about Us

We Grow Things in Impossible Places (And We’ll Show You How)

Here’s the truth: this whole thing started because I was mad.

I’d just moved into a sixth-floor Chicago walkup with a balcony the size of a yoga mat, and every gardening resource assumed I had a backyard. Or at least ground. I’m Maya Chen, and after burning out at 32 from corporate life, my therapist suggested I “find a hobby that involves dirt.” I bought seventeen dollars worth of tomato seeds and nearly killed them all in plastic cups on my windowsill.

Six months later, I grew my first actual tomato. It was smaller than a golf ball, and I cried when I picked it. That’s when I met Jake Morrison, and we realized millions of people are living in tiny apartments, wanting to grow food, feeling completely left out of the gardening conversation.

So we started City Cultivator. Not because we’re gardening gurus—we’re absolutely not. But because we’ve figured out how to coax life from fire escapes, balconies, and windowsills.

WHAT WE DO

What We Actually Do Here
Every technique on this site has been tested in real small spaces. We grow in balconies that get three hours of sun, fire escapes where your neighbor’s smoke drifts over, windowsills facing brick walls, and tiny patios where BBQs barely fit.

We document everything—the wins, the failures (great aphid invasion of 2023, anyone?), and experiments that seemed brilliant at 2am but were ridiculous in daylight.

City Cultivator

Our Vision

Imagine walking past city apartments and seeing green everywhere. Balconies overflowing with herbs. Window boxes stuffed with vegetables. Rooftop gardens visible from the street.
We’re working toward a future where “I don’t have space” isn’t a reason to give up on growing things.

Where your balcony jungle is so impressive your aunt stops asking when you’re moving somewhere with a “real yard.”
We dream about changing how cities think about food security and green space, one cramped balcony at a time.

What We Stand For

  • Start Where You Are: Your windowsill counts. Your fire escape counts. That shady balcony corner absolutely counts. We’ll show you what works in the space you have right now—not what you wish you had.
  • Failure is Just Data: We’ve killed more plants than most people will ever grow. Every dead basil plant taught us something. When something doesn’t work, we tell you exactly what went wrong.
  • Real Budget, Real Constraints: If it requires $200 or specialty stores, it’s not on our site. Most of our best containers came from restaurant alley dumpsters (cleaned thoroughly, obviously).
  • Community Over Competition: We’re all fighting the same battles against limited sun and nosy building managers. When readers email us their wins, we celebrate like family.

Meet the Team

Maya Chen

Maya Chen

The Obsessive Experimenter

That sixth-floor Chicago balcony humbled me in ways my marketing career never did.
I’d managed million-dollar campaigns but couldn’t keep basil alive for two weeks.

I’ve spent five years testing every container, soil mix, and vertical growing hack I could find. I’ve grown tomatoes in gutters, lettuce in repurposed dresser drawers, and once tried carrots in PVC pipes (mixed results, but we learned).

My 60-square-foot balcony now produces about 40% of the vegetables I eat from May through October. My neighbors think I’m slightly unhinged, especially when they see me out there at 6am checking for aphids with my headlamp.

I handle most hands-on growing experiments and photography. When something fails spectacularly (happens monthly), I document exactly why so you don’t repeat my mistakes.

Jake Morrison

Jake Morrison

The “It’ll Probably Work” Guy

I grew up in suburban Denver with parents who had a massive backyard garden that I completely ignored. Avoided helping my entire childhood because gardening was boring.

Then I moved to a Brooklyn studio at 29 and missed it. Not the work—the having fresh stuff part. Buying a single tomato for three dollars made me irrationally angry.

Started with a fire escape the super said was “decorative only.” Grew my first herbs using hanging shoe organizers because they distributed weight better than pots. My neighbors probably reported me when I was out there measuring weight distribution with a bathroom scale.

Now in Seattle with a legitimate balcony, but I still think about growing like someone who might get evicted for plant-related structural concerns. It’s made me creative about weight-bearing solutions and vertical systems that don’t require drilling into rental walls.

I focus on the engineering side of small-space growing and apartment-friendly pest control. Turns out you can’t spray poison everywhere when your neighbor’s laundry vent is three feet from your tomatoes.

OUR PROCESS

How We Create This Stuff

People ask: “How do you know this works?” Simple—we grow it.

Our process:

  1. One of us tries something based on theory or a 3am idea
  2. We document everything (even failures)
  3. The other tests it in their different space/climate
  4. We adjust based on what actually happened vs. what we hoped
  5. If it works in both spaces, we write about it
  6. Readers try it and email results
  7. We update posts based on real-world feedback

We collaborate with urban growers across different cities. Our community has taught us more than any book—like the Phoenix reader who showed us her shade cloth setup, or the Minneapolis guy who insulates containers for winter growing.

Everything gets updated when we learn better methods.

WHY TRUST US

We’re not scientists. We don’t have horticulture degrees. What we have:

Five years of constant experimentation across multiple cities and impossibly small spaces. We’ve tested over 300 different varieties specifically for containers. Most were disasters. The ones that worked are on the site.

Real failures we talk about: Jake’s corn-on-the-balcony bird haven? Documented. Maya’s “brilliant” self-watering system that flooded her downstairs neighbor? We wrote about that too.

We cite sources, update when we’re wrong, and never recommend something we haven’t personally grown. We’ll show you what worked, what didn’t, and why we think that happened.

Our Community (That’s You)

Our readers include the teacher in Atlanta growing salad greens for her classroom, the retiree cultivating herbs for his building’s kitchen, the Queens family feeding themselves from their fire escape, and the college student growing cherry tomatoes in her dorm window (against the rules, but we support civil disobedience for tomatoes).

Every month, readers send photos of their wins. Those emails make our entire week. You also call us out when we’re wrong or when something doesn’t work in your space. That feedback loop is crucial.

OUR PROMISE

We test before we recommend: Nothing goes on this site without real-world testing.

We update when we learn better: Gardening knowledge evolves. When that happens, we revise our content and mark it clearly.

We’re honest about limitations: If something only works in specific conditions, we say so.

We don’t shill garbage: We’ll use affiliate links eventually, but only for products we actually use.

We respond to emails: Both Maya and Jake personally read and respond. Sometimes takes a few days during peak growing season, but we respond.