Balcony gardens are special. Because space is at such a premium, the vegetables or herbs you grow on your balcony garden really should be chosen with a lot of care. After all, when you only have a little bit of room, it’s best to get the most possible bang for your buck!.
Over a series of 5 posts I’ll review what I think are the five most important considerations when selecting the vegetables or herbs that you grow on your balcony. They won’t be presented in any particular order – because frankly I think they’re all pretty much indespensible.

The first principle I’d like to present you with is the idea that you need to grow something your already know and already like. This might sound very simplistic, but seed catalogues and nurseries can make even a vegetable you don’t care for sound irresistable! (Heaven only knows I’ve fallen for it more than once.)

If you have a 20×20 foot plot in the ground you can afford to take a chance, but when you only have a small amount of room, go with a proven winner that you know you’re going to enjoy.

Also, you need to adopt a very Stephen Covey idea and begin with the end in mind. By that I mean only grow vegetables or herbs that you not only like but you actually know exactly what you’re going to do with. to make my point, just think of zucchini. Every year at the end of the gardening season when abundant harvests are generously distributed to friends, family and neighbors – what gets handed out more than anything else? Zucchini! Why? Well, because almost everyone plants too much of it and almost no one knows what to do with it! Do you?

Vegetable gardening on your balcony deserves a bigger reward than harvesting your crop and then watching it go bad when you realize you really don’t know exactly how to cook or preserve it or what to eat it with. I did that the first time I grew Thai Basil – which I love and NOW know what to do with.

Think it through!

Today, once I get my son out of bed to work the camera, I’ll be making the first video on how to assemble an outdoor hydroponic garden. I’ll also start work on a PDF version you can download that will have more detailed instructions.

But I know that anyone who is interested in growing vegetables – hydroponically – will have a ton of questions and I don’t really know what they will be.

So, if you have questions about how you can use the system that I use to grow container gardens – vegetables, herbs or flowers. Please send me comments and questions.

There are so many things I can say and so much I can write about, it would be incredibly helpful to me to know what you would like to know.

Thanks,
Lorraine

Attention frustrated gardeners. Do you work out of your home for too many hours every day? Do you live in an urban condo, apartment or townhouse with no place to dig a garden? Are you waiting for the chance to grow a garden? Well, you don’t need to wait any longer.

If you have a balcony or a patio or deck or even a postage stamp sized backyard there is only one non-negotiable requirement to grow your own vegetables. What you need is light. You need a spot with at least 5 hours of direct sunlight every day – unless you want to bring it all indoors and grow them under lights – and come to think of it – if you want – I can show you how to do that.

There is nothing you can do that is more in keeping with a long list of “it’s about time” trends than sweep off your deck or balcony take out some containers and use them to grow organic produce for your own table. Not only is it tastier than what you’ll buy in the store, it’s waiting for you, literally on your doorstep. Besides, when you release your hidden gardener, you might also find out why gardening is such a hugely popular hobby. It’s a calming, infinitely rewarding pastime that you might fall in love with. I did.

I started my first garden when I was about 7 or 8 years old. Everything died, from a combination of ignorance, neglect and the simple fact that my dad, anticipating my possible shortfalls as a beginner gardener allotted me a corner of the yard that were missing both rain and sun. I didn’t really care and over the years kept trying.

Right now I’m living in rental accommodations and don’t have any ground to call my own. I stopped putting gardens into my landlord’s yard because every time I moved I got to watch the next tenant kill my labor of love and I swore I’d never do it again. But, recently my interest in vegetable gardening was rekindled when I discovered an awesome technique for growing vegetables in containers. Using a gravity-fed, hydroponic system that is almost criminally easy to maintain, I harvested a wealth of peppers, tomatoes and simply the best salad greens that I’ve ever enjoyed and it was 100% organic.

If you’re still reading, I’m gathering that the idea interests you. So stay with me and I’ll tell you exactly how to do it…..although it’s going to take a few articles.

Step 1

How to Choose What to Grow

While there are a lot of things that can easily be grown in containers, some plants don’t do nearly so well. Luckily, the most popular vegetables including tomatoes, peppers and salad greens are excellent choices. I’m devoted to indeterminate tomatoes – that’s the kind that grow as a vine, as opposed to a bush. Yes you need to tie them up but having grown the special patio tomatoes in the past; I will personally never waste my time or my very precious space on them again.

