How to Grow Food for Free in the City

Hey everyone, Rob Greenfield here,

and we are at my urban

Food is Free demonstration garden.

This is going to be a crash course

in how you can grow food for free,

or with very, very little money.

I'm going to cover all the

limiting factors in gardening,

so we're going to go over how to get your

garden beds, seeds,

water, soil, mulch, compost,

everything that you need in order

to be able to grow food for free

or very, very little money.

So first thing's first is

raised beds, containers,

what you're going to be growing the food in.

And, since this is a demonstration garden,

I really wanted to show many ways

that you can do this in urban environments

or out in the countryside.

So I'm going to show you the 10

different gardens that we have.

So here we have an old nightstand.

This is just as simple as laying

it on it's side, filling it with dirt,

and then planting food in it.

You can use things like bookshelves,

drawers, anything like that,

where you can just lay it on it's side

and fill it up with dirt.

Here we have an old pallet.

The bottom is the pallet as the base,

and then around it, it's just using

the pieces of the pallets.

Or, these are fence posts.

99% of all pallets in the United States

are used 1 time,

and then end up in a landfill.

Pallets are endless.

You can get them on Craigslist,

behind grocery stores.

So many ways to get them.

So here's another really simple

raised bed.

This is just old scrapwood.

You could go buy

brand new from the store,

but the truth is that it's

laying all over the place.

Here's four 5- gallon buckets.

These are free all over the place.

You can go behind

grocery stores or restaurants.

They get a lot of their food ordered

in this like mayo and pickles

and things like that.

So you can use these buckets.

These are great for balconies and

patios, and things like that.

here we've got tires.

In neighborhoods like where I am in

Bankhead, Atlanta,

there's tires everywhere.

They make a really simple,

really easy raised bed,

and you keep them out of the landfill.

And then over here we've got milk crates,

also thrown away like crazy,

and you can make beautiful little

gardens out of those as well.

Another wasted resource that you can use

is bricks.

I got these from an

abandoned apartment complex,

which are just numerous

all across the community here.

This is my favorite of all.

This is just an old toy car of sorts.

I don't know if it was a sandbox toy car

or what, but anything that can hold

in the dirt, you can use it.

That's the idea of making stuff

for free and keeping it simple.

And then we've got some

vertical gardening here.

This is a great way to use an old ladder.

This is just a trash ladder I found

in an abandoned apartment complex.

And you just take old buckets,

or whatever containers that you find

for free,

stack them up, and then you've got

yourself a vertical garden.

For people that live in

urban places, apartments,

vertical gardening is a way to really

make your space go further.

Here, I haven't finished this yet,

but this is just an old pallet.

How this works, is you

just have to seal the back.

And then you fill it with soil,

plant it with herbs...

Right now I have some

herbs sitting on top.

Really cool thing here,

talked about using your resources,

using wasted resources.

This is is an air conditioning unit.

What I did is I positioned

the plants underneath it.

So these are actually using this water

that would have otherwise been

completely wasted.

You would be amazed

how much water you can get

from an air conditioning unit.

The key to making raised beds for free are

to be creative, use wasted resources,

use what is near by, and try to have the

least environmental impact,

and need as few virgin

resources as possible.

These are keys to always remember

when freestyle gardening

and trying to grow food for free.

Composting is extremely simple and only

as complicated as you make it.

A lot of people worry that

composting is this difficult thing,

but the truth is that the worst thing

you can do is not compost.

As long as you are sticking your kitchen

scraps, your yard waste, and so on,

into this,

and if you don't even think you're doing

it right at all, that is far better

than putting it in the landfill.

Making a compost bin is also as simple

as creating compost.

This is just three pallets,

nailed together, or you can use wire to

connect them.

It's just so you can keep everything in

and keep things like dogs out.

Just add kitchen waste, yard waste,

and paper waste together in a pile.

You basically want a

30 to 1 Carbon to Nitrogen ratio.

Carbon is your browns.

Nitrogen is your greens.

So browns would be things like

dried leaves or cardboard.

Greens are things like kitchen waste

or yard waste that's still green.

Now, how to get compost for free

when you're just getting started:

One, you can go to a lot

of the city landfills.

You can go to Google and do a quick search.

Find out if your city landfill

gives out free compost.

This is compost they're making from

yard waste that they pick up,

sometimes food waste,

if they have that program.

You can also go on Craigslist

and just type in "compost."

You might find mushroom compost

or a community garden that just

went out of business.

Just go on Craigslist, type in "compost,"

See what you find, a lot of times

you'll find it for free or very cheap.

You can also just make your own.

There's wasted resources all around you

to make compost.

Again, you just need to find

your greens and your browns.

Your nitrogens and your carbons.

You can do this by finding yard waste,

you can find huge piles of leaves or grass

clippings all over your neighborhood

and they'll get your nitrogen.

What you want to do is find food waste.

You can do this in multiple ways.

You can go dumpster diving.

Grocery stores are a great place to get

quality fruits and vegetables that are

going to waste,

that will make great compost.

You can also ask your neighbors

or local restaurants or businesses

to hang on to their food waste

and put it into 5 gallon buckets

and then you'll pick it up.

You can talk to coffee shops

to get their coffee grounds.

So wasted resources are all around you,

in order to get your

compost materials for free.

While we're on compost, let's talk about

mulch and soil.

You can get mulch for free, all around you.

One way, old leaves.

Collect them from your neighborhood.

This is a great way to get mulch.

Another way is cardboard.

