Growing your own food, even just herbs, is a powerful and satisfying act. But who has the time? These gardening gadgets ensure that even the laziest black thumbs among us can still enjoy a fresh tomato now and then.

A lack of space, time, cooperative weather and/or gardening know-how doesn’t mean you can’t revel in the taste of a home-grown tomato. You just need a shortcut past all the planning and digging so you can get straight to the growing and eating. Below are four growing technologies that make gardening approachable again, no matter how many house plants you’ve killed or how little yard space you enjoy.

1. Woolly Pocket

I know I already mentioned this device as a way to bring spring indoors, but I think they’re so neat, it’s worth another look. Woolly Pockets (pictured, top) are available as wall hangers, table planters, or raised beds. The newest offering, the Living Wall Planter, features a hard vented shell, a sturdy shape and is equipped with a self-watering tank–all designed to make planting easier. Just hang, fill with starters from your local nursery, and enjoy.

2. Auxano Hydroponic Vegetable and Herb Grower

Urban apartments may not have much space to spare, but one thing most do have is sunlight. The Auxano hydroponic growing system aims to capitalize on this under-appreciated resource with a window mounted design that turns previously unused space into a vertical garden. Its innovative oxygenating pump system further keeps water flowing to plant roots without the need for electricity. Check out designer Philip Houiellebecq’s Facebook page to find out when this device will be available for purchase.

3. Click and Grow

We’ve got smart phones and smart meters, so why not smart gardens? The Click and Grow is an easy-to-use electronic smartpot that grows plants without watering and fertilizing. Forget about constant watering, guesswork and worrying whether your plant is getting exactly what it needs. Just slide in the plant cartridge, and Click & Grow measures all the necessary parameters and doses an exact amount of water, fertilizer and air, according to the plant’s needs. The company is currently funding its second offering, an automatic herb garden complete with LED grow lights, on Kickstarter.

4. AeroGarden

If you’re looking for the crème de la crème of smart gardening gadgets, look no further than the AeroGarden. This counter-top hydroponic growing system is literally fool proof. I’ve been testing one out for the past few months, and it’s mind-blowing just how easy it is to go from nothing to harvest-ready plants without lifting a finger. The picture above was taken after just 2 weeks! AeroGarden comes in several different sizes and offers a wide variety of plant cartridges. You can mix and match, or purchase empty cartridges for starting plants from seed. Just add water and nutrients when the display tells you to, and you can’t go wrong.

Images: Woolly Pocket | Philip Houiellebecq | Click and Grow | Beth Buczynski

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The team at CasaSugar helps us create the DIY terrariums of our dreams. 

You might have seen our terrarium tutorial with floral experts Leigh Oakies and Allison Futeral of Crimson Horticulture Rarities. The design duo shared so many helpful insider tips about how to create and care for terrariums that we decided to pull together our favorite tips to share again with you. If you’re considering crafting a terrarium, you’ll definitely want to read these first!

When choosing a vessel, don’t limit yourself to the traditional glass bowl or vase. Leigh and Allison have experimented with everything from beakers to mason jars!

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Air plants do in fact need water. To water larger air plants, hold them under running water, shake off excess water, and dry them in the sun before returning them to their vessels.

For smaller air plants, simply immerse them in a bucket or sink of water and let them soak for an hour. Shake off excess water and allow them to dry in a sunny spot before returning them to their vessel. Watering should be done once a week.

For leafier plants like succulents and ferns, add activated charcoal as the first layer in your terrarium before adding sand or rocks, and soil. This will soak up excess water and keep the plants from developing mold. You can easily find activated charcoal at pet stores. If you’re using air plants, it’s fine to skip the activated charcoal and just use small rocks or sand.

If you have a terrarium with a lid, don’t be concerned if you see condensation – that’s a good thing! Just remove the lid overnight once a week to allow it to air out. Be sure to keep lidded terrariums out of spots that receive a lot of direct sunlight because the heat may become too intense for the plants.

Leigh and Allison mainly rely on paintbrushes, small shovels, and large tweezers to insert items into vessels and move them around until they are satisfied with their arrangement. Chopsticks are also unexpected but handy tools for arranging terrariums.

For a step-by-step terrarium tutorial, read this helpful guide!

More from CasaSugar:

100 Awe-Inspiring Green Home Photos

8 Cool Uses for Lemons

Everything You Need for a Stylish Eco-Friendly Picnic

The Perfect Summer Getaway… In Finland

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An indoor solution for the balcony and allotment-less urban dweller.

The word parasite carries with it some nasty connotations, particularly for the independent young urbanite. There’s the bloodcurdling kind (rats scrambling into crevices pitted into the tracks of the F train, e.g.)and then there’s the human kind (roommate, from hell). Both are pretty nasty.

They feed off our trash while lusting for our blood. They’re capable of murder most foul. Parasites: they suck. Whoever would invite them to live amongst us, in our kitchens? Where we eat?

The answer is, clever Deutschlanders Charlotte Dieckmann and Nils Ferber. They’re behind the strikingly inoffensive Parasite Farm.

The Parasite Farm is an indoor vermicomposting system, replete with a chopping-board for quick scraps disposal. It can be attached to a kitchen table and the mountable plant boxes can be affixed to existing bookshelves.

Inside the Parasite Farm live the parasites that feed off your biological waste churning it into humus soil.

According to Fast Company via The New York Times, food waste accounts for roughly 13 percent of the trash in the United States. Composting in the open country or even the ‘burbs offers an easy solution to offset that level of waste. Composting in the city is “not for the faint of heart.”

“It requires commitment, space and sharing tight quarters with rotting matter and two-inch-long wiggler worms that look like pulsing vermicelli.”

Um, ick.

It also beckons fruit flies and, if not pulled off correctly, major olfactory funk. Luckily the Parasite Farm comes with this handy little flytrap to keep the fruit flies where they’re meant to be.

And the lively green device makes the task look friendly and approachable, thus totally doable for the composting impaired.

Here’s a visual of how it works:

Step 1.

Slide veggie trimmings into the bin, where the worms live.

Step 2.

Harvesting involves shaking the grate at the bottom and pulling it out of the drawer underneath

Step 3.

Leftover water is siphoned into a separate tank to be used as a liquid fertilizer.

Step 4.

Voila! Fertilize seeds with your apartment grown soil. Call yourself Farmer Jane.

Truly, this is as close to urban organic as you can get.

Images: Alexander Giesemann; Charlotte Dieckmann

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