Growing Vegetables in Pots On Balcony [Beginner Guide]

What Can Your Balcony Garden Grow?

There are different foods you can grow on your balcony, mostly vegetables & leafy greens. You can grow a variety of vegetables on your balcony, depending on how rich your patio is and how much support it provides. 

To know what your balcony garden can grow, you will need to understand your balcony and consider the level of support it can offer. This is crucial to know the right kinds of veggies to grow for your container gardening.

Understand the amount of sunlight it provides and the amount of shade it offers. This will help you make informed decisions when you choose the veggies to grow in your balcony vegetable garden.

If your balcony vegetable garden doesn't have much sunlight access, you know you cannot grow productive vegetables that need sunlight, unless you address the sunlight issues.

Examine The Sunlight Level In Your Yard

You will have to examine the sunlight level in your yard to determine the best area to place your veggies. Getting this done is not a difficult thing to do. You will have to monitor your yard when the sunlight comes on and determine the amount of sunlight the yard gets during this period.

This can take monitoring the yard for up to two hours.

During this process, you should get a piece of paper upon which you would sketch your yard. After doing so, allot a number to each section of the yard that you can place your vegetables.

The number you give to each section allows you to adequately keep a tab on the sunlight level that each section receives.

Note the sunlight level that each of these sections receives during the period while you monitor the sunlight. 

Partial Shade Or Full Sun

You also would have to determine the amount of sunlight each area receives to know the area that enjoys full sun and the area with partial shade. This helps you to make informed decisions based on the area you want to place your pot.

For full sun areas, you'll have to monitor the areas that enjoy direct sunlight beyond six hours. For areas that fall in this category, they are referred to as the full sun areas. But with areas that do not enjoy as much sunlight, they're often called a partial shade.

Partial shade means that the area moderately enjoys sunlight while full shade means minimal contact with sunlight. By examining your yard carefully, you can note all the areas.

Understand that if you have tall trees, you definitely will have areas that are shaded. By knowing the full sun, partial shade, and full shade, you know where to place each vegetable that will match the vegetable's needs.

Addressing Sunlight Issues

If you need more sunlight or need to regulate the one that comes in, you have a few options. You can thin out trees if you need to get access to more sunlight.

You can also plant shade trees where you need to regulate the sunlight. You could also get the crown of the trees heightened where you need sunlight to cut through.

Lettuces and salad leaves can tolerate partial shade, but will take longer to grow in partial sunlight conditions.

Which Vegetable Grow Best On Your Balcony

There are various vegetables you can grow in your balcony. For many of these vegetables, all you need is to know the pot modifications that best suit their needs and the amount of access to sunlight they require to blossom.

Once you know this, you are good to go. However, the fact that there are many veggies to grow doesn't mean there aren't some that are best for you to grow on your balcony. I shall take you through the best veggies you can grow here.