I’ve also had decent luck with cucumbers although not such great results with squash. I don’t think they cared much for getting their roots cramped and any plant that needs a root run the size of Oklahoma will not be a great choice for containers.

Peas will do well, although they are a fairly short season crop and even more so given the extra warmth they’re experience in a container. If you’re going to grow beans – I’d suggest going with the pole beans even though I’m not sure they’re quite as tender as the bush variety, but the simple truth is that the bush beans just don’t give you the return on your space and seeding progressive crops is not as practical in a container garden as when you have lots of room in the ground.

Corn is a non starter and similarly I would also stay away from broccoli, cauliflower, and sprouts – something for which my son is eternally grateful. You also don’t want to try anything that has serious rambling issues like watermelon and I don’t recommend root crops either – meaning carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beets, turnips, radishes or parsnips. You can’t grow asparagus in containers either.

If you don’t know anything about growing vegetables and you’ve never done it before, advice like “vines are good” isn’t going to be much help. So maybe I should step back for a minute and approach this question from a different perspective. Try this on for size, “grow what you can’t easily buy”.

Yes, you can buy tomatoes – but the tomatoes you can buy in the stores have been selected for qualities which appeal to agri-business. For example – tomatoes that are going to be trucked across half a continent – or more- need to have fairly tough skins so they don’t get mashed to a pulp – yummmmmmy. They need to be picked when they’re green and ripen in a truck. They need to stand up well to refrigeration. They need to be uniformly sized so that they pack well and display easily in a grocery store. If you’re growing your own tomatoes – none of these things matter!

You can have plum tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, beefsteak sized tomatoes, grape tomatoes in a range of colors and sweetness levels that will simply amaze you. If you’re not a gardener already, then you’re probably not familiar with the craze that is heirloom vegetables. Oh what a wonderful surprise you have in store. I grow lots of tomatoes – surprisingly I’m not a huge fan of big chunks of tomato. But I love little grape tomatoes in Greek salads and I’ve found that oven dried cherry tomatoes packed in olive oil with basil are like eating candy.

Peppers are terrific – because there are so many different kinds of them – especially if you like hot peppers.

Salad greens – Mesclun mix – Baby salad greens – you know the ones I mean. They cost about 16 bucks a kilo and 9 times out of 10 the ones in the grocery store have already started to wilt. I don’t know about man – but woman cannot live on iceberg alone!

Other great small space crops include Chinese greens, eggplant, kale, spinach and Swiss chard. And then of course a simply wonderful idea is to also grow herbs – some of which – like parsley and cilantro also make great salad greens.  Basil is another example of a crop available in a mind numbing variety. I love Thai basil.

Oregano, thyme, chives, tarragon, marjoram and sage are all perennial herbs, which mean that they will live from year to year. Sadly, that makes them a not too good choice for a container garden since plants which can survive the (Toronto) winters in the ground will not necessarily do so in a container on a balcony. Ironically, rosemary, which is also perennial but one too tender to survive the Toronto winters in the ground can easily spend those winters on a windowsill and go back out next spring.

But what I’ll say right now is, “if you really want a perennial herb, and it’s easy for you to find the plants, give them a try and we’ll touch back on the subject before the fall of 2010 and talk about how you can get them through the winter. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

To help you begin to make your decision about what you might want to grow, here is a list of websites that offer herb and vegetable seeds. Take a look at what they have to offer and make some choices – you’ll probably choose too many, but that’s ok. You haven’t ordered them yet.

http://www.heirloomtomatoes.bizland.com/

http://eternalseed.ca/index.php?ID=1&Lang=En Canada only

http://victoryseeds.com/

http://www.seedsavers.org/

http://www.sandhillpreservation.com/catalog/seed_menu.html

http://www.heritageharvestseed.com/

http://www.uharvest.ca/zenstore/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=21

http://www.richters.com/

http://www.stokeseeds.com/cgi-bin/StokesSeeds.storefront

http://www.dominion-seed-house.com/en-CA

Now, if you’re thinking that come spring, almost every grocery store in the city will be offering trays of little vegetable plants that you can grow, you’re absolutely right. Some of them will have a simply excellent range of choices too and if you want to go that route, you certainly can. But at some point you’ll probably want to grow something that you can’t find unless you start it yourself. So for now, you don’t need to make an absolute decision, check out the seeds and if you’re just not ready to make this leap yet, you can always start with pre-started plants.

