How To Grow A Garden On A Balcony

One of the pillars of good health is getting plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. Unfortunately, much of the product in supermarkets comes shipped from far away locations and is not exactly fresh by the time it makes it to your shopping cart. 

The best way to get the vitamins and minerals needed in your diet is to grow your own garden. However, when you live in an apartment this may seem like an impossibility. Which is not really true. There are some ways to grow your own small edible garden even when you live in a city. You’ll enjoy the health benefits and even be able to drop your grocery bill by quite a lot, too. 

In this article, I will go over some of the ways you can grow your own garden on a balcony of an apartment. 

Use containers

Containers are an excellent way to grow vegetables even when you aren’t tight on space. They allow you to control the soil in an efficient way since it doesn’t run off when it rains or leach out the nutrients. There is less weeding to do and you can grow more per square inch than in a regular garden.

On a balcony, using containers is essential to free up space so you can still use the balcony while you are growing your edible garden. There are many different sizes available from sources like PureModern so you can grow small items like arugula up to things like full tomato plants. 

The key is to use the space you have and plan out your garden from there based on the size of the containers. For instance, if you have ten feet in length by two feet in width, you can actually grow a very good sized garden with that amount of space if you use the containers wisely and plan out your garden.

Plan it out

Let’s go with the hypothetical space of ten feet by two feet as highlighted in the last section. You now need to plan out what to grow in that space. The key to remember is that you can grow up much more effectively than grow across. So use height to your advantage here.

You can put stakes in the containers and grow vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers and beans in this way. If the container is a foot at the base and around 1.5 feet at the top rim then you are still well within the allotted space.

Smaller containers can be placed on shelves and even over the side of the railing as you would flower pots. This is a good space to grow small lettuces, radishes, small varieties of carrots and even strawberries.

Use the walls

You can take full advantage of the space by using the walls to hang pots so you are not taking up floor space. Herbs are a fantastic thing to grow on a garden wall as they need very little space. 

If you have two walls, choose the one that gets the most sunlight for your herbs to grow well.