The idea of mulch is to

do two things, really.

One: to keep moisture in.

It helps to keep the evaporation

from happening and keep the moisture

in the soil.

Another thing is, it decreases

your need to weed, because it

doesn't allow the sun to get through

for weeds to be able to grow.

As far as soil goes,

you can go back to Craigslist

and just type in "fill dirt" or "soil."

Fill dirt, a lot of times, you can get

dirt from construction sites.

They might just need to get rid of all

of this dirt that they dug up.

Another thing is you can see if there's

an abandoned garden,

abandoned community garden,

you can get soil or dirt from that

a lot of times.

Or, you might be able to just dig some up

from an area in your yard, as long

as you're not messing with

the native environment there.

Rainwater harvesting is another thing

that people think is really complicated,

but it's really just as simple as

diverting the water from your roof

into a container that can hold rain water.

Simple as that.

So what I have here,

this house, when I got here

earlier this month

had no gutters whatsoever.

If you have gutters, 90% of the work

is already done.

I simply put 10 feet of gutter on the roof

and then all you need is a downspout

that directs into the barrels.

All I have is a down spout,

and then I cut a hole in

the top of the barrel,

and put some mesh wire.

This is so that you don't have mosquitos

that are able to get inside there.

And then I just put these rocks here

in order to make sure

that the gutter downspout

is going directly into the barrel.

And then, on the bottom,

it's really nice to put a spigot on there,

but not necessary.

You can always go really simple

and just scoop water out of the top.

I like the system of having

a spigot on here though,

it makes it really easy.

And then, what I do is, I just set

an old bucket on the bottom of it.

To water the garden, I have this bucket,

which is just a bucket I found outside

that was going to waste,

and then I poked holes in the bottom.

Makes it really easy to water.

By watering your garden with rain water,

we're talking zero pennies.

Zero money in order to be able

to water your garden.

Here is another way to use water that

you wouldn't normally have

and would have been wasted.

This is a simple 5 gallon bucket

that came from inside the kitchen.

You can put this under the sink

and unscrew the P-trap

and place this under the sink

so that the water drains out.

And then you bring it out every time

you fill 5 gallons.

or you can just place this next to

the sink and then dump water in there

from the bowls and things like that.

So that's called grey water.

If you want to get a little bit fancier

but still simple, you can do

laundry to landscape,

which is just taking your washing machine

and setting it up so that the water

comes out into the garden.

You can also put a bucket in your shower,

or you can do the same thing and send your

shower water directly out here.

Another cool thing you can do is just

set up your hose as a shower,

next to your garden, so that the water

goes straight into your garden.

Lot of ways to be able to get water

for free, and use wasted sources of water.

Now, when I first got into gardening,

I never would have thought that there's

a way to get seeds for free.

But even seeds can be gotten for free,

and there's a lot of different ways.

Once you've started gardening,

all you have to do is save your seeds.

Let some of the plants go to seed

and then harvest those seeds so

you'll have them for your next planting.

But, if you're just getting started,

you won't have that.

So what you can do is

you can go to gardens

in your community.

A lot of times, community gardens

where they might have neglected plots,

will have tons of plants

that have gone to seed.

Ask if you can go there

and harvest those seeds.

Another thing you can do is talk

to your neighbors,

talk to people who are gardening,

and ask if they have

seeds that they've saved.

A little bit of seeds

goes a really long way.

Another thing you can do is ask people

in the community if they have seeds

that are going to waste.

Seeds that are older

and they might not use.

What you're going to want to do if the

seeds are older

is probably plant them first

in little trays that you can actually

test to see if they work, before

putting them in the soil.

You can harvest them from nature as well,

if you can find wild plants.

So, a lot of ways to get seeds for free.

Lastly, if you are short on cash,

if you really want to start gardening

but you don't have the money,

I can cover the seeds for you,

it's one of the things that I do.

And to figure out how to do that,

to get more information, just go to

my website, robgreenfield.tv/freeseeds

and you'll be able to get seeds for free.

So there's no reason

why you won't have seeds

between one of those,

to get your garden going.

Another limiting factor can be space.

But if you have a creative mind

and you're resourceful,

there's spaces all around you.

You can use balconies, window sills...

You can use porches and patios.

You can use vertical spaces.

You can turn lawns into gardens.

Just grow food, not lawns.

You can also use

other people's vacant space.

So there's people who have their

yards that aren't getting used.

Just grow it in their yards,

of course, ask them.

And then give them a percentage

of the food so they are getting

food for free.

You can also join a community garden

or make a community garden

if there isn't one.

And you can also freestyle garden

in abandoned lots or unwanted locations.

One really important thing I wanted to say

is that food is actually growing for free

all around you

if you open up your eyes.

You can eat the weeds.

There's broad leaf plantain.

There's dandelion greens.

There's lambs quarter.

Some of the most nutritious plants

are growing all over us,

in the cities and the countryside.

We don't even have to do any of the work.

It's just growing there,

ready to feed our bodies.

So get into some wild foraging.

I hope that what you've seen

here in this video, is that

gardening doesn't have to be expensive

it doesn't have to be challenging,

it can be really fun,

you can do it with very low

to no environmental impact,

while actually increasing the positive

impact you have on the world around you.

You can involve your neighbors,

involve your community,

and grow food to feed yourself,

feed your neighbors,

and to make the world a better place.

If you want to learn more,

more details and figure out excatly

how you can you can do this,

you can go to

robgreenfield.tv/foodforfree

Thanks a lot for joining,

and grow some food!