Maximizing Potential
Just because you live in tight quarters, or you don’t have access to land, doesn’t mean you can’t have a garden. You can even have a fruitful garden—it’s just going to be small. Perhaps, even,it may be modular. That is to say: you might be able to grow a garden in segments and move it as necessary. Certainly this has been done before with potted plants.
You put tomatoes in one plant, and dill in another, maybe some wheat grass in a third. You move them wherever it suits you in your home. But especially if you’re in a tiny home, a dormitory, or a studio apartment, even that may be a bit too cumbersome. Yet there’s still an alternative for you out there, and that’s a mint tin garden.
This is precisely what it sounds like. You get a mint tin, that is to say, a little metal container about three or four inches long and two or three wide, put some soil in there, and plant a seed. Perhaps plant a few seeds. You might even try different sorts of plants as it suits you. This is, essentially, the concept of a garden in a mint tin, and here we’ll explore it further.
How To Make Your Mint Tin Garden
This is pretty straightforward, but it’s worth a brief closer look. Essentially, you’ve got to properly prepare the tin. Some mint tins will have a hinge that needs to be disassembled, sometimes you can just pop it right off without any trouble. At that point, you want to poke some holes in the bottom of the tin so the water can pass through.
Next, put the tin atop the lid; this is where the water will drain. You may want to put the newly-configured mint tin on a placemat, paper towels, or some otherwise plastic protective solution. Barring that, simply be careful not to over-water whatever you grow, as it will overflow from the bottom of the tin and make a pool around your tiny little garden.
Plants You Might Want To Use: The Modular Approach
Once you’ve made your tin, you want to put the right sort of soil in it, and grow the right sort of plants. You might be able to get a bonsai tree going, you’re probably not going to have much success with a normal sized tree. Some plants that are small work better than others.
Some plants will simply stop growing once they reach root limitations, also; so you may be surprised at the variety you can grow in such a tiny space. Wheat grass, tiny little succulents, vines, varying flowers—if you really want to be stylish, check out this fine online lavender collection.
If you’ve got a few tins, you can put multiple plants together, and because mint tins are small and rectangular, essentially, you’ve got a little modular garden. Put fifteen of them in an array, and in the same space where you could only fit one or two potted plants before, you can have fifteen distinct types of flora flourishing, water them easily, and arrange them decoratively.
Repositioning such a garden is simple, too; just lift up all the little tins and put them in their new location. That’s much more difficult in a traditional garden planted in the ground. Certainly you can move it, but the plants won’t be fruitful for a while until they get settled in. Trees usually take a few seasons, depending on the tree and the climate, when replanted.
Maximizing Your Space, Large Or Small
Whether you’ve got enough space to grow a garden in your living room, or your living room is the size of a closet, the mint tin garden has applicability. It looks good, it’s easy to put together, it’s aesthetically interesting, it can be modular, and it allows you to maximize small living space. Contrarily, you can draw attention to the wide spaces.
Whatever best fits your particular living situation is likely going to be your most suitable option. So instead of throwing out those old mint tins, poke some holes in them, put the lid on the bottom, scrape some soil from one of your potted plants, and plant a seed in there. You may be surprised what you can do with even such a humble space.