I always do, because I kill so many of them with my ineptitude), and it just went gangbusters. In its initial growth, I swear it grew 6 inches or more a day! My daughter loved to “watch it grow” - she’d literally sit and stare at it for nearly half an hour, and tell me she could see it growing. I almost believe her!
Yeah, I thought we might not have enough sun for tomatoes. Oh well. Thanks for that list, WhyNot. We had a mint plant out there that was getting huge, but we went away for a few days and a huge storm came. Poor thing was beaten to death by the rain (it actually broke the pot it was in).
Also, for sweet potatoes: are you growing that as a vine or is it in dirt so you’re growing a crop? I’d be surprised if you were successful doing the latter.
You have nothing to lose by trying cherry tomatoes, and remember that pots can be moved into the sunny spots as the sun shifts. You can switch the pots to a sunny spot in a daily rotation too. Throw a couple low flowers like pansies in the pot with the tomato. If you have almost no sun try some shady flowers, because vegetables really need sun. Impatients, tuberous begonias or fuchsia do well in low light, and die in direct sun.
I stuck the original, already sprouted and bearing a few leaves, sweet potato in a pot of dirt. It, as I said, grew like gangbusters, and we rigged a tripod of sticks (obligingly provided by a passing windstorm) to give it something to climb. (We still occasionally have to have “discussions” with it about not eating the mini-blinds.) The original sweet potato got soft and then “empty” feeling, and there are now three sweet potatoes in the same pot - it seems to me like the original is still there, only hard again, but as I know *nothing *of the life cycle of sweet potato plants, I couldn’t tell you for sure. I’m just going off what I can feel with my fingers while checking to see if it needs water. It’s definitely viney and full leaved, but it seems like some of the vines like to dip back into the dirt.
So I guess I *could *harvest some of the sweet potatoes in the pot, but I wouldn’t really know how or when to do that without damaging the plant. It makes a nice houseplant, though! Plus, of course, it’s probably a weird Frankenhybrid, having come from the grocery store, so I don’t know if what I harvest would be as edible as the parent potato. Caileigh just likes feeling that we have new potatoes, she hasn’t asked to eat one.
Maybe you could go ahead and plant a shade-tolerant vegetable, then supplement its light with a plant lamp? I have grown sun-requiring plants in my (completely windowless) office using a plant light.
Do you have any community gardens in your area? There may not be space left to claim now, but it could be fun to check into getting a little plot for your family. I have several apartment-living friends who have done this and they’ve had a blast, and met some fun people, too.
Okay, I’m back from the nursery. We got a little kids’ greenhouse kit with some herbs (mint, lemon basil and catnip), a big pot, some radish seeds, and for the hell of it, a Patio tomato plant. I’m just going to give that one a shot and try to sneak it off into the sunny spots in front of our building as often as possible. I’ll probably try to coax the radish seeds up in front of the building, too. I feel like a renegade.
Well heck, you could even rig up a little grow light. They’re inexpensive and don’t take up much space.
I totally get that a community garden plot may be a bit much for now. If you find one nearby, though, it might make for a fun excursion with your son to visit it together and check it out.
I thought about getting a grow light, but we don’t have an outdoor outlet and I’m a little concerned about the destructo-toddler who lives with us pulling the cord if we snaked it inside. I’m going to see how this goes and if it doesn’t, we may go with the light after all.