So you’ve fallen hard for permaculture. I get it. Me too. I mean, what’s not to like about a framework for living a happier, more fulfilling, healthier life that is also the key to saving the world?
But, you live in an apartment, or maybe a rental house, and feel that you really can’t do much with permaculture because you don’t have space for a garden.
Think again.
There are loads of things you can do to up your permaculture game, even in a small apartment.
A Note About Expanding Outside Your Walls
Of course, there are ways to expand your permaculture endeavors beyond the walls of your home, even if you don’t have a yard. Things such as getting a plot in a community garden, guerrilla gardening, or volunteering to do some projects at a local school or community center.
But that’s not what this post is about.
Let’s Keep it Inside for This Post
Instead, I’m focusing on things you can do within your immediate living space to become more self-reliant, and environmentally conscious, and live your best permaculture life, even in an apartment.
Let me Tell You a Story
To illustrate the sorts of “lifestyle retrofits” I’m thinking, I’ll tell you a story. If you’re not into story-time, then feel free to skip ahead to my list of permaculture-based ideas for apartment living below.
I’d like to tell you a story about Daisy, a fictional character I’ve made up to illustrate living a permaculture lifestyle, apartment-style.
Although Daisy is a fictional character, plenty of real-life people make similar choices to hers in their own lives (including my former, rental-living, self). Daisy’s choices are what work for her in her hypothetical situation, and do not comprise the only viable path. I’m telling her story to provide inspiration, not to invoke guilt, judgment, or expectations. So take what speaks to you from Daisy’s story and leave the rest.
Meet Daisy
Daisy is a 24-year-old, recent college grad who works at a small accounting firm and rents a one-bedroom apartment that she shares with her cat, Goji.
Daisy’s Apartment
When Daisy was in the market for an apartment, high on her list of priorities was that it be a reasonable walking distance to her work and be a south-facing unit, preferably with a patio or balcony.
Unfortunately, when it was time to find a rental she couldn’t find a place that fit both criteria.
She had to choose between a place that was a five-minute walk to work but that faced north, and a place that had a large, south-facing kitchen window and small balcony, but was a half-hour walk to her office.
Daisy opted for the unit with better daylight and decided to get a bicycle to make the commute more manageable. By biking to work every day, she worked exercise into her daily routine, eliminating the need to join a gym for regular exercise, and saving herself valuable time during the week. In this way, Daisy is already “stacking functions” in her life. Her new bicycle (which was in fact second-hand) is both a means of transportation and exercise. And her time spent commuting to work is also time spent exercising.
Lifestyle Decisions
When she moved into her apartment, Daisy made the conscious decision not to get a TV, or subscribe to Netflix or other streaming services. She uses her laptop that she got for college to watch an occasional movie and read the news online. Instead of decompressing after work in front of a screen, she chooses to spend her free time playing with Goji, reading, doing projects, and learning new skills.
Daisy doesn’t own a car, but she does have the use of her sister and brother-in-law’s car when she needs it for doctor’s appointments or other, infrequent trips. Twice a week, Daisy stops at a grocery store on her way home from work, on her bike, to get the food and supplies she needs for the next few days. Baskets on the handlebars and over the back wheel of her bike are roomy enough for the few groceries she needs for herself and Goji. About once a month she and Lily go on a larger shopping trip together in Lily’s car (Daisy pitches in for gas money) at which time she picks up things like toilet paper, cat food, and kitty litter.
Daisy’s Food
At home, Daisy likes to cook simple, fresh meals, and take leftovers with her to work for lunch the next day. She makes a lot of skillet stir-fry meals and salads, with whatever vegetables are in season and look good at the grocery store or farmers market. Sometimes Lily brings over surplus vegetables from her garden for Daisy. During the summer, Daisy likes to go to the farmer’s market once a week for produce as well as local honey and an occasional loaf of artisan bread as a treat to have with dinner.
A Balcony Garden
Because she enjoys eating salads and likes to use fresh herbs in her cooking, Daisy decided to grow salad greens, garlic chives, basil, thyme, and parsley in containers on her balcony. But Daisy can be forgetful at times, especially when work gets busy. It’s not uncommon for her to forget to water them for too long, and then over-water them. Her first attempt at a balcony garden failed. When her second set of plants died, she told Lily that she just didn’t have a green thumb and was done trying to grow things. That’s when Lily suggested she try a wicking bed, which is a raised bed or container garden with a gravel reservoir at the bottom that wicks up into the soil as needed.
