Home Grown Vegetables for City Dwellers

If you have ever had the opportunity grow, tend to, harvest and eat fresh homegrown vegetables you know that there is absolutely no substitute for the experience.

It begins with a scheduled trip to the local farm store where one can find an almost endless variety of fresh seeds and plants ready for planting. I find it necessary to discipline myself by preparing ahead of my visit a list of seeds, plants and fertilizers that I plan to buy, otherwise I would buy one of everything in the store.

After a long, cold winter I find it enjoyable to walk the aisles of the seed store where I take in not only the colorful displays of plants and seeds, but also the warm aroma of sun-baked soil, fertilizers and newly sprouted plants. It is a ritual of spring that never disappoints me.

Most of my life I have lived in a suburban community which always provided sufficient space for me to cultivate a small vegetable garden in which I would grow tomatoes, radishes, summer squash, a variety of beans, cucumbers, onions, and potatoes.

You can imagine my disappointment when one extended work assignment required me to relocate in a major city where I lived in a small townhouse in a forth floor apartment. No room for a garden here. There was not even access to any unpaved ground!

I did however have a fairly large balcony that received about eight hours of full sun a day. What, I asked myself, would be the possibility of raising a small garden of selected vegetables on this balcony?

I decided it was worth a try.

My first hurdle was finding seed supply store. There was none that I could find. However, I did find a store that offered small packets of mostly flower seeds, but also provided packs of radish, cucumber, yellow squash and even tomato seeds. I bought two packs of each for my experimental balcony garden.

At the same store I purchased two cartons (20 bags) of 39-gallon Hefty garbage bags and five 20-pound bags of enriched potting soil. (I would later return for several additional bags of potting soil).

Lugging all of the above up to my forth floor apartment (there is an elevator) I carried everything to the balcony and began development of my balcony garden.

Step 1 - Remove ten 39-gallon plastic garbage bags and place them at two-foot intervals around the perimeter of the balcony.

Step 2 - Fill each bag with potting soil to a depth of about 10-12 inches. This is approximately ten pounds (or ½ bag) of potting soil.

Step 3 - Place several thick layers of newspaper under each bag. (the more, the better)

Step 4 - With a screwdriver or a fork punch several holes around the bottom perimeter of each bag. (to allow drainage)

Step 5 - In the first bag sprinkle 10-12 tomato seeds and cover these with a ¼ inch layer of potting soil.

Step 6 - In the second bag sow radish seeds over the entire surface of the bag and cover these with ¼ inch of potting soil.

Step 7 - In bag 3 carefully space 10 cucumber seeds on the soil surface and cover with ¼ inch of potting soil.

Step 8 - In bag 4 space 10 squash seed around the surface and cover with ¼ inch of potting soil.

Step 9 - Using a sprinkler can or a fine spray from a hose gently water each bag being careful to not wash the covering soil from the seeds.

You can place a small saucer or ashtray on the edge of the bag to measure the amount of water given. Spray until water is ¼ inch in depth.

The one vegetable I could not find in the seed rack of my local drug store was seed potatoes, and as I always look forward to freshly dug 'new' potatoes I was disappointed. Then it dawned on me that I could buy a few potatoes at the local grocery store and use these for seeds.

In the grocery store I selected six potatoes of the variety I prefer being careful to pick only those with several 'eyes' or buds breaking the surface of the potato.

Once at home I stored the potatoes in the refrigerator for 5 days to condition them. In my experience potatoes prefer cooler weather.

Step 10 - After 5 days of cooling I removed the potatoes and cut each into quarters carefully insuring that each quarter contained two or more 'eyes' or buds.

Step 11 - Selecting the potato quarters containing the most 'eyes' I inserted two quarters in each of the remaining 6 bags of soil and covered them with ¼ inch of potting soil and watered them to ¼ inch depth.

I now had my balcony garden planted. What remained was to wait for the seeds to sprout to a height of about 3 inches at which point I would need to thin out the radishes, cucumbers tomatoes and squash leaving only the healthiest, most vigorous plants.

Step 12 - The radishes would be thinned until there was two inches between each radish. This would leave about two dozen radishes in the 39-gallon bag. Leaving too many radishes would result in weak, thin and under developed radishes.

Step 13 - The cucumbers and squash plants would be thinned until only three plants, equally spaced were left in the 39-gallon bag.

Note: - If I had been willing to buy and fill additional bags with soil the squash and cucumber plants removed during thinning could have been transplanted into additional soil filled bags. Due to space limitations I settled for the ample production of three plants each.

The tomato plants were a different story. I planned to use every plant that germinated. This would however require an individual bag of soil for each plant saved. Originally I had filled six bags with soil reserved for tomatoes, but the last minute decision to use these bags for potatoes required me to purchase additional potting soil (3 20 pound bags) and fill an additional six bags as before.

Step 14 - Once the tomato seedlings reached a height of 4 inches I removed and transplanted six of the seven in individual bags and gently watered each.

Now it was time to watch my garden grow.

Using a sprinkler can I routinely watered each bag every other day and waited for blooms to appear.

Once fruit set on each of the plants I sprinkled a small quantity ( a handful) of balanced fertilizer (8-8-8) around each plant and watered heavily.

Within four weeks the potato plants had grown to a height of 4-6 inches and bright red radishes were breaking the surface. Shortly thereafter hardy yellow squash pods appeared where just days before beautiful yellow blooms had flourished. Pale green cucumbers followed the appearance of the squash.

Both the cucumber and squash plants produce tentacles which extend out from the plant some 3-4 feet. I had allowed room for this.

Within six weeks the potato plants had set blooms, the first sign that potatoes were forthcoming. After two additional weeks I lowered the side of the bag in which one potato plant was set and dug gently in the soil in search of tender, new potatoes and found several small, tender potatoes that I enjoy so much.

It was well into the eighth week before full sized tomatoes began to blush and gradually redden.

By the middle of July (I had planted in early April) I was enjoying fresh salads, which included home grown tomatoes (nothing is better), radishes, and cucumbers.

Dinner meals included tender new potatoes and tender yellow squash.

My little container grown garden flourished. I was home again.