The Balcony Garden

I am lazy. There I have said it. The admission feels good. It was this acceptance that lead me to seeking out a composter that i could place on my balcony, just outside the kitchen door. After all, your garden beings at your doorstep and compost plays a major role in any healthy garden. I found the plans I was looking for on the City of Toronto site. It is a simple design and easy to build. I now only have to open the balcony door and drop my food scrapes into the composter. I add a little paper and soil very so often.

This set up will provide me with compost for the container garden on the balcony. Container gardening is a different experience than gardening in the earth or using raised beds. The soil needs to be changed regularly, perhaps yearly. This can be a costly and time intensive experience. I have 33 containers on the balcony and to change the soil takes time. So much so, that in some years, I have decided not to do it. Then I rely on fertilizer, an organic, usually seaweed-based fertilizer. The problem with this is that it is an offsite input into my garden. So is buying soil.

The composter provides the needed material right on the garden site. This reduces the amount of work that I have to do. Fertilizer may still be required even with new compost each year. Rather than buy it which means going to the store and back, I make my own. At the end of the growing season, I always leave a few plants in the containers. The shape of the branches and seedpods, lens a pleasing visual to the balcony through the winter. This is especially so when there is 2-3 feet of snow on the balcony. Of course this year, there is no snow, so it doesn't look quite as nice. Anyway, in Spring, I pull the plants, break the stem off from the roots, and toss the stem into the compost. The roots, with dirt attached, I put into a bucket which I then fill with water. I don't put all the roots in, I set some aside for later in the season. I let it sit overnight and then pour that water into the containers, before putting in the seeds or seedlings. About 4 weeks later, I make another patch and feed the plants with it. This is usually all the extra input the plants need and all of it came from the site.

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