Designing a Mini Kitchen Garden Balcony

Designing a kitchen garden balcony doesn’t only provide colorful attractive tiny and dwarf varieties of fruits and vegetables looks but also provide your dinner table with fresh food. There are so many varieties, which you can grow in hanging baskets or other pots and tubs in a limited place, such as miniature cherry tomatoes are best to grow in hanging baskets, other options may include dwarf courgettes, miniature aubergines, and an ornamental sweet pepper plant that produces fruit in different shades of purple, red and yellow, which are nothing less than any exotic plant.

If luckily your balcony is a real suntrap, the best available option is the high-rise gourmet that can do their best with early ripening and good yields. Some modern varieties and hybrids are so bred to produce the maximum fruit from the miniature plants, for instance, from just a single plant of tomatoes or soft fruit, you can get 5 kilogram (10 lb) of fruit. The selection of plants largely depends on the size of your kitchen balcony. You can start from pot grown herbs, strawberries, or tomatoes to raised timber beds or boxes in which you can grow salad plants like spring onions, perpetual corn salad, radishes, and Little Gem lettuces.

Growing vegetables

You can grow different varieties of vegetables in your kitchen balcony, so that you will have fresh and healthy vegetables available at your home. Growing vegetables in your balcony is a great fun and thrill. You can grow potatoes in a barrel or you can use grow bags for the purpose of planting limited variety of compact vegetables, such as stump-rooted carrots or short-growing peas and broad beans. Although these bags are usually not very attractive, you can conceal them behind a brick faced frame or a timber so as to keep your balcony look attractive and stylish. For proper drainage, there are specially designed trays and troughs available in the market that is useful in draining water properly without flooding or ruining the balcony. Runner beans can also make lovely annual climbers for a trellis.

Growing fruits

Growing fruits along with vegetables in your balcony is also a great idea. The kiwi plant, Actinidia chinensis is purely a decorative climber. Other soft bushes like red or white currents, loganberries, blackberries and black currents can also be grown in the pots and tubs.

One or two dwarf fruits with trained branches like espalier and cordon will take very little place. Apples and pears can also be grown under these conditions. The balconies with hot sunny conditions, apricot trees, peach and nectarine can be used with branches trained into fan shapes. The sacking must be used to protect the fruits and bushes where balconies are in cold areas and pretty much exposed.

Citrus tree is a famous patio and balcony plant, which can easily be clipped and trained formally. Citrus tree is usually grown for decoration instead of a source of fruit as they look so pretty. As the small pots and tubs are easy to lift and can be shifted indoor in cold conditions, these are best for sunny balconies.