Harvest your cherry tomatoes for an appetizer, season pasta with your own basil, pick some radishes for lunch … it’s not an unreachable dream if you only have a balcony. Do you have a balcony and are you ready to roll up your sleeves? It’s perfect: in pots or planters, we explain how to create your kitchen garden on a balcony!
- Create a dedicated space on the balcony
To create a kitchen garden worthy of the name on your balcony, we advise you to share your balcony in two distinct parts:
- The first side will be dedicated to the vegetable garden with the cultivation of fruits and vegetables not taking up too much space if you have a small balcony. Choose high crops (such as peas or tomatoes) to save space. There are even now mini leek seeds or mini squash adapted to this type of restricted environment.
- The second side will be able to welcome a pretty living room of garden decorated with flowery planters. What’s more pleasant on sunny days, than sitting on a chair on the balcony and putting a fresh fruit juice on the garden table? Ideal for relaxing and enjoying the bloom, while watching the tomatoes grow.
The trick: If your balcony is too small to create two separate spaces, you can then install a small bench to allow you to enjoy your space and your garden, you install through special pots on the rail of your balcony. Note that this mode of cultivation is a little riskier since your pots can fall, become ashtrays for your neighbors above or turn into a litter for cats. On the other hand, well fixed, these pots are an excellent compromise to be able to cultivate and to relax on a small balcony.
- Choose the exhibition and the material of his balcony kitchen garden
To have a beautiful kitchen garden on its balcony, be sure to plant the fruits or vegetables away from the wind. In addition, space must be sunny to allow optimal growth of your crops. The ideal sunshine duration is 4 hours per day minimum, or 8 hours if you want to start growing tomatoes.
For the cultivation of your vegetable garden on the balcony, two choices are available to you:
- use conventional garden shoot methods,
- opt for hydroponic culture.
From this choice comes the material needed for your project.
- In both cases, you will need pots to plant your seeds as well as fertilizer.
- With the classic sprouting method, you will only need pots, potting soil, water and especially patience to grow your vegetables and herbs.
- With hydroponics, you can invest in a connected indoor garden, a high-performance hydroponic device, and design that allows you to grow quickly and easily your vegetables and herbs. The price of these devices is rather high, but the quality is fortunately at the appointment.
Good to know: Hydroponics can be a good solution if your balcony is not oriented South and does not get enough sun: these small devices will themselves use LED lights to feed the young shoots and grow them.
3. Focus on the installation of your vegetable garden
The advantage of having a vegetable garden on your balcony is that you will not have to dig or hoe the garden! A little potting soil special culture in the outside pot, some planters, and a little water are enough.
We advise you to plant fruits and vegetables that are simple to grow, such as cherry tomatoes or radishes. You can add herbs such as basil, coriander, mint, chives, parsley, etc. Salads and other aromatic plants are easy plants to grow on a balcony.
Gardener Tip: Water preferably early in the morning or late in the day. This allows, on the one hand, to keep longer the freshness of the earth for your plants and on the other hand, it prevents you from burning the leaves because of the magnifying effect of the sun on drops of water.
