Soil for the Containers

The worst part of gardening on the balcony is, without a doubt, the chore of bringing stuff into the apartment from the car. Luckily, there's an elevator in the building which makes carrying heavy items like soil to the fourth floor a little easier, but still, it's a pain. I bought ten 25litre bags of potting soil the other day, then took one of the empty containers back to the car, which is parked about a half a block away from the building entrance, and put 3 bags of soil inside it to make them easier to carry. So, that was two trips with three bags, which nearly ripped my arms off by the time I got to the apartment door, and two trips with only two bags in the container, which was obviously a little easier. I really need to get a trolley or something. It's like this all the time. Groceries might take two or more trips up and down while bringing bottles & recycling to the depot sometimes takes four trips up and down. It's just ridiculous. Where's an empty shopping cart in the alley when you need one, eh?

Once the soil was on the balcony, the next task at hand was drilling drainage holes in the bottoms of the containers. The picture shows six holes in the bottom but a little while later I drilled two more holes on the bottom sides as well. I hope that's enough, but if it isn't I can always drill a few more holes into the sides.

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One thing I have read which is a concern, however, is that plastic can deteriorate over the years from sitting in the sunlight. There is a lot of soil in these containers. They are 18 gallons (68litres), and it took two and a half bags of soil to fill each one. Now that I have drilled holes in them I have weakened them even further. I'm not really too worried about them not standing up for the purpose of gardening in them, but I want to make sure that when I move out of here one day, I don't just try to pick up the container full of soil, get half way out of the apartment, and have the bottom of the container tear apart on me. That would really suck! So when that day comes I'll have to be extra careful. I figure the best solution to this potential problem might simply be to go back to Walmart and buy a brand-new container, and then use it to put the other containers in for secure transportation out of the apartment. It's not like they cost a lot of money. These ones were $7.50 each, which sounds like a pretty cheap insurance policy against having a "soil disaster" on moving day. 
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And voila! Dirt to play with! All I need now is my plastic beach pail & shovel, and perhaps some Tonka Toys.

I put a potting soil mix in the large containers. The containers I had from last year have a premium top soil mix in them, and I still had some left over which I used to to top them up. They should all be potting soil mix, rather than top soil. You can tell the difference right away. The top soil has little bits of bark and manure in it while the potting soil is nice and clean, with it's added nutrients quite visible. I've also read that potting soil is lighter than top soil. Well, I'm not going to just throw out the top soil, because plants still grew perfectly fine in it previously, but if I replace the soil in the future I will certainly use all potting soil mix. 

As you can see in the pictures, it's pouring rain outside. This is one nice thing about being on the balcony - you can be puttering around in your garden no matter the weather. Ha! Take that, you soaking wet in the backyard land-gardeners! Us sky-gardeners got you beat hands-down in this department, even if it also means regularly watering by hand. 
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I'm not sure if I'm going to keep the containers positioned where they currently are. There are many ways I can arrange them, and in fact, I could easily stuff two more of these containers in between the others and have six of them on the balcony. Maybe next year. First we'll see how these four work out.