The wicking beds Lily and her husband, Leif, made at their place were way too big for Daisy’s small balcony, so they modified the plans for smaller containers and spent a weekend at Lily and Leif’s building three of them. Now Daisy only has to water her garden beds once a week and doesn’t have to worry about under or over-watering. Her wicking beds help her grow most of her own salad greens and herbs for about six months out of the year.
One evening, on a whim after cleaning up after dinner, Daisy planted some pieces of ginger root in one of her wicking beds. A few weeks later green shoots sprung up. Now in addition to fresh herbs and salad greens, she grows most of her own ginger root for her stir-fry dinners.
Vermi- What?
One Saturday at the farmer’s market, Daisy noticed a different stand, nestled between the native plant society and her favorite market garden stand. It was a vermicomposting display. The lady minding the stand was selling red wiggler composting worms and worm towers.
Daisy had thought about starting a worm compost system before because she hated throwing away all her vegetable scraps, but she was worried that it would be smelly and too much work. She spoke her concerns to Rhonda, “the worm lady,” and after a five-minute conversation, Daisy learned that worm bins, or vermicomposting bins, aren’t smelly if they’re managed properly, and they’re easy to maintain. Rhonda even told her that cat waste can go into worm bins safely, when in a compostable litter.
A DIY Worm Farm and Compost Generator
Daisy was excited to start her own worm farm in her apartment, but the worm towers on display weren’t in her budget. Rhonda handed her a flyer with pictures and instructions for making a cheap DIY vermicomposting bin.
The next week, on their monthly shopping trip, Daisy and Lily stopped at a thrift store and picked up two nesting Rubbermaid tubs with lids. Lily loaned her an electric drill and a quarter-inch drill bit and Daisy made her first worm composting bin. For the worms’ bedding material, Daisy brought home a bag of shredded paper from work.
The next Saturday, Daisy bought a small bag of red wigglers from Rhonda, brought them home, and introduced them to their new home, already furnished with damp shredded paper, and stocked with fabulous worm food, already beginning to decompose (carrot peels, lettuce bottoms, and a couple of apple cores).
It took a few weeks, but soon her red wiggler population grew to its capacity and she got the hang of adding the right amount of shredded paper with her kitchen scraps to keep the bin’s carbon and nitrogen in balance. The worm castings and compost tea she added to top off the soil in her wicking beds, helped her greens grow beautifully. She even started a second bin and tried adding Goji’s waste to it (after switching to compostable cat litter of course), and found that the red wigglers did an excellent job of breaking down the cat poo as well. In time she even became comfortable using the fully composted kitty waste in her container gardens.
The worm bins live on the east end of Daisy’s balcony in the summer, shaded with a roll-up shade to keep from overheating but come inside during the winter to keep from freezing.
Learning New Skills
Daisy loves to cook with gourmet mushrooms, finding them much more palatable than standard white mushrooms, but they are too expensive for her to buy regularly. With a little bit of research, she discovered that oyster mushrooms are easy to grow on a window sill in coffee grounds. Although she doesn’t drink coffee, many of her office mates do, so she brought home some coffee grounds from work and bought some whole, fresh oyster mushrooms from the grocery store. She sterilized and then inoculated the coffee grounds with mushroom spores and set them in a dark corner of her kitchen cabinet. In a few weeks, mushroom mycelia had spread through the coffee grounds, ready to start fruiting. She put the container of grounds (with holes cut for the mushrooms to grow out of) in indirect sunlight on her kitchen counter. A few weeks later she had delicious oyster mushrooms to harvest. She ate some and used the others to start the process again. After a while, she was growing more mushrooms than she could eat, so she dried the excess harvest in her oven for future use. After that, she took a break from growing mushrooms and looked for a new project.
This time it was making sauerkraut…
I could go on and on about Daisy’s projects (many of which reflect my own projects over the years), but I think you get the idea.
And Now I’ll Finally Get to the Tips
So I’ll step away from Daisy’s narrative and get to my list of tips. Some of them you’ll recognize from Daisy’s story, others I didn’t include, but all are good ideas (or at least food for thought) for implementing permaculture in an apartment.