Yesterday I had to clean up my vegetable garden for the winter season.  It would be a sadder time, except I try to choose a beautiful fall day to do my clean up. – Actually, I stage the job over a few days because my back just isn’t what it used to be.

I pulled the beefsteak tomato, green bell pepper, Brandywine tomato and flat leaf parsley – each in their own one gallon pot (which is only 6″x 6.5″high) from the planter they shared with a single gravity feed valve.  Of all the hydroponic designs I played with this summer this simple configuration – 4 pots in a single tray, with a single valve, from a single purposed nutrient reservoir- was the most successful.

when I pulled the plants from the pots, I was gratified to see the kind of solid mass of roots that you’ll be shown in any picture that demonstrates what a root bound plant should never look like.  But since I had no intention of either increasing the pot sizes, planting them into the ground or extending the life beyond a single growing season the solid mass of roots was good news to me becuase the purpose of the exercise was to confirm that – You Can Grow a Full Sized Tomato or Pepper in a Six Inch Pot!

OK,  so neither the beefsteak tomatoes nor the peppers will yield Fall Fair Blue Ribbon sized fruit ( yes they’re fruit!)  but they will yield a steady, generous crop of food – and you can do it in the lowest maintenance container garden that you can imagine.

Since I’m about the worlds worst artist,  I won’t be sketching out the designs but I’m going to create a PDF with photos to show how to make these gardens.  I hope that for anyone who would love to grow their own organic vegetables and herbs, but don’t have the space to plant a garden – these designs will set you along the road to your first harvest.

I’ll post information about the designs here – and probably post the PDF on my ecommerce bonsai site – Zen Garden Bonsai.

Oh – the flat leafed parsley is actually still good until a hard frost takes it out – here’s a shot of what it looks like.

There is a famous marketing saying, the gist of which is that it can be difficult to see  beyond the end of your nose – particularly if your head is stuffed up your …….. Oh, you’ve never heard of it?  Well, repeat it to enough people and you’ll hear of it.  That’s called viral marketing.

I Love to Garden.  Always have.  I planted my first vegetables when I was about 8.  They all died, but that’s hardly the point.

I’ve tried to do lots of different businesses on my own but in spite of wanting to be objective about what business I’ll go into and evaluating the opportunities based on research, somehow I keep ending up growing something.  But looking at my ideas for outdoor-hydroponic- container-vegetable gardens, that truly are effortless and idiot proof, I’m wondering if there will be any appeal beyond pure gardeners.

And if so, who are my buyers?  Are they organic and natural health types?  I can certainly understand why this group would want to grow their own vegetables, but do they live in high rises? and if so will they pay about $80.00 for a planter that will grow a few tomatoes a herb and some peppers?

This is not about the price of the food or even the quality.  It’s about choice.  Its about going out to a balcony in the middle of Manhattan and being able to pick organic produce for your dinner.  Its about a feeling and bragging rights.

But I just don’t know if anyone will care.

It started with an idea to use hydroponic principles to grow vegetables outside for people who don’t have the space for a traditional garden  – outdoor hydroponic vegetable container gardens.  It almost immediately “expanded” to embrace an organic component……………and I’ve been trying to simplify it ever since.

First it was a matter of getting rid of the overly complicated mixing and balancing of nutrients that are an inherent flaw with traditional hydroponic systems.  At least they’re a flaw if you want to get regular consumers interested.  Then it was about ditching the reliance for electricity – and luckily both of the first two problems had the same solution.  I thought the gravity fed valves were my answer but now I’m not so sure.  I think they’re overpriced and I can’t seem to do anything to bring the prices down and they are still a mechanical element that is subject to a few hiccups.

If it doesn’t work flawlessly, it can’t be foolproof and I want foolproof.

The second season is starting and the new lettuce garden is still hydroponic, still small space, still organic – but this time it might also be foolproof, too.  You see, I’ve ditched the valve for now and I’m working on something that is sooooooo simple – if it works – it will take the container and balcony gardening world by storm.  On the other hand – maybe I’m about to find out why this technique hasn’t found broader adoption.

I’ll let you know.

I’m pressed for time today (as usual) and don’t have time to download the shots I took of the pathetic site I returned to after only three days away from the house.  As luck would have it, after a cool ( some would say cold) and perpetually wet July, the August long weekend was warm and sunny.  I was in heaven.  My vegetables in traditional containers were in hell.  I returned home to find my herbs, and peppers pitifully wilted and the leaves of  my cucumbers, acorn squash and tomatoes yellowed and crispy.  It was not pretty and one cuke and both squash have succumbed to their injuries.  Piss me off!

