Get creative on your RV adventures
If you’re like most people, there are a lot of things you left behind in your old life once you embraced the call of the open road. There’s only so much hiking you can do before you want a change. Change is what lured you into the RV life. We RVers are pretty fluid creatures, and we go where the wind blows us. If you’re ready to embrace a new hobby, why not try gardening in your RV?
Why do you want to garden?
The first step is figuring out the purpose of your garden. Do you want more decoration, or is your aim to grow plants you can eat to help you stay healthy on the road? If you want them just for decoration, then gardening gets a lot easier. You can find plants you love in the gardening section of your favorite store. If you want to grow actual food, then there’s more to consider.
Functional indoor plants
You probably have an assortment of indoor plants that you keep on your counter or on your table. Outside of aesthetics, what is their purpose? Sure, they clean the air, but can you eat them? Decide which vegetables you enjoy eating and get to work replacing your decorative plants with the edible variety. Find vegetable plants that won’t consume the inside of your RV or ones that you can let grow tall rather than bush outward.
Where will you plant it?
If you have a toy hauler, then your work just got a lot easier. You can buy storage bins or 5-gallon buckets to fill with dirt and string UV lights above them. Designate space in your hauler for your garden and start planning. Drainage is something you’ll need, and you can achieve this with holes in the bottom of your bins, or with rocks under the soil to let the soil drain.
Alternatively, if you have a larger RV that affords you with a bit more space, try downsizing enough where you can have a section of it to a garden. Use the same idea with bins and buckets to plant your crops. The good thing about dedicating a section of your RV to gardening, rather than a toy hauler, is the amount of natural lighting you can utilize.
If you’ve stopped for a while in a location to enjoy the summer, talk to the campground or RV park about setting up a place on your plot where you can garden. Explain to them you don’t plan on tilling the earth, you’d use the same principles of gardening inside so it’s all portable. This will give you extra space to work with and will allow the plants to grow stronger outdoors.
What will you plant?
That’s all up to you but be sure you know what your plants need as far as watering and sunlight before you go too crazy. Research the vegetables your family likes and decide where you could put each of them. Do they need more direct sunlight? Put them closer to the windows. Do they like the shade? Figure out where gets the most shade outside at your campsite.
That all sounds like a lot of space
You’re right. It’s going to take space to garden. If you’re not up to downsizing more than you already have to, or there simply is no place where you can garden, consider hanging baskets or hanging planters for herbs. While it’s not the same as growing vegetables that you can add to your recipes, it does allow you to grow spices that you can put in dishes and taste the fruits of your labor.
There are a lot of ways you can take advantage of gardening in your RV. It all comes down to planning and space, like almost everything else to do with your RV. While it can be challenging, we think you’ll like the rewards of growing your own food and a new hobby you can take part in each year.
For more interesting, fun, and helpful articles, visit our blog! We walk you through road rules for the states you travel through, where some of the most interesting camping spots are, and how to get the most out of your RVing experience!
