The Edible Balcony : Growing Fresh Produce in Small Spaces

264 Pages·2012·14.88 MB·English

by  Mitchell

Contents
Introduction
The Easy Edible Balcony
How You Make It Personal
The City Farmer’s Balcony
Some Like It Hot
The Edible Forest Roof Garden
The Futuristic Balcony
Pests and Diseases
Recommended Suppliers
Index

Introduction
It’s the ultimate escape from the urban buzz. Imagine sitting in a Mediterranean-style
haven surrounded by grapes, tomatoes, lemons, and greens so fresh that they squeak
while the traffic roars around you. From a few pots on your balcony or fire escape to
an entire orchard on your roof terrace, the possibilities for growing fruit and
vegetables off the ground are endless—even if you live in the heart of the city or
suburbs. Not having a garden doesn’t mean you can’t be eating delicious, organic
greens, herbs, vegetables, and fruits every day of the year.
Urban buzz: beehives and crops co-exist happily on a city rooftop
From simple fire escapes and window boxes to sleek, decked roof terraces with a
view of the city skyline, your own little bit of outdoor space has always been
something to covet, but now more than ever we’re embracing the chance to green up
our environment. Home farming is a trend that seems here to stay, with seed sales
reflecting our growing enthusiasm and plants appearing in the most unusual places.
These budding balcony gardens are not just growing flowers, either—after all, why
just fill the space with geraniums when you can grow fruit, vegetables, herbs, and
greens and benefit from delicious fresh, organic food at your fingertips?
Balconies are ideal places for growing edible crops, as they are often very sunny
and high out of reach of pests such as slugs and snails. Many crops grow very well in
containers and a surprising number are beautiful too—from lush fig trees to silver
thyme, yellow climbing beans, and frilly lettuces. You can gather strawberries when
they’re properly ripe, not picked hard in order to be transported. You can eat peas and
carrots before their sugars have turned to starch, and pluck tomatoes still warm from
the sun. Get growing yourself and you can fill your space with unusual crops you can’t
easily buy in the stores—striped tomatoes, beautiful flecked rose beans, or tangy
buckler’s leaf sorrel.
Whether you’d like a few herbs or pot after pot of carrots and potatoes, a balcony
is the ideal place to get growing. You may not be self-sufficient, but you’ll enjoy
delicious fresh food picked straight from the plant, and know exactly how and where it
was grown. The average green has traveled 1,400 miles to reach your table—grow it
on your balcony and you can reduce this to a few yards.
In cities all around the world, people are discovering how wonderful it is to grow
fresh fruit and vegetables, and realizing that you don’t need a lot of space to do it.
Urban residents, many of them young and with no experience of growing food, are
discovering the pleasure of eating their own produce straight from the plant and
marveling at how they can grow it right there outside their window.
Outdoor spaces may be small, but that inspires people to find creative ways to use
every available bit of them. Whether you’re after an exotic feel, a sophisticated herb
garden, or simply want to squeeze in as many crops as you can in a glorious mass of
fertility, a balcony is a theater set waiting to be dressed. People are finding ingenious
ways to grow crops—from greens in bottles to herbs in hanging shoe-organizers.
Invention, individuality, and expression are the key words for this new breed of urban
farmers; rolling acres are not necessary—all you need is a few pots.
The potential for growing food in our cities is everywhere. If you added up all the
flat roofs in New York or Chicago or Seattle, you would have room for an awful lot of
tomatoes. And even the tiniest of spaces count too. Windowsills and walls are all
viable with the right pot or customized container. And why stop at fruit and
vegetables? A beehive takes up less space than you’d think, so how about producing
your own honey several stories up?
Whether it’s guavas in Mumbai, a Manhattan fire escape of herbs and greens, or
olives ripening in the heart of the city, The Edible Balcony mixes inspirational ideas
with practical advice to show you how to create a beautiful, flourishing outdoor
space. From an easy edible balcony that can be set up over a weekend to individual
styling tips using recycled and salvage materials, advice on producing exotic fruit you
never knew you could grow and even on making a do-it-yourself green wall, this book
is full of ideas to turning your outdoor space into a garden packed with gourmet
pleasures.
Why should I grow food on my balcony?
Your balcony, however small, is a valuable splash of green in a concrete urban jungle,
but its benefits are far more than just aesthetic: When you plant produce on your
balcony you are not only creating a relaxing haven and a handy source of ingredients
for your lunch, but you’re benefiting the wider environment, too.
It looks better
A bare balcony is a depressing sight and a wasted opportunity. Fill it with plants and
it becomes vibrant, softening the hard lines of the city and giving you a space to pause
and breathe.
It tastes better
Grow fruit and vegetables on your balcony and you can experience the wonders of
fresh food—sweet carrots, meltingly ripe strawberries, and crunchy greens. You can
also grow produce you can’t easily buy, such as purple snow peas and yellow cherry
tomatoes. With the merest effort you can be self-sufficient in herbs and never again
have to let those plastic packs of parsley from the grocery store turn to slime at the
back of the refrigerator.
It reduces food miles of fruit and veggies
There is something undeniably satisfying about being able to pick greens from outside
your kitchen and know exactly where and how they were grown. When you start
growing some of your own food, you quickly learn about and appreciate what is in
season and what is local. When you have eaten French beans you have grown yourself,
those little cellophane-wrapped green sticks flown in from thousands of miles away
don’t seem so convenient after all.