Talk about tough love: This past weekend I came across a cautionary essay on purchasing Valentine’s Day flowers.

The writer, bless his green heart, viewed the arguably commercial holiday through the prism of factory farms. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

But even those of us trying to be increasingly environmentally conscious might have found it difficult to go cold turkey and give up that sentimental bouquet.

If you weren’t quite able to wrap your head (or your arms) around the idea this year, take heart, there are other ways to up your green quotient when the curtain rises on the coming garden season — even if you’re like me and your stage is a small city balcony…

Here are a few simple green efforts that will provide instant (or practically instant) gratification in your urban garden oasis:

Grow edibles: Take a small stride toward sustainability by growing edibles in your small-space garden. Herbs are a great stepping off point, but it doesn’t have to stop there — lots of other produce is adaptable to containers. I’ve become obsessed with growing small-fruit tomatoes and they not only meet salad demands, but manage to find their way into a multitude of other dishes. I’ve also grown strawberries, jalapenos, Thai eggplant, and edible flowers. This season I plan on taking another shot at lemon cucumber (the plant I bought last year died) and to experiment with one of my favorite veggies — sugar snap peas. Oh, and I’m going organic with my edibles.

Encourage beneficial insects: If you go organic, too, be happy those ladybugs find their way into your garden, as they keep pesky destructive insects at bay naturally. Bees are also your friend as they pollinate and promote prolific production. I love watching bees keeping busy making the rounds from plant to plant — tomato, nasturtium, lisianthus and the like. I wrote about the One Seed Chicago contest previously, which will give away plants native to the Illinois prairie — all attract beneficials.

Plant heirlooms: I love heirloom tomatoes; mainly because of the flavor. Once you start with these seeds, which date back many decades, you won’t want to eat another mass-produced tomato again. So, while growing heirloom tomatoes is a completely selfish act, it comes with a built-in selfless benefit: cultivating them is a way of making a small contribution to preservation and posterity. Growing heirloom flowers can also give you a sense of history — it’s a way to step back into a garden of a century ago. And don’t forget to collect the seeds, so you can keep these gardens alive in future plantings.

Wet work: Though harvesting rainwater is not an option for most of us small-space urban gardens, you can still put the reuse principle into practice if you corral (and transfer to the watering can) the runoff water used to rinse veggies before cooking, as well as the cold water that normally washes down the drain when you’re waiting for the tap to heat up. Also, recycling the drip tray runoff from one pot to use for watering the next pot down the line is a nice alternative to letting it just evaporate.

Oh, I recently discovered that my midnight watering habits have an unintended green benefit, too. While I water after dark so as not to accidentally sprinkle my neighbors, nocturnal watering is good for container gardens because without the daytime heat the soil holds the nourishing moisture longer. Ding! Ding! Of course it makes perfect sense, I just never even thought about it.

There’s probably plenty more I haven’t considered, so I’d love to hear about the green principles you apply in your garden — whether it’s a small city garden or a sprawling suburban one. So please, leave a comment.

[Photos: Incredible, edible dill above the city street (top); a lovely ladybug takes refuge on a leaf]