A few of these ideas have to do with growing things to eat. Yay! But remember, permaculture principles are more broadly applicable than just gardening. Some of these ideas are about the built environment and behaviors as well.
How does your apartment “ecosystem” support you?
For all of these ideas, think of your home and the activities you do in it as a system. It’s your own little urban ecosystem. Look at inputs and outputs. Inputs include everything you bring in the door: food, clothing, tools, toys, etc. Inputs also include water, electricity, fuel, and so on. Outputs include everything that goes down the drain or in the trash, recycle or green bin. Other outputs are any products or gifts that leave the home. Now, we’re going to look at ways to change the inputs and outputs to minimize waste and consumption and enrich your life.
I’ll divide these tips into three main categories, biological, built environment, and behavior. (Thanks to David Holmgren for these fields which he uses in his book, “Retrosuburbia: The Downshifter’s Guide to a Resilient Future.” And while I’m at it, I’ll also credit Holmgren with the idea of using fictional characters to illustrate permaculture solutions, as he so beautifully did with Aussie Street in “Retrosuburbia.”)
Here Are 17 Ways to Bring Permaculture into Your Life, Even if You Live in an Apartment.
Biological
First, we’ll look at the biological category. What can you grow or process in an apartment that produces a yield?
1. Grow sprouts and microgreens
These are perfect apartment crops because they take up very little space and they pack a nutritional punch. You’ll need a sunny window or a grow light. Eat them fresh in salads or freeze them and use them in smoothies. Both sprouts and microgreens can also be added to lacto-fermented vegetables like sauerkraut. (See tip number 5)
2. Grow culinary herbs in a container
If you have a sunny window or balcony, or a grow light, you can grow an apartment-scale herb garden. Some options are parsley, cilantro, basil, thyme, green onions, and chives. Rosemary and bay, being perennials, make great potted house plants. Use herbs fresh or hang bunches upside down to air-dry.
3. Grow oyster mushrooms
Oyster mushrooms are one of the easiest varieties of mushrooms to grow because they are robust, fast-growing, and easy to grow on a small scale. Additionally, they are adaptable to many different growing mediums, including sawdust and coffee grounds. Eat them fresh, raw, or cooked, or dehydrate them in a food dehydrator or low oven.
4. Preserve excess
When you harvest food from your apartment, you may have more than you need. This is the perfect time to do some processing to preserve your harvest for the future. Of course, you aren’t limited to only the plants you grow in your apartment. Also, preserve any excess produce you buy (maybe it was on sale) or are gifted. Get a box of apples from the farmers market in early autumn and turn it into applesauce and freeze, or slice thin and dehydrate to make apple chips.
5. Lacto-fermentation
Traditionally, pickles and sauerkraut were made by lacto-fermentation, a process that uses the naturally occurring yeasts present in the environment all around us, on the surface of vegetables, and even on our skin, to preserve food. The result is a healthy probiotic food with a longer shelf life than fresh vegetables. Many foods other than cucumbers and cabbage also do well lacto-fermented, including carrots, beets, onions, radishes, and many others. I love to add shredded carrots and ginger to my sauerkraut. Sprouts or microgreens can also be added for additional nutritional value.
All that is needed to make a batch of sauerkraut is a head of cabbage, salt, whey, or probiotic powder or liquid from the previous batch, a large glass jar or ceramic crock, and a piece of cloth and a rubber band to cover. The sauerkraut recipe I use is from the cookbook “Nourishing Traditions,” by Sally Fallon.
6. Kombucha and kefir
Both Kombucha and kefir are fermented drinks, excellent for the gut, that have become popular in recent years and are available in the chilled section of most grocery stores for a decadent price. But it isn’t hard to make either of these yourself, or so I hear. I haven’t made these myself yet, but recipes are easy to find online. “Nourishing Traditions” also has a milk kefir recipe that I’ve yet to try but hope to someday.
Built environment
Retrofitting the built environment of an apartment is inherently limited. You can’t go knocking down walls, adding windows, or installing rocket mass heaters, but there are some things you can add to your built environment. For instance, adding thermal film to windows can help retain heat in the winter without limiting your view of the outdoors. Similarly, use draft-blocking snakes at the base of the front door.
