How to Grow a Balcony Garden

Member

By howsitdone
User-Submitted Article

Article Rating:

(18 Ratings)

Even a standard-sized apartment balcony has room to grow a garden. This article will show you how to optimize the space and grow a nice garden. Using the principles given in this article, you can grow a vegetable or flower garden in a variety of small spaces.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Various sizes of containers
Several 1, 2 and 3 gallon buckets
Potting soil and/or dirt
Large watering can or access to a hose
Seeds and plant starts from local nursery
Exposure to sun (south or west facing balcony is best)
Your choice of fertilizer

Step 1

Decide what you want to grow. An east-facing balcony can grow beautiful flowers, herbs, and smaller vegetables such as radishes. Cool-weather crops such as lettuce also do well with an eastern exposure that gets most of its direct sun in the morning, since leafy vegetables tend to go to seed rather than maturing if they’re grown in a desert climate or with hot afternoon sun on them. A southern exposure to sun will grow almost anything, but stay away from bushy or tall crops like corn if you have limited space. Root vegetables, such as long carrots and most potatoes, require soil depths that you really can’t get in a container-based garden.
Step 2

Line up all of your containers according to size. See Step 4 for instructions on using the buckets for certain crops. Figure out which herbs or vegetables are good matches to which containers, then write the container size in a notebook with the veggie name. For example, radishes or herbs will grow nicely in a long flower box that is only a few inches deep. Bell peppers need slightly more depth and plenty of horizontal space to spread out, so you might use regular flower pots for those. Plan a crop for each container, then take your notebook to the nursery. Read labels or ask the nursery worker to determine how many plants you should start with in each container for each type of vegetable. To get maximum yield from each container you’ll want to plant more starter plants than the container can actually grow, because you’ll undoubtedly want to weed out the slower growing and sickly looking ones along the way.
Step 3

Let the starter plants sit for 24 hours in their nursery containers to allow them to recover from the handling they’ve endured. During that time, fill your growing containers half to two-thirds full of a mixture of potting soil and dirt. I’ve found that mixing dirt and potting soil together is a good way to get a rich mixture for vegetables. Flowers are usually happy to be plopped directly into potting soil. After the 24 hour rest period, plant starter plants according to package or nursery guidelines, expecting to thin the smaller ones out when you can see which ones are more robust.
Step 4

The buckets you’ve set aside will be used for some “inverse gardening” of plants like tomatoes and cucumbers that are often avoided in small gardens because they are bushy. If you have a covering on your balcony where sturdy hanging hooks can be mounted, you can grow these bushy crops quite easily. Simply cut a hole in the bottom of the bucket that is very slightly larger than the root ball of your tomato or cucumber plant. You’ll need someone to assist with the rest of the operation so you won’t break the plant after it’s inserted into the bucket. Carefully push the root ball through the opening so the plant emerges from the bottom of the bucket, then line the bottom of the bucket with part of a feed sack or other discarded fabric. The fabric should form a loose shield between the top of the root ball and the hole in the bucket to secure the plant and soil until the root ball grows larger. Fill the bucket with soil as you normally would. The plant should be hanging out the bottom of the bucket. Now hang the bucket in the upside-down position from the upper rail or near the edge of the balcony ceiling. You may be able to use the bucket’s own handle as a hanger. Leave enough room around the hanging planter for the plant to spread out, water regularly and watch the plant mature. Plants grown this way require less water and often grow larger produce because gravity allows water to flow more easily to where it’s needed.
Step 5

Place your smaller planters on railings, hang plants in flower boxes over the railings, and get creative about where to put all of the other pots. Rotate the locations of plants occasionally and rotate individual pots often to get the best exposure to the sun. You’ll be amazed at how much produce you’ll enjoy this summer from such a small space!