Growing Food on My Balcony - The Experiment Begins

Planting a garden and growing my own food is something I've wanted to do for a while.  When I was growing up my mother always had a garden, mostly growing salad vegetables, broccoli and cauliflower.  On the hot, humid summer days in Nebraska when it was too hot to cook, we would often eat fresh vegetables right out of the garden and slices of lunch meat.  My favorite was radishes with garlic salt.

As I got older and learned about Peak Oil and it's effects upon the food supply my interest grew.  I started to learn that growing your own food is more than just a hobby.  It's a radical act, and in not too distant a future something that could very well become critical.  

Now, as I learn about all the other problems with our food supply growing my own food seems more important than ever.  But, I have a problem.  I don't have a yard.  I live in a townhouse and the landscaped areas around my home are considered communal property and are maintained by my HOA.  I am not allowed to plant in the communal areas.  I've been trying to figure out how to grow as much food as I can on, or hanging over, a small balcony and a small patio between my front door and the sidewalk. I have more space on my patio, but it's adjacent to the landscaped areas and I have concerns about the pesticides the HOA sprays. Even if they don't spray my little area, I would still get some drift from my neighbors.

This is the front of my house.  I have plenty of room to grow in containers, but everything here is exposed to pesticides

So, for now I'm doing what I can on my tiny east-facing balcony, and hoping I can bring as many as possible inside for the long cold-season.

Because of the issues I noted above, I'm a big believer in growing foods that are very nutrient dense, like beans, not just lettuces and other foods with high water content...although I want to grow those, too.

I don't have much of a green thumb.  Keeping plants alive inside is hit or miss.  Last year I grew organic roma tomatoes in a Topsy Turvy.  It worked great, but I only got about 5 small tomatoes before the first frost hit.  The growing season in Colorado is pretty short, and last year it was very short due to late snow storms.  I think we only had 5 months of appropriate weather.

This year I'm going to try a little harder.  I'm starting from seeds (even though I've never had luck there) so I can start growing earlier.  It's getting easier and easier to find certified organic seeds.  

I found these at my local Home Depot and Natural Grocers

Anything I grow inside needs to fit on a window sill so I was happy when I found these seed-starters.

I'm going to give up on the idea of finding large ceramic pots for growing outside.  They are just too expensive.  I'm going to grow in as many planters as I can hang from my balcony and follow the example of Michael Lieberman of Urban Organic Gardener and grow in 5 gallon buckets and found containers.  It's more important that they grow food than that they are pretty.  And, I can get approximately 4 buckets for the price of 1 similarly sized ceramic pot.  Mike makes his buckets into self-watering containers making growing even more fool-proof.  

I may also try vertical gardening.  I like this idea from GreenUpgrader using hanging shoe racks.  I couldn't grow anything large here, but it might be fun for herbs, saving my pots/buckets for larger crops.  I would just have to make sure none of them were lined with vinyl.  

So, for now my little experiment is underway.  It's still early, so I may do more.  I would love to be able to eat vegetables only from my balcony with the occassional trip to the farmer's market.  We'll see how that goes.  Wish me luck!