Concrete Jungle Garden

I was planning on having a big garden this year and one of the biggest disappointments of moving into a 3rd floor of an apartment complex was sacrificing the garden. Then I stumbled on a great article posted by Better Homes and Gardens about how to grow a garden using containers. So this year we made a little container garden on our teeny tiny balcony!

The best cost effective containers we could come up with were totes. So we got two 18 gallon totes and my hubby drilled some 1/4 inch holes in the bottoms of them for drainage.

Xander wanted to help carry in the potting soil.

Yes, our kids are crazy strong. They held a bag of potting soil up between the two of them!

After the kids showed off their strength with the potting soil, I cut some chemical-free landscape cloth and lined the bottoms of the totes with it so that the soil wouldn't fall out with the water.

We filled them with potting soil and then added our plants. We planted one pepper and one tomato plant together in each of the larger totes.

Xander was very, um, "helpful". He had fun watering and digging in the dirt.

We had two smaller totes we got for free (yay Craigslist!) and planted cucumbers in one and acorn squash in the other. Gabriella was very hesitant to get her hands dirty but she enjoyed helping me pat the soil down around the plants.

Here it is. Our little garden in the middle of a concrete jungle. We planted 3 acorn squash, 5 cucmbers, one roma tomato, one early bird tomato, one jalapeno and one poblano plant. I am excited!!

All of our plants are non-gmo and no-pesticides used.

All day long the kids check out the window at our plants to see how they are doing.

I think my Grandpa would be proud to see how much they enjoy gardening!