How to Start a Gorgeous Balcony Veggie & Herb Garden

If you live in an apartment or don’t have a large garden, fear not! You can still grow some of your own food. Today, I’m going to be sharing my tips on how to start a container garden, whether that be on your balcony, front porch or patio! Balcony gardening is heaps of fun and super rewarding if you know what to grow and how to look after your plants, so read along to find out more!

WHAT KIND OF LIGHT DO I NEED?

When growing veggies and herbs, you need to make sure they are placed in a spot with plenty of direct sunlight. Ideally, a north facing balcony would work best especially if you’re attempting fruiting veggies such as tomatoes or eggplants (which by the way are both summer veggies so don’t plant these now!). However, if your balcony is partly shaded during the day, you can still give things a go! Greens such as spinach, bok choy and lettuce should do more than fine in part shade, as well as all your herbs.

WHAT SHOULD YOU GROW ON A BALCONY?

If you’re just starting your garden or if you’re growing on a balcony because you want easy access to things, then I would recommend starting off with your favourite herbs and a range of salad greens. Herbs are really easy to grow and often quite expensive to purchase at the supermarket. Whenever I used to purchase a punnet of herbs from the supermarket, half of it would always go to waste because you only really need a small handful at a time. So I definitely recommend growing herbs. Some of my favourites are parsley for omelette making, coriander for garnishing and in rice paper rolls, oregano for pizza, thyme for pizza, mint for flavouring drinks and lemon balm for making tea. I also recommend growing things like baby spinach leaves or mixed salad leaves. I love growing these because they’re so easy to grow and you can save so much money (& plastic!) by not buying them in plastic packaging for high prices in the supermarket.

WHAT ARE MY SMALL-SPACE CONTAINER OPTIONS?

When it comes to gardening in small spaces, we’re definitely looking at containers!

Some suggestions I recommend for gardening in small spaces are stylish raised options like the Vegtrug herb planter (which is what I’ve recently set up in our garden) and barrel planters for shrubs or in my case, a curry tree (for curry leaves!) like this one here. If you want something very small and narrow, then I also came across the Pinnacle range of raised planters whilst shopping which looked really handy as well. Lastly, you can also find containers that hook onto balcony railings like some of the ones I found here which are useful for small spaces too. All of these suggestions you can find at Bunnings.

Most herbs and green veggies have really small root structures so any containers from around 20cm-ish in height is plenty of space!

WHAT SOIL TO USE?

When growing in containers, soil quality is super important because it’s all that the plant has when it comes to looking for nutrients. A really simple way to make sure a plant gets everything it needs is to use a quality potting mix which will be formulated for containers such as this one here.

Alternatively, you can also mix your own potting mix if you have existing options at home. This is what I did for my balcony garden as I had leftover compost and manure. What I did was mix compost and manure with perlite to help increase drainage - all things I had at home already. I also mulched on top of all my plants with leftover pea straw mulch.

HOW TO TAKE CARE AFTER PLANTING OUT?

When growing in containers, you’ll need to check regularly to make sure your plants haven’t dried out. As containers are small and enclosed, it’s likely they might dry out faster than plants in the garden. Make sure to water regularly so they don’t dry out for too long.

Every few weeks I also like to feed my plants with a liquid fertiliser like Seasol. Also, whilst we’re on the topic of feeding, worm castings are another great way to add nutrition to the soil and one more balcony planter option you can totally consider is The Composta which is a small worm farm and planter in one which I blogged about recently here.

HOW TO STYLE A BALCONY GARDEN?

As balcony gardens are so close to your living space, I always like to make sure they look good and stylish and easy on the eyes! So I love making sure planters I choose look beautiful amongst everything else happening. When styling a balcony garden, I also love the idea of lining the entire edge of your balcony with planters, so that you can create a bit of screening with your plants from other neighbours, as well as create a nice little area on your balcony for relaxing, reading or even doing a bit of yoga surrounded by plants!

I hope this post gives you some tips for starting your balcony garden! Happy gardening, everyone :)