Vegetable: Gardening in a Small Apartment

In an apartment as small as ours, barely 800 square feet, it can be difficult to find space for all of these projects. It is also important to make sure these projects don't begin to invade our living space. A little project in the living room now and then is nice, but when you find yourself sitting next to fermenting pickles with your feet up on a case of homebrew and a leg of prosciutto hanging over your head you realize you may have a problem. This lead me to put some effort into finding a nice space for our seedlings to sprout. It is necessary that the spot in the apartment brings lots of sunlight to our little seedlings, which can be challenging in the grey days of winter and with minimal window space. With these restrictions in mind I looked up to the sky light in our living to find a home for our little sprouts. Using salvaged plywood from a neighbors demolished garage I constructed a shelf to hang from the ceiling so that light can still enter the room and egg cartons filled with soil pellets and seeds can perch along it. This puts the seedlings out of the way and yet keeps them easily accessible by stepladder for watering. The seedlings are getting lots of sunlight and there are already some chives, marjoram, oregano and coriander peaking out from under the soil.