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I live in a small, one bedroom apartment in South Western British Columbia, Canada. For the past two years, I have been keeping a few pots and containers with various vegetable plants out on our balcony, as an experiment of, well, basically answering the question of whether I could keep a few plants alive out there or not. So far, so good, and none have died - not by my hand anyway. I did try a cucumber plant last year and about a week after I planted it, a big wind storm blew in and the poor thing snapped in half. But, now I know to protect them from the wind when they are young. I've never had a vegetable garden before, so for me these plants were a bit of an experiment in simply growing the things in the first place. I've learned a few things, and learned that I don't know a lot more things. That's okay, I figure, because I can keep learning how to do things better.
This year will be my third of gardening out on the balcony and I'd like to expand the project in a significant way, to really see what I can do for food production with this small space. From here on out, I want to start gearing this space towards providing a steady supply of food throughout the growing season. Don't get me wrong - I don't think I'll need to build a root-cellar out there to store my produce, but I want to see just how productive I can make a balcony garden. Is it worth-while? How much can it supplement my grocery-bought food? Therefore, I have a two-fold goal: 1). To learn how to grow more types of vegetables in containers, and, 2). To learn how to maximize this small space for the purpose of growing various food-bearing plants.
The Past
Here are some pictures I took of the first pots I put out there two years ago.
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One thing I learned in the first year was that I didn't plan out my pots and containers very well. I should have used deeper ones and I should have spaced my plants a bit further apart, even if it meant having less plants overall. Also, I should have paid a bit better attention to what grows well with other plants and what doesn't. Do they both need similar amounts of water and sun, for example, or, when they mature, will the one hamper the growth of the other by being too bushy? This year, after I expand the amount of containers and thus, my growing area, I will do some earnest planning before I plant anything, to hopefully make things more efficient.
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No sooner than I had bought these containers at Walmart, I brought out the trash and someone left a large white plant-container in front of the complex's garbage bins. Being the proud man that I am, I took it and used it.
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Here they are later in the summer, around the beginning of July, if I recall correctly. I moved the box of herbs up to the top (below left) - it was way too full! There is parsley, mint, dill and chives in that little box. Although, I did get a fairly good crop from them, despite their crowded quarters.
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Some peppers starting to fruit.
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Tomatoes coming along nicely.
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I've tried a variety of different peppers over the past two years, with mixed results. My green and red peppers came along quite well until about mid-season, and then simply stopped growing and stayed about half the normal size. The same thing happened to the jalapenos. They grew quickly to about half-size, and then stopped growing. However, I also have grown banana peppers and a variety of hot peppers, which all did very well for me. A difference I noticed between the ones that worked well and the ones that didn't was that the green, red & jalapeno peppers, which ultimately failed to grow to a mature size, started coming along very early and then quit, while the peppers that did the best for me took a slow, steady path to maturation. In fact, of the ones that turned out well, I had almost written them off as "not going to produce anything" in the beginning of the year, and I harvested them quite late in the year. Here are some of the jalapenos. I was quite excited that they grew like this, and there were so many of them. But, they didn't really get much bigger than what you see here.
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My tomatoes as well have not grown to a very large size, but they did better than the peppers and were at least respectable - plus, they fully ripened and tasted great. Cherry tomatoes and strawberries have done the best for me so far, providing the most produce of any of the plants I have tried growing.
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The Present
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Here are some pictures of the balcony as it sits today, ready for the vegetable garden to be expanded. It's not a very large space. I've walked it, and given that I wear size 11 shoes, it is about 11 steps across by about 6 and 1/3 front to back. I'll pull out the measuring tape later, when the pots start coming in, but I estimate it to be around 70 square feet. Not a big space by any means.
I spend quite a bit of time out on the balcony. This is a pretty small,
one-bedroom apartment - around 550 square feet - so there really only is
the main living area and the bedroom indoors. Since I
am a smoker, I end up going out to the balcony quite often,
and I suppose the balcony is kinda my man-cave, or man-balcony, or
man-perch, or something manly like that. It doesn't have a high-tech
entertainment system or anything, but the low-tech entertainment is
still very rich. There's lots of activity going on in the courtyard and
parking lot, as this is a pretty large complex with three separate
buildings. I've estimated the amount of units to be over 200, and with
that many people there's always something going on, including moments
spiked with drama for one reason or another..
Thus, I often joke that I live in Melrose Place. My
favourite incident so far was during the first year we moved in here.
There were a couple of girls living on the ground floor back then, and I
don't know what all happened but they kicked one of their boyfriends
out of the apartment (the guy didn't live there, he was just visiting).
Anyway, during the commotion that ensued, these girls' neighbour - some
young, muscular guy - came outside to "protect" them. The girls tried to
get the neighbour to calm down, but the fellow would have none of it
and grabbed a baseball bat to wave around. Then, to show how tough he
was, he took a swing with the bat... at his own window! "Smash!" The
glass didn't completely shatter, but there was a big hole in the center
with fractures radiating outward. I watched him over the next couple of
days trying to get the window fixed before the landlord seen...
estimates for the repairs were in the $500 to $600 range. And, he didn't
get it fixed in time. By the end of the next month he was gone,
evicted, I suspect.Another favourite neighbour of mine was the girl who lived in the building across from mine. Once every couple of weeks she would have her boyfriend over at night. I don't know what kinky games they were playing, but they would open the blinds with the interior lights on and dance naked in front of the windows for five minutes or so, then they'd close the blinds again. Happened several times. Sadly, she no longer lives there. Like I said, there's never a dull moment out on the balcony!
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But, back to the garden! I've moved the present pots around a bit, to kind of envision the amount of space I can create for growing. Amazingly, I think I can stuff all the pots I currently have around the barbecue and still have room to spare. This is what I meant earlier up, when I said one of my goals was to maximize growing space. Just because this area is only around 70 square feet - on the floor - does not mean it cannot be utilized well, or expanded vertically to create more growing space.
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The Future
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I also seen that they had both blueberry and raspberry "dwarf-shrubs" for $25.00 and $35.00 respectively. They are both designed for pot growing, with the blueberries growing from 1 & 1/2 to 2 feet tall, and the raspberries growing from 2 to 3 feet tall. I'd really like to get those. Then I'd have strawberries, blue-berries and raspberries growing, which I can easily supplement with a harvest of the wild black-berries that grow in almost every nook and cranny of the Chilliwack area.
I'd also like to see about growing some vines along the back wall using a pot with a wooden trellis staked into the soil. I figure I could have two of them in the corners, and try to run the growing vines along the wall and around the window. Grapes grow in the region here, however, I know nothing of grapes except that I like eating them and don't know if they would be suitable for the balcony. I seen some other vines for sale - one was some sort of kiwi fruit vine which grows to about 20 feet long. This sounds interesting as well.
Some other ideas I've been thinking about with vines/vining, is using the railing to grow cucumbers and/or beans. If I set something like a wire trellis against the railing, would they grow in and fill in the railing? I think of this for two reasons, the first being that it would obviously be a good use of space. The second is that my balcony faces to the West and gets the full brunt of the afternoon sun in the summer. That deck gets hot! Real hot! So far, every plant I've grown has been for "full sun," but I wonder if I could arrange a plant capable of vining on the railing and create a suitable shade area behind it, which would increase the kinds of plants I could try to grow.
Well, these are the immediate plans for "phase one" of the "Garden for the Balcony Project." Please, feel free to follow along in my experimental journey of discovering just how much food I can grow in this small space. Comments are encouraged and appreciated, as this is very much a learning process for me and I would love advice and information-sharing with others who are interested in this subject.
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