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6 Tips for Planning a Successful Balcony Garden
Balcony gardens both enhance your own living space and are good for the planet, since they feed the bees. To have a successful balcony garden, it’s important to plan it to fit the space you have. Here are some tips to help you end up with a lush balcony.
1. Know the sun exposure your balcony gets.
Exposure in this case refers to both the amount of sun it gets each day, and how windy it is. Just like yards, some balconies are shady. Others are partial sun or full sun. It’s important to look at your balcony on a sunny day about once an hour and see how much sun it gets. Be aware that some areas of your balcony may have different exposure than others. Consider the exposure in the areas you want to put your containers when selecting plants.
2. Identify wind solutions.
Even if the ground level of your home isn’t windy, it’s likely your balcony is. The further from the ground you are, the more windy it will be. Other factors like how close tall buildings are to your own can also impact the amount of wind.
Once you’ve established how windy your balcony is, consider which solutions to windiness you want to use. You have options.
- Select wind tolerant plants like zinnias.
- Erect wind barriers, such as screens attached to the railing.
- Install support structures for your plants, for example grow cages or trellises.
3. Select containers for your space.
Consider what type you will use. Rail hangers? Vertical planters? Planter boxes? It’s important to know what containers will fit in your space and how before you select your plants. Once you’ve determined the type of containers you’re using, measure the space to ensure you only buy what will fit.
Ideal balcony containers will both have internal water reservoirs and drainage. You want some excess water held onto for drier days at the roots of the plant. But it’s also important that any excess beyond that reservoir can drain. Otherwise it will simply sit on top of your container and potentially drown your plant or cause unsightly mold to grow.
4. Choose your plants.
Now that you know the sun exposure, windiness, and containers you will be using, it’s time to select your plants. Remember to consider your planting zone when making this selection. You can grow a plant from outside of your zone if you are willing to move select plants inside during certain parts of the year. For example, if you are in zone 7, you can have a banana tree on your balcony if you move it indoors in the cooler months.
There is value to growing both edible and decorative plants. Flowering decorative plants help attract more pollinators to a garden that is mostly edible plants. On the other hand, decorative edibles, such as chives or ornamental peppers, can add a dash of variety to both your garden and your meals.
Be aware that many types of plants have varieties already identified as being likely to succeed in containers. For example, the Paris Market Carrot grows to be short and fat instead of long and narrow, which makes it ideal for a container garden.
The world of perennials (plants that come back on their own each year) is not cut off to you in containers. Consider making about half your container garden perennials for ease of care. Chives are perennials and are actually easier to care for in a container than in a lawn garden. Raspberries and blueberries can also do very well in containers and come back perennially.
5. Buy the proper soil and toppers.
Research the best soil mixes for the types of plants you’ve selected. For example, a banana tree needs a different type of soil mix than a tomato plant. You can either buy pre-made mixes or the elements to mix them yourself.
Soil toppers help the balcony garden succeed. Mulch, such as coconut coir, serves two purposes. First, it prevents weeds, which can happen even on a balcony. Second, it helps the plants retain moisture. You might consider further topping the mulch with decorative rocks. Desert plants should skip the mulch and use only rocks or sand.
6. Plan for watering.
Just like lawn gardens, you will need to water your balcony container garden. Ideally you will do this in the early evening or morning. This both ensures the water is there when the plants need it during the heat of the day but also helps prevent the growth of fungi. Schedule it so you don’t forget.
The careful selections you’ve made so far in containers and soil should help minimize your watering. Keep in mind that larger containers also have a larger soil reservoir of water, and so you can water these less. If you have a variety of plants, try to place the plants with higher watering needs in the larger containers. This will help equalize your plants so you’re watering them all at a similar cadence.
A drip irrigation system is the ultimate easy way to water your balcony garden. But you do need access to an external water spigot for these to work. If you don’t have access to a water spigot from your balcony, don’t despair. There are other tools available to ease your watering efforts. You can buy and fill watering spikes or glass globes. You can also repurpose plastic and glass bottles to fill this same need.
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5 Things That May Surprise You About Planning Your Wedding
Oh, Bohotats, I had no idea what a hit you were going to be.
