Balcony Garden As of February 2013

After much experimentation, my optimal garden location is right outside my bedroom door, the upstairs balcony. I live on the third floor of an apartment complex, so the elevation above the trees allows for more light to hit the balcony during the morning.

I have created about 5 different planting areas on the balcony. Here is a diagram in MS paint that I shall use to help explain.

Fixing a fender mount

The bracket that attaches my home made (half) front fender to the fork crown had finally become victim to aluminum's terrible fatigue strength (in other words, it broke).  So I decided to do it the right way and use steel this time.

"mud brake"

What was left of the original bracket

Wintertime Misadventures

I chose to start gardening in October, since that is when I bought my supplies. I started my seed in 1 gallon pots which I purchased from the store.

2 weeks after germination

Now my biggest mistake here was that I did not do my homework. I have an east facing window, but because of the way the building faces, my balcony is only hit with direct sunlight until about 12PM. I now know that my lower balcony receives significantly less sunlight than the one outside my bedroom window, meaning that my little seedlings did not grow too much in the time between when I started them and when I moved them. (My balcony still does not even get 6 hrs of direct sunlight in winter). Additionally, I started way too many carrots and spinach. I was very clumsy with the seed packets and dozens of seed fell into each pot. So I had way too many seedlings without enough light and without enough growing space. I clearly was a mess. This was somewhat remedied when I brought back two 22 gallon totes from home after Thanksgiving. I learned quite a bit from these mistakes. To summarize:

• Find out how much sun the balcony gets
• Locate the optimal sunny spot
• Be careful with seed packets
• Not everything can grow in winter

The good news is that some of the seedlings did survive and will produce a small harvest. I will be planning better for spring.

Hydroponic Plant Pots

Filling the space between the bars.

I got the idea to do this from this instructable (Thanks Professor-Mousedude!). It looked really easy to do and the materials for it are extremely cheap. To make a planter like this, you'll need:

Looking forward to Spring

I picked a miserable time to start my garden. I had absolutely no plan at all nor did I follow my first rule.

Location.

Now that I'm on the upstairs balcony, I get a decent amount of sun. Its not the 6 hours required for optimal growth, but my plants are still growin'.

Call me an addict, but each day I always look at the weather channel's website, always checking to see whether I'll need to cover the plants or not. And everyday or so, the sunrise time on their website goes up by a minute. All of these minutes add up. As of now, right in the heart of winter, there is only about 10 hours of daylight available. I lose sunlight at about noon, midday, so my plants only get about half a days worth of sun. March 20th is the Spring Equinox, meaning there will be 12 hours of day and night again. Once that day comes, I'll be able to sow my larger plants without fear of them getting too little sunlight.

48 days to go.

A small step to get the garden growing again