4 Ultra Easy Ways to Grow Food Without a Garden

Growing your own food is undoubtedly one of the best ways to maximize nutrition. Taking advantage of the freshest possible produce, know exactly where it’s been, and helping kids get excited about eating vegetables are all make gardening an important piece of optimal nutrition.

But let’s face it, gardening can be hard. If you reach the first hurdle of actually having a great place to garden, then you have to figure out what to grow, when to plant it, how to prepare your dirt. Once you know what to do, you have to make time to weed and take care of it.

I have had a couple years of moderately successful gardening years ago when we had a big garden space in the house we were renting, but I haven’t had a “real garden” in about 8 years. My biggest hurdle is my current backyard–the only places that get enough sun are either on the patio or right in the middle of the lawn that is already much smaller than we’d like. Even if I had a great spot making time to figure out what to plant, when to plant it, when to water it, when to weed it would be a huge hurdle too. BUT, since I haven’t been willing to take on a major landscaping overhaul just yet, I’ve figured out a few ways to take advantage of growing your own food that take minimal time and are totally doable with young kids.

Sprouting

If you do nothing else, you should be sprouting. It takes maybe 2 minutes a day, costs very little and is a great way to have nutrient-packed fresh produce ready at any time, so you’ll be ready if the Zombie Apocalypse, major disaster or anything else cuts off our food supply. Furthermore, sprouts are PACKED with nutrition. Broccoli sprouts contain 25 times more sulfurophane than regular broccoli and are one of the best anti-cancer foods you can eat.

If you’re not familiar with sprouting, you really only need a mason jar, some type of screen to drain the seeds and the seeds themselves! I used a piece of window screen held on with a rubber band for a long time. Finally I invested $6 in these sprouting lids and they were a great buy. I love being able to toss them in the dishwasher and they came with a great chart and instruction sheet that I keep handy. These have a little stand on them and look like a great option too.

Right now I am enjoying mung, alfalfa, and broccoli sprouts, but the list of things you can sprout is long. Virtually any seed, grain or bean can be sprouted. So far I’ve played it safe by buying seeds specifically for sprouting, but you can also sprout beans and grains from the bulk bins at . . . you guessed it, Sprouts my favorite health food store!

How to Sprout:

You can look up instructions for your specific type of seeds, but generally all sprouts follow the same basic process:

Soak the seeds for about 12 hours.
Then using the screen, drain the water and rinse the seeds.
Store at an angle (I set my jar inside a bowl) so that the water can drain out.
Rinse the seeds 2-3 times a day (doing dishes after a meal is the perfect time) until they begin to grow and enjoy after about 3-4 days. Store in fridge.

Sprouting Tips:

Sprouts flavor gets stronger with time. If you are introducing them to your family for the first time, you’ll want to eat them as soon as they begin to resemble sprouts, at roughly 3 days. More time growing and more time in the fridge leads to a taste that can become bitter.
To get your sprouts nice and green, place them in a sunny window or other location. I usually just try to get them a days worth of sunshine just before we stick them in the fridge and hopefully enjoy them very soon.
Know the difference between cilia and mold! I dumped a whole batch of sprouts because I thought they were moldy, but it turns out they develop a fuzz called cilia when they are a little too dry. Here is a great video to help you know the difference.
Sandwiches, salads and smoothies are our favorite way to enjoy sprouts. My boys still aren’t super ambitious when it comes to eating sprouts on their own, but if they are mixed into a salad or something they are usually okay with them.

Container Garden in Your Sleep With Earthbox

Turns out I should have take some more pictures of my Earthbox last year, but these little seedlings were huge plants by the end of the summer. The little boys grew too!

Okay, so you might want to be awake for this, but Earthbox provides super simple instructions and kits to take the guesswork out of gardening and ensure success your first time. You can grow nearly anything you would in a traditional garden with the amazing Earthbox system. They have implemented commercial growing methods to minimizes challenges with watering, weeds, fertilizing and promote more harvest than you can get in a traditional garden. I chose the organic option, and with great instructions and the Earthbox Forum we loved harvesting cucumbers and zucchini for months from ours last summer. I had three zucchini plants and one cucumber. I think I fudged their recommendations a bit and regretted it, but we still had a good harvest and are very much looking forward to doing it again.