These tips include things you can add to an apartment, like furniture and accessories to support your permaculture lifestyle.
7. Wicking bed
This tip goes hand in hand with the container herb garden from Step 2. To make watering container gardens easier, build a small wicking bed as our friend Daisy did. Wicking beds work wonderfully on sunny balconies or patios, but can also work in front of a south-facing window (northern hemisphere) or even under a grow light. I plan on making a tutorial at some point, but, just Google DIY wicking beds.
8. Hugel pot
Another related idea is to make a hugelkultur bed in a pot. Huglekultur is an old German method of gardening that involves covering rotting logs and branches with soil. The resulting hug0lekultur mounds are highly fertile and retain moisture better than conventional garden beds, often needing no water or only one or two deep waterings a season. Traditionally these mounds are large and outdoors, but the same concept can be used in container gardening. Any medium to large-sized pot will do. At the bottom of your container, layer pieces of wood, twigs, straw, or any organic woody material. This will break down over time, continuing to release nutrients to your plants. On top of the wood, add regular potting soil. You can also add kitchen compost scraps directly to the hugelkultur pot, just make sure it is cut into small pieces and completely covered by soil so it doesn’t attract flies or become smelly as it decomposes. Plant anything you’d like in the “hugel pot,” and consider planting multiple things to make a miniature guild.
9. Vermicompost bin
These are contained, red wiggler worm-powered composting systems that, if properly maintained, have very little odor and efficiently turn your kitchen scraps and paper waste into plant food. You can buy fancy vermicompost systems or make one out of plastic storage tubs. Keep it in a dark corner or closet near the kitchen. Putting it near the kitchen will make it easier to regularly check on your wigglers and add kitchen scraps to the bin. Making your own compost supports much of the growing you can do in an apartment and is a great way to reduce outside inputs of commercial compost or fertilizer. Instead, turn your kitchen scraps into fertilizer for your potted plants. Layer worm castings into potting soil, or sprinkle compost tea on the soil as fertilizer.
10. Get a grow light
If your apartment doesn’t have a balcony or great windows for growing plants, or if you just want to increase the growing potential of your space, consider purchasing a grow light. Putting the light on a timer to mimic day and night is a great way to not only get an indoor harvest but also have a year-round growing season. You can go as big and complex with this as your space and time allow, with one or more large grow lights rigged up over indoor planting beds. Or, keep it small and simple with a single, full-spectrum bulb shining on a single plant to give it a boost.
11. Maximize daylight
Sunlight is one natural resource that is free and abundant. It even shines its way indoors. Make the most of this resource by inviting as much of it into your space as you are reasonably able. To maximize daylight for your plants, add open shelving or a vertical garden system in front of sunny windows.
Sunlight is good, but sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. To control glare and how much sunlight comes into your space, install window coverings that are easy and enjoyable to operate. A lot of apartments and rental houses have standard horizontal blinds that start to break and look awful after a while. In this case, if your landlord won’t replace them, consider temporarily sliding them out of their brackets (you can easily pop them back in place when you move out) and replacing them with a spring-loaded curtain rod and fabric curtains.
Sunlight helps our houseplants thrive, but it also benefits us directly with its mood-boosting and vitamin-D-making superpowers. I don’t know about you, but sunlight makes me happy, and when I’m happy I make decisions that better serve my journey to reach my best life. But this is dipping into the next category, behavior.
12. Thermal Mass
Sunlight doesn’t just brighten the day, it’s also a form of energy. And we can use the sun’s energy to passively heat our living spaces. Cats take advantage of this heat source all the time. I can just imagine Goji (our friend Daisy’s cat from earlier in this post) lounging in a beam of sunlight on Daisy’s kitchen floor. To increase the amount of solar energy you can store in your home, improve thermal comfort, and even reduce your heating bill, make use of thermal mass. Good thermal mass materials include ceramic tile, brick, and glass blocks. If you are lucky enough to have thermal mass materials such as flooring or walls, where sunlight shines, then don’t cover them up with rugs or wall hangings. If your apartment doesn’t have exposed thermal mass materials, you may be able to introduce some thermal mass with furniture, but this will be limited due to the weight of these materials and practicality.
