Creating a vegetable garden on your balcony is not always as easy as you might think in magazines, especially when you are a beginner. Here are 10 tips that will make it easier for you!
1- Take into account the exposure of the balcony
Before you start, take a good look at your balcony, what is its exposure? Is it in full sun? If so, you're in luck because you can grow most vegetable plants there. If it is in the shade and exposed to the North, forget tomatoes, eggplants and melons!
2- Be well informed
If you are a real novice, read up on gardening in books or on websites dedicated to gardening, this will help you avoid making many mistakes later on.
3- Get the right equipment
To grow vegetable plants on a balcony, you need containers that are large enough for the roots to develop properly. Forget about small individual pots and invest in large, deep containers. There are also growing tables specially adapted to growing on a balcony.
4- Drainage
Drainage is an important concept! Containers should be pierced at the bottom and a layer of gravel or clay balls should be left in place to allow water to drain away to avoid root rot and the failures that go with it.
5- Choose the best potting soil possible
Choose a very good commercial potting soil. Avoid the cheap ones, and prefer a brand name potting soil that already contains a slow release fertilizer, because the nutrients will be in less quantity and more quickly depleted than in open ground. This parameter is very important to ensure a good success. Add a fertilizer base for greedy plants.
6-Use the verticality
Sometimes there is not enough space on a balcony. Get around this problem by placing large containers at the foot of the side walls. You can use them to grow string beans, peas, cucumbers or even melons on a solidly attached trellis. At the foot of these climbers, in the foreground of the planter, strawberries, aromatic herbs, lettuce and radishes will find their place.
7- Grow early seedlings under cover
Invest in a mini heating greenhouse to sow tomatoes, peppers, melons, zucchini and eggplant in the warmth of March. This method allows you to obtain varieties that cannot be found in pots in the shops, to grow old or forgotten varieties and also to save money.
8- Wait for the right moment
Don't rush! Even if some vegetable plants are on sale very early in the garden centers, wait until all risk of frost is gone to install the most frigid ones.
8- Watering
Watering must be even more regular than for plants in the ground because evaporation in pots is much more important. Be very careful and never let the mixture dry out completely between two waterings.
9- Mulch
To reduce watering operations by limiting evaporation, mulch the base of your plants with a layer of at least 15 cm of straw, grass clippings, RCW, or flax chaff.
10- Fertilize
Fertilize regularly during the season with a complete organic fertilizer in granules.