When you first get engaged (maybe even before that), you have a whole set of ideas in your head about how both wedding planning and your wedding will go. I am here to tell you that many of those ideas will be wrong. Some of them in a good way. Some of them in a not-so-good way. But they will all surprise you. So here is a list of things that surprised me about our wedding planning and wedding.
- You might not have an “omg this is the one” moment with your dress.
I did not. Many of my friends have not. I had more of an omg I have to pick one and this one is the right price and works with my body so I guess I’m going with it moment I did have an omg this is the one moment with my wedding boots, though. So you will have one of those I feel like a princess moments. It just might not necessarily be with your dress. And that is totally ok. - Who is super-excited about your wedding and who reacts like you just announced there’s a sale on broccoli will surprise you.
It’s difficult to write this part without specifically calling out any people who disappointed me, and I don’t want to do that. Suffice to say, there was one relative in particular who I had always just assumed would be at my wedding and who never RSVPed. I called them thinking something happened with the mail, and they proceeded to give me the world’s lamest excuse about not coming (it involved deer hunting season), promised to send a card, and then never did. In contrast, we had a friend come all the way from Texas (for my non-American readers, that’s 3,160 kilometers of travel), and we had friends who we had not known very long be incredibly enthusiastic and generous about our wedding. To sum it up, a lot of people will show enthusiasm and generosity about your wedding. It just might not be who you were expecting. As I told one friend who asked me about what wedding planning is like, wedding planning shows you who is really truly invested in you as a couple. And sometimes that’s great and sometimes it stings. - You will make a wedding website. And no one will read it. (Ok, ok, many people will not read it, and it will feel like no one did).
I cannot count the number of times someone good-naturedly asked me a question the answer to which I knew for a fact was on the wedding website (and had been from day one), and I had to bite my tongue hard and answer politely and not say “Didn’t you even read the wedding website?! Do you have any idea how much time and effort I invested into that thing?!” Yes, some people read the wedding website and never asked me about things like parking or the weather or where they should stay. But a ton did not. This is a fact of life you are just going to have to accept. You can’t make them read the wedding website but you also can’t not provide it. As Buddhism teaches us, accept reality for what it is. - You do not have to provide seating during the ceremony. Or assign seating for dinner. Or [insert tradition that you don’t want to do but that everyone on the internet is judging you for not wanting to do]. You will worry about it incessantly but it will actually be fine.
We didn’t provide seating during the ceremony because we wanted people standing. I was nervous about this, so I offered to provide chairs to anyone who felt they couldn’t stand for the duration of the ceremony. No one asked for a chair. Our venue randomly had a picnic table near our ceremony location that we last-minute moved to the audience section as a seating option, and no one sat on it. It was totally not a big deal. Neither was not assigning seating during the dinner. Now, I’m not saying this wouldn’t be a big deal for every crowd, but it wasn’t for our particular group of friends and family. The bottom line is, you know yourself, your partner, and your friends and family best. You don’t have to do the traditional thing that the whole internet thinks you have to do. You just have to think about what will work for you and your partner and your friends and family. And even if you pick to do something that annoys the crap out of your guests, they’re not going to say a peep to you about it (at least not on your wedding day). Because the worst wedding taboo of all is complaining to the celebrants. - There is bound to be one throw-away, last-minute thing you do that winds up being a smash hit, and you never could have predicted it.
For us, this was my last-minute acquisition of a ton of temporary glitter tattoos. About a week before our wedding I remembered wanting to put on a couple of glitter tattoos for the ceremony. I found some on Amazon, but they came in huge packages. I bought them anyway. Because wedding. The day of the wedding, I selected out which ones I wanted and had applied them. When my girlfriends arrived at the bridal cabin, they were all really excited about the extras I had spread out on the bed. I told them to feel free to take them (just not in the same colors I was wearing), and it turned out to be a smash hit. In an instant the bridal suite transformed into a group of giggling women putting on temporary tattoos, and the whole vibe changed from nervousness to excitement and celebration. I had no clue that my girlfriends would all be super-into this. I didn’t plan it. But it was a hit. Just another example of go with your gut and be generous with your friends and family, and everything will work out fine.
I think what all of these surprises point to is this. You can plan all you want, but at some point you just have to let go and watch what happens. So long as your planning was honest and loyal to who you and your partner are, everything will work out ok in the end. It’ll probably even work out amazing. 😉
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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