Balcony Gardening - An Introduction

I've always had an interest in gardening, but figured I never had the space to do it. Before my wife and I moved to our new townhouse, we lived in a 2 bedroom ground floor condo which had a walkout patio, but the rules didn't allow gardening of any kind.

Our townhouse has a terrace above our garage, and I was determined to make use of the space to start some serious gardening. I'm not talking about a few flower pots and herbs - I went all out and started my very own square foot vegetable garden. Last year was my first attempt, and when I told my friends, family and coworkers what I was up to, they wished me well but questioned what I would really be able to accomplish. So I set out to prove them wrong, and using my Steemit blog, I want to show all of you that even with the smallest of spaces, you can achieve great things!

The picture at the top of this post was taken last year after things got established. I admit I went a little overboard and grew a wide variety of things, many of them in containers, but I expected my first year to be primarily experimental to hone down my crop list for the following year.

As I mentioned, I went with the square foot gardening method. If you're unfamiliar with it, definitely check it out. The entire philosophy behind square foot gardening is to ditch planting in rows and make use of 1x1 foot sections, with each section containing a different plant. The less space a plant takes up, the more plants you can fit in an individual square. Larger plants are one per square while the smallest plants can be 16 per square. Normally, the grid is composed of 16 squares, but in my case I had limited space so I went with a 3x2 grid and supplemented with containers. The most amazing thing about this method is that you only need 6 inches of soil depth.

Instead of building a wood raised bed, I opted to stack loose bricks that my in-laws had laying around in their garage, and it worked like a charm.

So, What Can You Grow?

When I tell people I grow vegetables on my terrace, they usually assume I'm growing lettuce, cilantro, and basil. Then I tell them I grow all of the above, as well as green onions, tomatoes, bush beans, sweet peppers, broccoli, carrots, eggplant, cucumbers, and corn. Yes, corn! Not to mention some flowers to attract more pollinators. I'm also proud to mention that I grew absolutely everything from seed. There's just something so satisfying about growing entire stalks of corn from single kernels.

Below are some of pictures of my results from last year. I live in Toronto, Canada, and the growing season isn't terribly long, and definitely didn't come without challenges. We had an extremely wet spring which gave rise to an infestation of fungus gnats, several hail storms that nearly decimated a few of my plants, and extremely hot temperatures in the summer. One thing I learned about plants is that they are extremely resilient, especially if you treat them right.

In future posts, I am going to take you through my second year from scratch so you can all follow along, so definitely follow me here if you're interested! Before I get growing, I'll also post a few additional articles about my experiences with balcony gardening, such as challenges, tips, critters I've come across, and more.

Corn growing in a container. Yes, you can grow corn in a container with just 6 inches of soil. :-)

Picked corn.

Eggplant growing in a container.

Eggplant and cucumber.

Everyone's favorite - tomatoes! I had a few tomato and cucumber plants and were giving them away to anyone who wanted them, and still had tons left over for my family. This year I'll definitely scale those down.

Round romeo baby carrots. This variety doesn't grow more than a few inches long, are very sweet and also don't require peeling!

Happy Growing!

Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear in the comments about everyone's experiences in gardening, and if you've attempted balcony gardening or square foot gardening. Looking forward to following some great gardeners here on Steemit!