| Very good information! Me and my wife have grown stuff on the balcony, but the main reason that we don't anymore is that we go away for four weeks during the summer where there is the most need to water. We can grow things in the spring and in the autumn, but we miss the warmest period in the middle. We bought four large clear plastic containers from IKEA that are intended to store stuff under the bed, drilled holes in the bottom of two of them for drainage, and put them in the other containers. We filled them with LECA pebbles and dirt, and watered with large PET bottles. It was all very easy. One summer we grew kale in one container, but were discouraged when we harvested it and only had enough for one pie. Your first sentence triggered this memory, which is the point of my comment. Growing kale on that small scale was terribly inefficient, and the amount of work to water it far surpassed the joy of eating the pie. Another summer we had curled leaf lettuce that was much better than kale. It grew so quickly that we could continuously harvest it and still have more growing. Of course you can't eat it for the calories, so it's just for fun. We've also had windowboxes on the inside of the balcony railing with flavorful sallads and herbs, like rocket sallad, basil, chives, and so on. As you say, those add a lot to a meal without taking up too much space, and are easy to start with. |