I’m in my 3rd year gardening from my balcony and living room. Here’s a quick overview of my experiences to help newbie apartment gardeners navigate the many options available.

Note: I am comparing my results with other ‘traditional’ gardeners’ who I share seeds with. So I’ve seen how more soil directly translates to larger growth.

Soil Based

1. Grow Bags

I find these to only be good for sweet potatoesm flowers and herbs. You have to fill them too full for larger plants which causes the bags to bulge. I tried Tomatoes/Zuccini but both got blossom end rot and didn’t produce viable fruit.

Main issue is not enough soil for plants to grow their roots out.

2. Hanging Plastic Bottles.

So I tried these with a dwarf bell pepper variety and the fruit were smaller than the ones that got planted in the ground. I also had significant problems getting the right amount of drainage leading to blossom end rot.

I never tried the “upside down” versions with the plants growing downward as that is counter to the plant biology of most plants.

Overall I would only recommend this if you have zero space and zero access to alternatives. Could be more viable for herbs, strawberries, and climbing plants.

3. Wall Planters

So I only tried these this year and I made several mistakes. First off, I put it in an area with too much sun. Second, I direct seeded my greens into it because I didn’t want to do any more seedlings this year. 3rd, I did not water it ‘correctly’. Because of the small soil space, the sun expose, and my climate it require red more frequent small waterings. Everything that sprouted either dried up or drowned.

Next year I will start them as seedlings and transplant them, use dripping irrigation or some other form of water management.

4. Railing Planters

So these are pretty consistent, their main limiting factor is of course shallow soil. Great for herbs and flowers, strawberries are okay. Grew a sunflower out of one but it was much smaller than the others.

Definitely a good place to start. Just make sure they have drainage holes.

Hydroponic Based

5. Tower Garden

So these are legit, but they’re also over priced. This was my first hydroponic grow system and while it worked well for some things, the “one size fits all” has it’s limitations.

The main strength of these are the vertical aspect and the aeration. Which I will discuss more in other methods.

6. KRATKY

So KRATKY is essentially growing in water with nutrients. The biggest drawback is there is no aeration. As such you need to refill only to 2/3 leaving 1/3 of the roots above water to absorb oxygen from the air.

Size of container limits root potential and thus overall plant growth. I’ve used 5gal jugs and gotten much larger plants simply from the size increase.

I do NOT recommend the coloured pots in the picture. They are too small. Might be viable for non-edible plants but for anything you wanna eat the smaller harvest is a drawback.

7. Aero-Garden / iDoo / ETC

So I highly recommend these type of systems in general. They have drawbacks and can be overpriced but they are easy to use and produce. They all have water circulation pumps that provide aeration, so you can fill them fuller and you get much larger harvests. This is the primary advantage over KRATKY. I highly recommend adding an air stone to any existing KRATKY to massively improve growth.

Downsides are they tend to be smaller so roots can only grow so big. They also tend to use switches whose timer resets when it loses power, so you have to turn them on at the correct time for them to turn off when you want them to.

8. Aquaponic w/ Aquarium

So this is by far the most complicated option. BUT fish water is amazing garden fertilizer, so it’s a viable part of any growing system.

Main consideration is tropical fish want warm water that doesn’t hold oxygen, meaning you need airstones and will always have stunted growth.

Secondary is algae, which grows from light entering the aquarium. The challenge is getting light on your plants while minimizing the light hitting the water.

I’ve done strawberries, sweet potatoes, and spider plants. I would suggest going with non-edible plants like the spider plant or pothos.