The Six Basic Principles you Will not Find Elsewhere For Growing Vegetables on Your Balcony!

Those principles originate from our own experience. Albeit we were satisfied with our results, it sometime appeared that we were far away from what could be seen in gardening sites and magazines!

• Basic Principle #1. Tweak a Chassis! Balcony or terrace garderning, counter-intuitively, is not gardening a open-air soil! It is better a kind of seedling cultivation. Seedling cultivation is that gardening technique which consists into germinating seed indoor, grow them into a plant of the kind you find at a garden shop, and transplant it into the garden when ready to keep growing. That technique may be certainly used for balcony gardening as the transplantation occurs then into a balcony container. That is a option provided however you have a warm and sunny location inside, and room enough to accomodate for all your varieties, which is not necessarily true in a condominium. Some vegetables on a other hand do not endure transplantation well. When no space nor light available indoor, you will thus to start your seeds directly in the balcony pots. Which brings to that the temperature will not necessarily be appropriate nor sunny days. The only option would be that the market provides for dedicated greenhouse chassis for balcony gardening. Which is not the case, some kit plastic greenhouses excepted, which need for a adequate room on your balcony. So, a fine idea is just tweak a balcony chassis, using a plastic sheet of the transparent, plant growth-acceleration gardening plastic sheet type. You will have to hang it unto a pot using a appropriately sized and strong rubber band. Just cut out the plastic sheet at such a size that, once affixed, it will still allow enough space for the growing plant (check with the illustration). That technique is adapted to any vegetable cultivated from seed. You will first begin keeping the chassis closed, a few ventilation -- by night included -- excepted. Time passing, and weather thus, your vegetable will grow. You will then adapt the opening of the chassis, with, when the weather is fair, opening more and more and closing back at night still, for example. You will end with opening each day whatever the weather and closing back still at night, with a large ventilation left. When the vegetable's growth at last will have well progressed, you will be able to remove the greenhouse chassis. That generally occurs when your vegetable will have grown beyond the stage at which the gardening outlet is solding those to you. Note that, should you care about your pots' patina, you might want to take care that the plastic sheet let pass the perspiration of the system -- and even watering or fertilizer -- in a acceptable way only

  A simple, tweaked greenhouse chassis permits to protect seedlings, then the plant's growth! check for a detailed view of how to tweak a chassis

