I tried to make the best out of limited balcony space this summer and have been pretty happy with how some things have turned out.


The pots that line the railing are peppers (poblanos, serranos and jalepenos) in the biggest on the left and tomatoes down the right (hillbilly, green zebra, cherokee purple, black prince, green grape and 'jenny tomato'). The hanging basket has a lemon cucumber and the rack on the far left has assorted herbs, a strawberry and some key lime seedlings.Those tomatoes have grown another foot or two in the past couple weeks since I took these pictures.



Believe it or not there are 12 young citrus trees on that table there.

Front line along the railing (left to right): persian lime, sunquat, limequat, another persian lime and a meyer lemon on the far right.

Middle 3 (left to right): ujukitsu, gold nugget mandarin and you can just barely see a tiny sanguinelli blood orange

Back line closest to the viewer (left to right): another gold nugget mandarin, tango mandarin, variegated calamondin (blocking out the sanguinelli in front of it) and the big one on the back right is a eureka lemon.


On the ground there are some more jalepenos in the baby blue pot and 5 or 6 kinds of basil in the rectangular pot next to it. The big round pot in back of the basil has sugar snap peas and green beans growing in it and the smaller pot to it's left in the corner is a small blueberry bush. The rack on the right (starting on the very top) has a weeping/basket orange bell pepper in the round pot and another strawberry to it's right (you can barely see some of it's leaves at the very right of the picture). The shelf below it has various herbs in the small pots and another lemon cucumber in the bigger rectangular pot. The shelf below that one has some tomato seedlings in the clear plastic container and several types of peppers in the rectangular pot to it's right (bananas and mini bells). The bottom shlelf has some flowering herbs in the small round containers (chamomile and lavendar) and the rectangular pot to it's right has more jalepenos and another weeping orange bell pepper.

Do not let a lack of space get you down.

Anyone else have limited space? Got any good ideas on how to maximize space?

Joe

Joe, I have a similar space problem although not so extreme. I have a ground-level patio garden as well as a 2nd-story balcony. The patio gets sun morning-noon, but is open to predators (squirrels, possums). The balcony is hotter than Hades in the afternoon but predator free.

I do have one ~espaliered navel orange tree in the ground. It's not looking its best right now but I'm working on that.


Here are my container citrus (Meyer lemon, baby flying dragons, yuzu):


Since both the patio and balcony have opaque fences/walls around them, I have shelves to raise the trees above the shadows. 90% of my stuff is in containers and I have an automatic drip system in the patio area, mostly servicing my flowering fruit-tree bonsai starters.


The f-ing squirrels like to dig up my potted plants so I have constructed armor for the most popular targets:


In the winter, when the balcony has a nice climate, I grow South African flower bulbs up there - they are prone to being eaten by varmints. Fortunately they are dormant in the summer so I just hide the pots under the shelves then.


My cat likes to hang out up there and watch the world go by. He's not allowed outside without an escort so it's the best he can do.

Fofoca, I love your set up! That espaliered navel orange is really something! I cannot wait to have a backyard!

Hopefully it will be a little bit bigger than mine!

I was just sitting here online on my day off and realized that there is a crew of guys outside trimming back all of the trees in front of my balcony! My balcony faces directly east and there are two decent sized trees that cut out some sunlight in the morning but for the most part the sun rises directly between the two. It is quite a bit brighter now which is GREAT news for all of my plants! What a good day I'll have to take some new pictures soon and post them. The original pictures posted are over a month old and kind of hard to tell what's what because of all of the trees in the background.

Joe

How nice of the gardeners to be thinking of you! Keep an eye out in case anything gets burned from the sudden increase in sun though.

Good thinkin Fofoca, I'll make it a point to keep an eye on that. Luckily it will not really increase the direct light much (I think) but the indirect light differance is definately noticable (at least from what I've noticed here in the second half of the day)! They really cut back the trees quite a bit and actually took a couple out from what it looks like. The two trees that are to the right and left of my balcony probably had half of their foliage removed.

Joe