Some Hints About Growing Flowers on Your Balcony

We are also growing flowers to decorate our balcony. Here are some more hints about growing those also!

• Mostly now, balcony flowers are sold like already grown seedlings at your garden center. Just choose flowers for your balcony function of your taste and also the conditions of your balcony (sunny, shadowy, East, South, West, North, etc.)
• Advices in terms of containers are about the same than for vegetables. There are diverse as terra cotta, with varied shapes, usually is a good choice (worry about the drain hole at their bottom which is for allowing the soil to breathe through possibly draining a watering surplus; that hole has to be obstructed a way or the other albeit letting a surplus to drain)
• Soil used for flowers needs a good attention too. The best choice there is also a 2 thirds-one third of garden soil and compost. Using garden soil will spare you watering water as it also contains more nutrients to flowers. You may also additionally use fertilizer under its miscellaneous varieties found at garden centers. For more about improving containers' soil on your balcony, you may usefully check at our Basic Principle #3
• Planting flower seedlings is easy. Have soil to reach just what enough to the container's side's top (planting your seedlings, generally, will raise some more soil). Then with a appropriate balcony gardening tool, or your hand, drill a hole in the soil appropriate to the flower considered, that is that once planted into, the flower's collar will just surface the soil! Get the seedling out of the pot the garden center sold you with. Should the flower's roots have constituted a sort of felt against the wall of it, take care of crumbling that, which will allow the flower's roots to more quickly work into the soil. Then, pack down the soil evenly around. For a contenant holding several flowers, just repeat the operation. Once over, just possibly add some more soil to that it reaches to a appropriate height along the contenant's sides. That's it!
• Thence, once a plant transplanted, just water plentifully which will help the plant to recover from the stress. Caution! Do not use fertilizer now because doing so after planting, you might 'burn' your flower's roots; just wait one more week or so before using fertilizer
• Along your flowers' life, just water accordingly and harrow soil at intervals to allow roots to better work (a saying is that airing a soil is worth two waterings! check more at the Basic Principle #4). Pick flowers at intervals, which will yield more -and ornate your home ;-). Get rid of withered leaves as they are straining a plant in terms of nutrients
• Do not hesitate to follow the advices we give about how to refine your containers' location because, on a averagely-sized balcony, the container's location may do all the difference. As you will take care however of avoiding a continuous ballet of your pots do not hesitated to change a pot's location should you check that the same variety gives better result in another location, or if on a given place, you may rotate the pot on itself to reach a balanced growth!
• The general plan and display of your flowers on your balcony is just, of course, relevant to your will. Too much symmetry, generally, is to be avoided; for a group of three pots, for example, just arrange those unsymmetrically. The sole obligation for you will be to check that, except for a South-exposed balcony, some zones are better exposed to Sun and others to shadow
• in terms of preserving flowers from one year to the next, the question is first set by the difference between 'annuals' and 'perennials.' Annuals are flowers that only live one year, as perennials fall asleep during winter and are reborn every year. This is true for flower in open air soil in a garden. In containers on a balcony however, it is experience that will help you decide whether such or such perennial survived winter and then will resume, because the substrate is less nutrient-rich. A the middle latitudes, if a perennial survives the cold of January or even February, it means it will live. On the other hand it is not said that it will restart by spring, which will have to wait late April to be verified. So it's your experience which primes. On the other hand, it is useful to place your plants on the part of the balcony that is less exposed to northern winds and to use winter protections (bubble paper, wintering veils, to be found in a garden center. Those latter techniques are protecting only down to about 28°F at night. As soon as normal temperatures return, those protections must be removed because leaving them is as harmful: plants can dry or rot. The freezing periods of January and February are often preceded by a shorter period in early December; that one, usually, does not require the installation of protections but it somehow proceeds by itself to winter pruning: part of the aerial parts of the plant is burned; just remove them. Strong colds (at about 17.5°F) are more problematic and only experience shows whether the protections are actually effective. The Internet, on the other hand, gives, according to species, more solutions. Like bringing the plant with its container into your home during the winter period; or, about mid-September proceed with vegetative cuttings, which is taking and preparing a piece of plant which is planted and preserved indoors as it will later give back the plant, when reinstalled on the balcony with the return of fair weather; another technique is also to collect all the containers of plants in the most protected area of the balcony and protect them in bulk (protection of containers and upper parts). Then, if a plant survived winter, it is possible, in March, when the temperatures are well launched, to prune parts that have been damaged, and then wait for spring to act and and if, towards May 11-13, some plants have not restart, they will have to be replaced (by plants or seeds)
• As far as heat waves that can occur during the fair season are concerned, check the tips we give in the part dedicated to vegetables. The essential difference is that most flowers endure to be sprayed on their leaves
• For more details about varied flowers type and characteristics you will of course turn to your garden center or a gardening manual. Some flowers -like pansies for example- are able to withstand the winter season and they thus may still ornate your balcony at that time then yield their maximum during spring's first part