The Earthbox is a large planter box with a tray that holds the dirt above the water area and allows the plants to drink the water as needed. So you don’t have to worry about over or under watering, you just have to keep the water reservoir full. It has a cover that ensures your plants grow and the weeds do not. They even have a watering system that will water your plants while you go on vacation! We took ours over to the neighbors while we were out of town last year–it worked alright but I am looking forward to getting the watering system!

I was able to place the Organic Earthbox on my picnic table, send any of my boys (ages 5-9) out to water it and enjoy fresh cucumber and zucchini. And did you know that Zucchini flowers have special cancer-fighting properties as highlighted by Dr. Li during the Food Revolution Summit?

At $50-$60 the Earthbox has a larger upfront investment, but within 2 years I am guessing we will make back our investment. Add to that the excitement of growing your own food without a lot of knowledge, time, or garden space and it’s a fantastic option.

Seedsheet

Another great option is the Seedsheet. My husband just got me one for my birthday, and this picture shows our progress one week after planting, which included some snow and several cold days!

The seed sheet is essentially a ground cover type fabric with little pockets of soil and seed. We have the salad Seedsheet and everything is coming up! We used a pot we already had, filled it with potting soil, then staked the Seedsheet on top and watered it.

I love that you don’t have to worry about what grows well together, how to space it, and all of that!

You can buy an entire Seedsheet kit, or buy the sheet and use containers and soil you may already have. At about $15, it’s comparable to what you would spend on seeds, except that they are totally ready to go! It also comes with a watering nozzle that screws on nicely to a 1 liter club soda/seltzer bottle.

Fermenting

The health world is a buzz these days with information about the power of good gut bacteria. Often we think of yogurt as a good way to strengthen our gut’s microbiome, but generally it only has only one or two strains of bacteria and is often full of ingredients that are going to do more harm than good.

Fermenting your own food sounds kind of scary and out there, but it’s actually super simple and low-cost. In about 15 minutes and for a few dollars you can grow your own probiotics with a vast array of healthy strains.

Purple cabbage has the most antioxidants per dollar than any food. We really got our money’s worth out of this head — first it was featured in this video, then it made an appearance in some Asian rice wraps for dinner, then the remaining got turned into sauerkraut. It can be hard to eat an entire head of cabbage so this is a great way to maximize the nutrition you’re getting from the humble cabbage.

After thinking about it for years, I finally made my first batches of sauerkraut and it is ultra easy, ultra low cost and just as good as the raw sauerkraut I picked up at Costco! It takes about 15 minutes to prepare, but then it sits on your counter and does the rest of the work itself!

How to Make Sauerkraut

1. Cut 1 head of cabbage into ribbons, about 1/4 inch in width and 1-2 inches in length. You don’t have to be exact here, just nice smallish pieces.
2. Place chopped cabbage in a large, deep bowl and sprinkle with 1 TBSP sea salt. Allow to sit for about 10 minutes.
3. Massage cabbage with clean hands for about 8 minutes, or until it has softened and produced a generous puddle of liquid in the bottom of the bowl. Carefully place cabbage in a quart size jar and pour the liquid over the cabbage. I found that my Adam’s Peanut Butter jars and my potato masher were a perfect combo here to press the air out of the cabbage and below the liquid. If you don’t have enough liquid to cover you can mix an additional 2 tsp sea salt with 2 cups water and pour it over the cabbage.

You want the cabbage to be completely submerged beneath the water. You can use the core of the cabbage or a smaller jar to prevent the cabbage from floating above the water line. Any cabbage that is above the water line needs to be discarded and not eaten. If you are serious about fermenting, fermenting weights are a great investment so it’s easy to keep all the cabbage below the water line.

I’ve found the best way to get the sprouts and sauerkraut into my kids is salads or sandwiches. The real benefit of sauerkraut is that the salty tangy flavor can stand in as a great substitute for dressings or other often less-healthy methods of adding flavor to salads. I like to add my sprouts to salad with a diced avocado and mixed greens or they are also delicious in a sandwich with hummus and tomato as pictured.

It can be so easy to put off growing your own food, but these methods require minimal time and money to produce better nutrition than you can buy in the store. Pick one and try it today!

What’s your favorite method for growing your own food? What works for you?