10 Simple, Cheap Home Gardening Innovations to Set You on the Path to Food Independence

by Alex Pietrowski

The issue of food quality and food independence is of critical importance these days, and people are recognizing just how easy and fun it is to grow your own food at home. When renegade gardener Ron Finley said, “growing your own food is like printing money,” he was remarking on the revolutionary nature of re-establishing control over your health and your pocket book as a means of subverting the exploitative and unhealthy food systems that encourage the over-consumption of processed and fast foods.

Thanks to the Internet, the availability of parts and materials, and good old-fashioned ingenuity, there is a wide range of in-home, and in-apartment, gardening systems that are easy to construct and maintain, and that can provide nutritious, organic, and low-cost food for you and your family. Once you realize jut how rewarding home gardening can be, it is tremendously fun to experiment with different systems and ideas for best producing your favorite healthy, fresh fruits and veggies.

Since everyone’s gardening space, interests and budgets differ, here are 10 simple ideas and how to’s for getting a small, affordable, and easy to construct gardening system up and running in your home.

Aquaponics

Aquaponics is growing in popularity as a versatile method of growing nutritious vegetables while raising fish, combining hydroponic gardening with aquaculture. Systems can be built to fit in almost any location, indoors or outdoors, and can be designed for almost any crop or edible fish.

Read: Aquaponic Gardening: A Step-By-Step Guide to Raising Vegetables and Fish Together

Here is a simple affordable home aquaponics system that can be adapted. Be sure to read the comments below the video for additional insight and afterthoughts on this simple system…

This is a great example of an apartment size indoor aquaponics system…

Vertical Gardening

Vertical gardening is a terrific method of growing more plants in a smaller area by constructing standing or hanging planters that can house many plants in a small space.

Read: Vertical Gardening: Grow Up, Not Out, for More Vegetables and Flowers in Much Less Space

The easy and affordable example below can be adapted for many different fruits and veggies, or scaled for larger purposes…

The following video is an example of a simple and cheap, stand-up pallet vertical garden…

Simple Greenhouse Designs

Greenhouses are imperative for starting many types of edible plants and can also offer protection against some garden pests while increasing the length of your growing season.

Read: Greenhouse Gardener’s Companion, Revised: Growing Food & Flowers in Your Greenhouse or Sunspace

Easy to build hoop house greenhouse how-to…

How to build a backyard fence-rested greenhouse…

Cold Frames for Winter Gardening

Cold frames are an excellent and affordable way of growing nutritious ground crops in colder climates and during the winter…

Read: Backyard Winter Gardening: Vegetables Fresh and Simple, In Any Climate without Artificial Heat or Electricity the Way It’s Been Done for 2,000 Years

Simple winter cold frame garden…

Composting

Composting is an essential part of every garden, is the best way to dispose of everyday organic kitchen refuse, and provides free plant-food for your garden.

Read: Let it Rot!: The Gardener’s Guide to Composting (Third Edition) (Storey’s Down-To-Earth Guides)

3-bin compost system using free pallets…

Cheap do-it-yourself worm composter…

Ideas for Apartment Gardening

Living in an apartment can mean you have to be more creative and imaginative with the space you have. Here are some resources and ideas for finding and setting up your apartment garden.

Read: Apartment Gardening: Plants, Projects, and Recipes for Growing Food in Your Urban Home

Here are some useful tips on finding space for your apartment garden…



We hope that you find the inspiration to find out for yourself just how easy, fun, and liberating home gardening can be as further stress on our collective food systems continues to drive up prices and drive down nutrition.

Gardening is both addictive and contagious, so be prepared to have fun, grow some tasty food, and meet some new friends once your neighbors hear about your success.

Alex Pietrowski is an artist and writer concerned with preserving good health and the basic freedom to enjoy a healthy lifestyle. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com, where this first appeared, and an avid student of Yoga and life.