Indoor Gardening in a Manufactured Home
You can grow flowers, fruits, vegetables, succulents, and herbs right on your wall or in containers and use functional indoor gardening in a manufactured home!
Your space can be utilized in such a way that your home smells amazing and you have your favorite fresh herbs on hand whenever you need them. It takes a little bit of planning, a little bit of work, and a lot of love and cultivation but when you’re finished, the design will be better than you imagined.
Related: Decorating With Indoor Plants
Indoor Gardening in a Manufactured Home Ideas
Planning Your Garden
What do you want to grow? Most flowers and herbs can be cultivated in small pots that can be placed pretty much anywhere that there is sun, but some of them need larger space and have to eventually be moved outside. Research the types of plants that you want to grow before you purchase seeds and potting soil so that you don’t end up with plants that die in pots that are too small for them. In your research, find out which plants need the most sun so that you can place them strategically to get the nutrients that they need. If your home doesn’t get that enough sun, you can purchase grow lamps to place near the plants so that they receive sun. Learn how to design a successful indoor garden here. Click here for a great guide to indoor gardening from Living Simple.
Shelving and Potting
It’s likely that your walls are not naturally equipped to hold potted plants. Therefore, you’ll have to put up shelves or get window boxes that work with your manufactured home decor. When it comes to potting your plants, you don’t have to use only regular pots sold in garden stores. You can use mason jars, water bottles, and virtually anything else that will hold soil and water. If your plants require drainage, you’ll have to drill holes in the bottom of the containers and provide drainage trays to catch any excess water.
There’s a great tutorial on instructables.com for mini indoor herb garden.
Vertical Gardening
Vertical gardening has gotten very popular recently. Living walls are a great way to introduce greenery into your home. You can grow herbs, grasses, and succulents fairly easy with a vertical container. Some people use plastic or cloth bags that have been modified a bit but there’s also kits you can purchase.
Soda Bottles
Soda bottles are a very affordable way to add plants to a wall. Just cut out a large hole in the side of the bottle and tighten the lid. Add soil and the plants and water!
Unconsumption.com has some great affordable gardening ideas. From old purses to growing plants in your shower floor, there are plenty of ideas for you to grow any kind of garden you want. Here’s the shower idea:
Below is a vegetable garden using 2-liter soda bottles:
Pockets
As stated above you can use old purses for your plants, just fill with soil and add plants. You can hang them using the straps or attach them in rows on the wall (use the studs cause it may get a bit heavy when the dirt is wet). You would have to be careful when watering, you wouldn’t want to over-water. If you are using cloth you may want to add a waterproofing to the wall.
SeasonalWisdom.com has a great collection of vertical gardening ideas. Below is an example of purses being used as planters:
Rain Gutters
Rain Gutters can be used in vertical gardening. You can attach them to a wall or hang them from the ceiling. You’ll need to grow plants with shallow root systems but there’s plenty of those that grow well indoors and outdoors.
Plain ole’ Shelves
Here’s a great idea using basic plant containers. You could find a merchandise display and modify it or just use some lumber to build a shelf to hold the containers.
Being Practical
Flowers are very pretty and can accent your manufactured home decor in many ways, but an indoor garden is also a great way to plant practical things that you may need for cooking or to filter the air. Plants cleanse the air naturally. Many kinds of herbs can be grown indoors and you can pick them fresh as you need them. Think about herbs that you’d like to use more often but have been too expensive or difficult to find in the past. You can plant these for regular use right in your home.
You can use leaf cuttings from a succulent to save even more money.
Here’s a neat infographic about succulents called ‘A Visual Compendium of Succulents’ :
A VISUAL COMPENDIUM OF SUCCULENTS [Infographic] by the team at heitonbuckley.
Patience, Patience, Patience
No matter what you try to grow, be aware that it will take time. The research and planning that you do are only the beginning. Your seedlings may take some time to yield usable herbs or sprout the flowers that the pictures portray on the seed packets. It’s important to remember that this doesn’t happen overnight and you shouldn’t give up after only a couple of weeks. Give your garden time to grow and you’ll be happy when it does.
As always, thank you for reading Mobile and Manufactured Home Living!
Hi Kat!
I’m not really sure about that. I have read about the chemicals in water bottles so it very well could be an issue.
Doesn’t the BPA in the plastic over time leach into the soil which in turn leaches into the vegetables? I think it does because we know that water in plastic bottles eventually leaches chemicals into the water stored in it. So, given that it makes sense that this would eventually leach into the soil and vegetables growing in them.
great ideas. beautiful and practical. thank you for sharing.
Love your creative ideas for low maintenance wall gardens. It inspired me!!