• Basic Principle #2. Sow Deep, And Sow a Lot! The instructions found upon seeds bags concerning how to sow your vegetables seeds are giving values for garden sowing. Now, on a balcony, you will sow into a container! A container holds less nutrients than regular garden soil and experience shows that, should you enforce sowing depths like instructed for open air gardening, you will only result into your early plants to 'thin.' Thinning means that your early vegetables will have their two early leaves -- or cotyledons, which serve to pull the plant from the soil -- raising too high and weaken their growth. The plant's stalk will turn too slender and will not really grow! The best example comes with radishes with leaves and the stalk's base reaching too high, pulling a part of roots. Those do not stay enough into the soil and do not allow a real growth of radishes. Thus, for balcony gardening, just sow your seeds deep, a depth you will learn with experience. Sow less deep somewhat for your largest terra cotta pots. A example of depth for radishes is about close to the pot's bottom and less somewhat for other vegetables. Hold to the depth principle whatever how weather conditions may vary from one season to the other. Once the appropriate depth found for one species, always hold to it. On the other hand, it looks like you should not hesitate to sow a lot, compared to the number of seeds that you would use in a open soil. Which is for the same reason than before, due to the substrate's lesser richness. There too, experience will guide you like such quantity of seeds for such a size of a container. Don't be cheesesparing over. As far as vegetables to be sown in seed pockets are concerned, like cucumbers or melons the seeds of which are to be put by 5-6 into spaced out holes, just qualify. First barely add some more seeds to the number prescribed, dig holes deep according to our advice but instead of the -- important for garden -- distance prescribed between holes, tighten those. Three ou four holes into a pot of 9.8", for example
• Basic Principle #3. Use Fertilizer! Do not hesitate to use fertilizer because nutrients are more naturally present in regular outdoor soil, which may allow to use few fertilizer only, or none, excepted when digging the earth by the season's end when one adds naturals or chemicals to ease soil's renewal. Gardening in balcony containers, even with a good mix of garden soil and compost, your soil will not be as rich in nutrients and adding fertilizer will be of use! I personally use liquid fertilizer for vegetables which is used by adding it to watering, and I use it in a way to avoid too much concentration of chemical elements into edibles. The use of bio fertilizer is of course up to one's choice. I usually wait some time before adding fertilizer with watering after sowing, and about one week minimum after transplanting a plant from a garden shop or from your seedling work. Fertilizer, generally can indeed burn developing seeds or roots. 'Mycorrhizae' may also provide for the lesser richness of substrates in containers. Mycorrhizae are microscopic fungi which, in the garden plain soil, are associating with the roots of plantations and promote the nutrition of these. Mycorrhizae are now found in garden centers in the form of supplements, to be add when one roots plants or seeds inside a container. One also can, in the case of a vegetable already in place, sprinkle mycorrhizae in a few holes around it and water. Water will drain the mycorrhizae towards roots. The addition of mycorrhizae has an effect on the growth of vegetables, can reduce the amount of water and too the use of fertilizers
• Basic Principle #4. Harrow Deep! To harrow a plant is airing the soil around it; in open soil gardening, for example, you would use the accute side of a digger, or a dedicted tool, to break the crust of soil which form along with waterings or rain. On a balcony, the idea remains the same as, beyond breaking the crust around the plant (caution! do not damage the plant's stalk due to a lesser space available for work!), you will not hesitate to harrow deep! Just take care then of stressing the plant's roots reasonably only, and function of the vegetable worked! For example, you will take care to harrow the soil between radishes only, or should strawberry plants be concerned, only between the plants too. Harrow also, generally, along the pot's walls, taking care also not to damage those. 'One harrowing, a French saying goes, is worth two waterings.' Harrowing allows avoiding the soil not to get compact around the plant and thus to aerate soil better, which is beneficial to the plant due to that the air of the atmosphere will mix with the soil. The operation is similar in case of strong rain as airing the soil that way is helping to the soil drying itself. In the open soil garden, harrowing to get rid of weeds (which is not pertinent to balcony gardening) is named hoeing and may necessitates a appropriate tool (some weeds however may be found and likely brought by birds; finally, it hints to a good health of the container's soil). The more the root tuft will expand, the more cautious you will have to be, of not damaging roots!
• Basic Principle #5. Use Remontant Species! Each time the species of a vegetable will allow to, you will choose a 'remontant' variety. Remontancy is a vegetable's feature which makes it remain productive regularly all the season along, as it will reach a peak typical of the species and will keep also yielding -- albeit less -- either side of it. Such that characteristic is thus pecularily well suited to balcony gardening because you will usually grow few plants of each vegetable, thus few harvest. When gardening in regular soil outdoor at the opposite, you would grow more plants of each species and, through spreading out sowing, that would allow the same for harvesting! Even when using remontant varieties, of note is that some species of leaf-lettuces may need a second or even third sowing. Some vegetables do not feature remontant varieties, like radishes, for example
• Basic Principle #6. Water by About Noon! When gardening outdoor, watering is generally advised by the evening as the plants will have nighttime to benefit from it. As far as balcony gardening is concerned, my experience is showing it better to water about noon, or Sun's noon as it looks like that the afternoon solar light will bring heat to the containers and their soil and watering will then combine to that lukewarmness and promote plants' growth -- likely through their roots -- Plants after that may rest during night. That practice might be tempered function of your practice and experience. It is possible that a South-exposed balcony more easily allow what is practiced in a garden. Generally, the return to evening watering is beneficial during summer days as your plants will take advantage of a whole night to cool down and hydrate (in case of a stronger heat, you might be obliged to afford more water in the afternoon) . Watering at last, will be made at the plant's bottom and not over the leaves, as it is the roots which use water the most! Also avoid overwatering which may rot the vegetable's roots trough too much dampness. A French gardening saying states, in terms of watering, that 'Better less than too much!' A right watering is judged from that water ends by flooding -reasonably- the entire soil's surface -- which may be less true for other container types -- It's better on the other hand, to have one important watering than a few frequent, light ones