BUT – Everything and I mean everything that relied upon my hydroponic watering system including tomatoes, herbs, peppers and all the salad greens were in perfect condition.

I’m struggling with an affordable way to bring this system to market.  The problem being that I’m just too small to buy the volumes that will command a great price so the cost of goods will be ugly and unless I want to market these for free ( or worse yet at a loss- which I can promise you is deadly easy to do) they are going to cost about twice what I hoped to bring them to market for.  Still – They work.  And the relative benefits just keep stacking up so I’ll just have to wait and see what I can do.

Gotta run.  Late for work – again.

This is working better than I could have imagined in ways I didn’t expect.  To find a simple, low cost way for people who were otherwise unable to grow vegetables to actually grow some of their own food was all I set out to do.  I suppose you could say that was enough of a challenge since I started on the assumption that I’m planning for a small family or a working couple with a townhouse deck of condo terrace or balcony.  I’m allowing for the fact that they might travel on business which would leave their container garden possibly untended for up to a week – maybe more.

And of course the vegetables would need to be organically grown- to do anything else runs so far against the trend as to be a waste of time.

The first bonus was a cut and come again salad greens garden that not only grows well in its hydroponic garden but has produced a better yield than expected.  In fact that advantage continues to grow.

Even though the lettuce has bolted....

The oak leaf lettuce in the shot to my right has got leaves that have extended a long way up the stem.  if this lettuce had been planted in the ground it would be completely inedible, since once it starts to bolt salad greens are incredibly bitter.  This lettuce still tastes terrific.  It’s still tender and not bitter and a true delight.

I’ve concentrated the harvest lately on one half of the garden so I can pull it up and reseed for the second season – which should be good becuase it seems that summer does not really want to come to Toronto this year.

Still many salads left on the left

As you can see, the left hand side of the garden where I backed off a bit for the last three meals has tons of greens left, so while the right hand side re-sprouts, I’ll be dining on the left.

I’ve also been playing with the design for the tomatos and the real question is just how small can the pots be to produce a good yield.   I’ll let you know more about that soon because I’ve got a Brandywine heritage tomato and a beefsteak tomato in what are definitely undersized pots.  They got a later start than I would have liked, but they’re starting to take off now.

Looking over the numbers I’ll be able – I think- to bring different variations of this garden plan to market starting at about $60.00 . Still sorting out the line up and confirming what works.

Beefsteaks tomato

New Tomato Garden Test

Salad Greens

If you’re ever looking for a better way to relax go into a  garden.  Even now when I have my crazy junior bonsai nursery growing down the side and a wide collection of pots and bags with tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers, squash and herbs, its still the most peaceful place in my world.

And even though I’m trying to develop a product -  urban hydro gardens and bring them to market and I’m still fine tuning the prototypes and starting to juggle the numbers.  Sitting ( or standing) around plants that I’m growing is the most soul easing place in the world.  I sincerely believe that anyone who loves to grow plants gets the same feeling.  It can be stretched a little out of shape now and then, when the slugs are eating holes in my pepper leaves and the earwigs are treating my romaine lettuce like a high rise condo.

It makes me wonder if people with other passions get the same sense of peace or if maybe this is just something special that’s given to people who love to ( or is that need to? ) grow things.

The great summer experiment this year is coming along very well and I’m very close to finalizing a design for a balcony, patio, deck or terrace (whatever you want to call a small private space with no place to stick a shovel) hydroponic vegetable garden.  It’s very exciting because at this point I have a design that not only is dead simple to work with and  is recognizable to just about anyone as a garden but it can also be brought to market for a better price than anything else out there.

I can swear to you that the plants I have in the hydroponic gardens are growing better than my pampered little beauties in their pots of compost- and they are much easier to care for- probably because I don’t have to water them every day and don’t need to worry that they’re going to just about expire if we get a hot day and I’m not around to water them

This is what I was aiming for when I started this project.  High yield, organic and super low maintenance vegetable gardens in a small space.  It’s all coming together now, but there was one thing I had forgotten about – Earwigs!

In my 20′s I did battle with them, only to learn that it isn’t worth the trouble and now I have them again, hiding in the lettuce, dining on my basil and chewing great jeezly holes in my peppers.  Thirty years later and almost nothing has changed – except me.