How to Compost and Garden in an Apartment

Managing organic waste, reducing your environmental impact and creating a lush, fertile garden sounds pretty unachievable if you’re living in an apartment. Where are you gonna find the space to do all that? Never mind the time in your busy city life schedule!

Subpod makes all this possible though, bringing the world of composting into your home no matter the size of your outdoor space. You live in a high rise with only a balcony and no yard or garden? Now you can create a vibrant ecosystem right on that balcony!

Meet Modbed, our modular garden planter designed for gardening in small spaces.

Before we get into how Modbed can turn your balcony into a green space, let’s take a look at why composting is so important.

Why Composting Is So Important

The world has a food waste problem, and composting is seen as a cornerstone in our efforts to solve it. According to the UN, over 1.3-billion tonnes of food is either lost or wasted around the world every year. Much of this ends up in landfill, where it decomposes slowly and releases harmful methane into the atmosphere.

Methane sucks. It’s up to 28-times more powerful than Carbon Dioxide, making it one of the most potent greenhouse gases out there.

Composting is your way of joining the fight for sustainability, putting your home on the front line in the war against food waste! It takes the pressure off landfills, it reduces greenhouse gases and it gives you a nutrient rich product to help support healthy soils.

If we stopped wasting food and sending it to landfill, we’d eliminate 6-8% of greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere. Now there’s a good reason for all of us to band together and get that home composting solution setup on our balcony!

Why Inner-City Gardening Is So Important

Gardening has a wealth of physical and mental benefits, and the best thing is you don’t need to be a green-fingered gardening guru to enjoy it! Growing plants helps you connect with Mother Nature, giving you an avenue of peace and quiet in the midst of your busy urban existence. To be able to enjoy that on your own balcony, without leaving your home, is great for your mental health!

This escape from the business of your day-to-day life encourages more mindfulness, a greater appreciation of the present. You can plan and savour the time spent pursuing a worthwhile pursuit in composting and gardening that benefits not just yourself but the planet too.

What’s more, you get delicious fresh produce to enjoy, straight out of your own garden bed! You can start growing herbs and vegetables that you love eating, saving you money and trips to the supermarket. Even better, your homegrown produce doesn’t come packaged in wasteful single-use plastic!

How Modbed Turns Your Balcony Into a Garden

Modbed is a modular garden bed, compact enough to fit on any sized balcony. The garden bed section is made of FSC-certified, carbonised wood that is salt- and rot-resistant while also deterring pests like termites. It sits at around waist height on four legs with wheels at the bottom of each, making it easy to move around.

Your Modbed, once filled with soil, can be used as a compact, mobile garden bed on your balcony. Here’s the thing though, it's the perfect size to house a Subpod Mini! This allows for the creation of a closed loop gardening system: food waste goes into your Subpod, worms and microbes turn it into nutrient-rich compost, the compost is used to fertilise your plants, you eat the produce of your plants.

What’s great about the Modbed bundle is your worms can move from the Subpod into the surrounding soil, taking their fertile goodness with them. Any plants in the Modbed have access to the nutrient rich, organic fertiliser created by the worm castings. Flourishing plants and abundant harvests are the result!

With Modbed, your concrete or tiled balcony soon bursts into life and becomes a flourishing ecosystem. This verdant world-of-its-own helps reduce your carbon footprint, tackles the food waste problem and gives you a lush place to escape your urban concrete jungle - right in the comfort of your own home!

So if you want to get gardening, Modbed is the compact, mobile and easy-to-use setup, no matter the size of your outdoor space. Browse it and other Subpod composting options in our store below!

Want to get composting in your apartment?

Check out our range of worm farm compost systems!