13. Airtightness and ventilation
You can also improve your apartment’s comfort and energy efficiency by addressing air movement through the space. In cold weather make your space more airtight by adding weather stripping around doors if needed and make sure your door has a door sweep or use a draft snake to stop drafts. On the other hand, when the weather is comfortable outside, open windows to bring fresh air inside.
14. Request repairs as they come up
One of the benefits of renting is that you aren’t responsible for standard wear and tear repairs. Your landlord should take care of these things when they come up. Make a list and contact your landlord about addressing them. This includes things such as leaky faucets, running toilets, changing dirty HVAC filters, etc. Having these areas in shape reduces the waste of natural resources and your utility bill.
Behavior
Our behaviors are often difficult to change, but they also have great potential to enrich our lives. We’ve already looked at inputs and outputs of our apartment “ecosystem” and touched on energy conservation in terms of building materials and maintenance. Now we’ll look at heating and cooling energy and water conservation. Lastly, we’ll consider the often-overlooked resources of time and human energy.
15. Conserving heating and cooling energy
We already touched on improving the energy efficiency of our homes through thermal mass, weather sealing, and maintenance of the built environment, but our daily behaviors also have a large impact on resource use. Choosing to lower the thermostat, wear an extra layer of clothing, and add an extra blanket or hot water bottle to the bed can greatly reduce energy consumption. I’m not saying live in discomfort, but rather to find alternative ways to find comfort besides cranking up the heat. The same goes for air conditioning in summer.
I’ve realized that moving my body is one of the best ways for me to warm up when I find myself getting chilled at home (usually when sitting still at the computer for too long). Taking a break to move around, maybe doing a chore, or quick exercise (a few sun salutations, perhaps) is often the best remedy. A cozy blanket and a hot cup of tea also help.
For staying cool, a damp handkerchief or dish towel around your neck and an open window or fan works wonders.
16. Conserve, collect, and reuse water
I considered putting this tip in the built environment category because, in a large-scale permaculture property, that is where rainwater collection would belong, requiring gutters, downspouts, and rain barrels. At the apartment scale, we’re inside and not using rainwater. Instead, we’re concerned with the water flowing through our built environment—tap water. However, I feel the behavior category is more appropriate because this tip is more about habit-building than it is about the built environment.
Most likely you won’t have a downspout for collecting rainwater at an apartment, but there are other places to recover this valuable resource. Keep a bucket in your bathroom and fill it any time you run the hot water waiting for it to warm up. This water can be used to water plants, or even in cooking (if you use tap water for cooking.) The double benefit of doing this is that if you let the water sit out for a while, some of the chlorine will leave the water, making it healthier for plants than tap water that’s used immediately.
Graywater from washing vegetables or almost any other time the faucet is run can be collected and used similarly or as dish-soaking water. The point is to be mindful of the water that runs down your drain. Instead of letting it go immediately, collect it and think of secondary uses for it before it leaves your home.
17. Do a time audit
How are you spending your time? In our modern world of consumerism, overconsumption, and seemingly endless options for paid entertainment, it’s important to be mindful of time spent indulging in these activities. A lifestyle grounded in permaculture principles leans away from these consumptive activities and toward more productive use of time. Making this shift doesn’t mean working all the time and never having fun though. It’s more about being mindful of our habits and (if we choose) deciding to make changes to how we spend our time that will ultimately make us happier and bring abundance
Activities can be categorized as either predominantly creative or predominantly consumptive. Although a balance of both categories is reasonable, consider skewing your time towards creative activities. By creative, I really mean literally creating something. A meal, a garden, a piece of writing, making music, etcetera. By all means, continue to enjoy an occasional TV show, movie, or video game, but more often than not consider creating instead of consuming. Creative (productive) activities include paid work, household chores, writing, and food growing, harvesting, preparing, and preserving. When you do engage in consumptive activities, consider choosing things that have more relative value than just watching or playing, such as learning new skills and spending quality time with loved ones. What is your ideal balance of time spent on consumptive versus creative activities?
That’s a Wrap
There you go. Those are my 17 tips for implementing a permaculture lifestyle in an apartment. This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor a prescriptive one, but a collection of ideas. I hope you found inspiration in this post, to help you shift into a happier, healthier, and more enriching permaculture lifestyle while living in your apartment or rental house.
I’d love for you to comment below with your own ideas to take on permaculture apartment living.
Until next time, happy growing.
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