No Room to Garden? Use Your Truck or Barge or Bathtub

Seriously, if I hear one more person say to me, "I don't have room to garden," I'll go Norman Bates on them. You have room, you are just to lazy to go and find it. Rent a community garden plot. Ask a relative/friend/colleague for a patch of their earth. Explore unused spaces like roofs/window ledges/front steps. I've seen gardens in stored canoes hanging down restaurant walls, in unused bathtubs, on office parking lot islands. "No space" is flat out no excuse.

In the category of found garden spaces comes a new documentary from the guys behind King Corn. Truck Farm! is about literally a farm planted on a truckbed. They use greenroof materials to install the base layers and the rest is just basic gardening -- good soil, plant seeds, water, park in a sunny spot. Truly meals on wheels -- Genius!

Last week, I caught a screening of Truck Farm! and a discussion with the filmmakers at the Smithsonian as part of the Resident Associates program. The film is more than just the truck planting, thank goodness, it is about the urban farming trend in general and how growing our own food is bringing new life to emply places in our inner cities. Other inventive urban farm examples in the docu include gardens on a barge, over a baseball field, in an apartment lobby window, and on top of a Brooklyn factory roof. The filmmakers commented that after completing their work many more urban farms in even more inventive spots have come to their attention and more are taking root every day.

So I say it again: "no space" is no excuse. Where will you grow your garden?