How To

How to Grow Vegetables on a Balcony

By Jackie Harsha, eHow Editor
Tomatoes Growing in Pot
Tomatoes Growing in Pot
Rate: (10 Ratings)

The price of produce is going up with everything else, and if you have a sunny balcony, you can grow some of your own delicious vegetables. Besides harvesting healthy foods, having pots of growing food on your balcony is a wonderful, inexpensive way to decorate it.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy
Instructions

Things You'll Need:

  • Balcony or Patio
  • Potting soil
  • Clay or plastic pots
  • Stones or small rocks
  • Vegetable plants or seeds from the nursery
  • Water
  • Organic plant food
  • Access to water
  • Moisture meter

    Growing Food on Your Patio

  1. Step 1

    Take a stone or small rock and put it in the drainage hole for the pot. This will keep the soil in, and the excess water out.

  2. Step 2

    Add soil to the bottom of the pot. Large vegetables like tomatoes like lots of room, so use bigger pots for those. Hold your plant up to the pot, and see how much room there is between the bottom of the roots and an inch from the top of the pot. Add more dirt until you reach that level. Tamp the dirt down.

  3. Step 3

    Put the vegetable in the pot, and carefully pack the dirt around all sides of it. Tamp the potting soil, and add more dirt if it needs it. You want the top of the dirt to be an inch below the top rim of the pot so you can add water. If you are using seeds, follow the depth recommendations on the back of the seed package.

  4. Step 4

    Water your plant, and keep out of the sun for a few days. Use the moisture meter to make sure that you have enough water in the soil for the plant. Repotting plants often shocks them, and they can't deal well with bright, warm sunshine.

  5. Step 5

    After a few days, put the plant back into the sunshine, and check the moisture levels. Most people tend to over water plants, and by using a moisture meter, you can make sure your plants are not sitting in too much water, or they are dying of thirst.

  6. Step 6

    Plants grown in pots need more food than plants grown in regular garden soil. Feed them at the recommended intervals found on your plant food box or bottle. Every time you water, food in the soil is flushed out.

Tips & Warnings
  • Leaf lettuce and other greens are one of the easiest things to grow in a pot on a balcony, and have a high rate of return considering the costs involved.
  • Radishes are easy to grow, as are green onions from sets.
  • Beets are easy to grow in a pot. You can eat the greens, too.
  • Home grown tomatoes are truly one of the finest foods on earth, and can be grown in a pot, with some difficulty. They're even tricky to grow in the ground. Cherry tomatoes are the easiest to grow in a container.
  • Potatoes are not worth growing in a pot. Ditto sweet potatoes, but their foliage is beautiful.
  • Peas can be grown in a pot, but need something to climb, like a railing or a wall
  • Sweet corn is easier to buy than grow in a pot.
  • Don't overload your second or third floor balconies with too much weight.
Photo Credit

www.growquest.com/.../container_gardening.htm

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