If you don’t have a formal garden plot or you don’t have the time or patience to keep one up – there are a lot of other ways to get pretty good results.
I do a lot of indoor sprouting with seeds, and that takes no soil and are ready in just a few days. You just need jars and either lids with grates on them or cheesecloth, and you can buy sprouting seeds at any gardening store.
For the outdoors, I have a bunch of raspberries planted. A few are left over from last year and I had pretty good results with those, so I added a couple extra – since unfortunately the original ones got kind of squished in the winter.
I have strawberries planted right in the grass, and those grow pretty well. I added rhubarb this year too. Also have a Saskatoon one which I don’t think will ever yield anything but it’s just interesting to look at.
On the deck I have mint, basil, a giant planter with assorted herbs and it also has tomatoes and peppers in it and a few salad bowls I put together with stuff from the greenhouse. You could start all of those from seed, or just buy them ready grown if you don’t have a lot of patience.
On top of pallets I keep all my potted stuff – apart from the flowers that are just there to be planted in the front yard, the rest are staying in their pots all summer long. I don’t bother to transplant any of them, and have good results. It’s nice to be able to move them around in case you have rabbits or squirrels in the yard who like a certain variety of food. Those are all from this season, and there’s already a few strawberries almost ready to eat and a few tiny cucumbers growing. They would work well even on a windowsill or on a small deck. I’m not a big fan of weeding, so these are a great option. Pretty much if you can remember to water them properly, most things will grow nicely like that.
When it was still freezing overnight, I was making many trips every morning and night to put them back in the garage, but they should all be fine outside now.
I find even if you just have a little bit of space, or if you have the space but just aren’t into gardening that much you can still grow quite a bit of your own food. Even just having salad bowls and some herbs go a long way.