DYI Ideas

Making a balcony composter can be easy. Marco Pagliarulo offers the following guidelines to make one like that shown in “A Downtown, South-facing Balcony, 5th floor”. Marco developed this composter with some ideas he found on the web, adding his own modifications.

Materials:

  • A large planter about 45 cm diameter, with a tray to catch excess water
  • A pail about 27 cm diameter, at least 35 cm tall
  • Potting soil
  • A drill
  • A saw with a narrow blade

    • Instructions:

  1. Cut out the bottom of the pail using the drill and saw. Drill several holes (lots!) in the pail and lid.
  2. Cut a little trap door in the bottom of the planter (about 12 cm by 12 cm). This is for removing the finished or near-finished compost from the composter. You might need to use something to keep the trap door shut when not in use.
  3. Put 5 - 10 cm of soil in the bottom of the planter. Drop the pail into the centre of the planter. Fill the rest of the planter (around the pail) with soil up to near the top of the planter.
  4. For aesthetics, plant some small plants in the ring of soil that surrounds the pail. Also, keep the lid on the pail and perhaps place a smaller planter on top of it.
  5. To keep your balcony composter odour-free, stick to these general rules:
    - Do not throw any animal-derived products (meat, egg, dairy, fish...) or oily foods into your composter. Basically, keep it vegan and oil-free.
    - Cut food scraps into small pieces (generally no larger than the size of a quarter coin) to facilitate breakdown.
    - Every time you throw in food scraps, throw in the same volume of dried leaves, and stir everything deeply with a bamboo stick. The drilled holes help with passive aeration, but the stirring is important for aerating the bottom parts. Aerating keeps the composter breaking food down "aerobically", which doesn't smell.

Troubleshooting:

  • If your composter smells, it means that it might be too wet, or you're throwing in foods that shouldn't go in, or you're not aerating enough.
  • Fruit flies: After you add food scraps and dried leaves, and after aerating, sprinkle some sand or crumbled dried leaves on top of the compost before closing the lid.

Most of the excess liquid from the composter is absorbed by the surrounding soil in the planter. As the composter gets full, the pail can be lifted a bit higher out of the planter to allow for passive aeration through the drilled holes.

When your composter gets too full, start removing the finished or near-finished compost from the trap door. If the compost is not finished yet, you can leave it in a separate pail for a few months or give it to someone who can pile it in the corner of their garden.

You'll find that the volume of compost coming out of your composter is only a fraction of the volume of food you put in.

Have fun!


Mary Brittain from The Cottage Gardener suggests the following vegetables and herbs that grow well on balconies. The Cottage Gardener is an heirloom seedhouse and plant nursery in south-central Ontario - www.cottagegardener.com

Container balcony gardening is very different from regular gardening in a few key ways:

  • There is less soil available to the plants and less space for them to grow in. Plants only grow as large as their roots are allowed to spread. The larger the plant the more its roots need to spread. And you don't want your plants spreading all over your balcony.
  • It's a drier environment for the plants. The soil in containers dries out more quickly than in the ground since the walls of the container are exposed to air and light.
  • Balcony gardens tend to have windier environments. Often there is a lot of sun with little shade.
  • Also, since the balcony garden does not lend itself to overwintering herbs, best to stick with annual varieties.

So...plants that do better in containers on balconies tend to be those that have contained growth and those that can handle more adverse growing conditions.

Most herbs fit these criteria since they like loads of sun and are pretty drought-tolerant. Particular ones would include basil (all varieties), German Chamomile, cilantro, parsley, salad burnet, summer savoury, sweet marjoram and summer thyme.

Veggie varieties that are better candidates for containers include: bush beans (pole, if you can add poles); beets; Little Finger carrot; Little Fingers eggplant; most greens - lettuce, Dwarf Blue Curled Scotch Kale, mustard greens, cress, purslane, collards; onions; Dwarf Grey Sugar Pea; most peppers, although some, like Tollie's, Aurora and Nosegay are very small and can be grown in the smallest containers; Red Malabar spinach (if trellised). Galilee spinach; radishes; swiss chard; turnips; tomatoes – determinate* ones only, such as Black Sea Man, Red Burbank, Nebraska Wedding. (*Note: determinate tomatoes stop growing at about 3 feet; indeterminate tomatoes keep growing until they reach 6 feet or so and would be unwieldy for a balcony).

For vegetables, it is important to use the right-sized containers. Root crops like beets, carrots, radishes and turnips need deeper containers according to how deep the roots grow. Tomatoes grow larger than herbs so would need larger containers that hold more soil. This is because the larger the plant is, generally, the more nourishment it needs and, since it draws its nourishment from the soil, the more soil it needs to draw from.

 

By Steven Biggs

picture of seedlings

I can still picture my grandfather fetching a plastic washbasin from the laundry room. We were planting tomato seeds indoors—and didn’t have any trays or pots. It didn’t bother him. He added a few handfuls of potting soil to the basin, tore open the seed packet, casually sprinkled on some seeds, and encouraged me to sprinkle on a few more. We covered them with a bit of soil and were done, except for a label made from masking tape.

That memory conveys what I’d like to share: starting seeds indoors isn’t rocket science.

Let’s break down planting seeds into four simple steps:

1. Soil Meets Container
First of all, a quick note about soil...or lack of it. A soilless mix is a good choice for starting seeds. Such mixes, often made of peat moss, perlite, and vermiculite, are generally free from disease, and allow good movement of air and water around your seedling roots.

Lightly fill your container right to the top with your soilless mix, but don’t compact it. Don’t bother tamping with your hands or a flat object, which many books recommend as a way to remove air pockets. You’re just complicating things. Instead, simply give the filled container a couple hard knocks on the table. This will cause your soilless mix to subside—to sink a bit—leaving you room to add your seeds and some more mix.

2. Seeds Meet Soil
Don’t sweat the spacing of seeds, and definitely don’t buy any seed dispensing gadgets. Usually when we start seeds, it’s in a temporary home—somewhere they can germinate. So a bit more or less space between seeds simply affects how soon we need to transplant the seedling to a larger container.

Hand sprinkle (broadcast) the seeds from the packet onto the soil. Sometimes tapping the seed packet will dispense the seed uniformly. But not always...
If seeds are too small for hand sprinkling or dispensing from the packet, try this: Place seed in the fold of a piece of folded paper. Then, tap the paper or use a pointed object (a finishing nail works well) to move the seed from the paper onto the soil.

3. Covering Your Tracks
Now we cover the seeds with soilless mix (2-3 times the width of the seed.)
Some gardeners cover seeds with fine vermiculite or sand, which, with a finer texture, can be easier for germinating seeds to poke through. I find soilless mix works just fine and don’t bother with these additional supplies. At this point, tap your container again to remove air pockets. In most cases, very fine seed can be lightly pressed into the surface of the soilless mix instead of being covered.

4. Water, Cover, and Wait
Now it’s time to water, and you have choices. You can (1) use a watering can (gently, so as not to wash away seeds); or (2) water from the bottom by setting the container in a couple inches of water (the water will wick upwards) for a couple hours.

With seeds planted and watered, cover them to keep them moist. Use a plastic dome or clear plastic bag. Check daily for moisture and for germination. BE PATIENT. Germination takes anywhere from a couple days to almost a month, depending on what you’re growing and the temperature.

Steven Biggs is a Toronto horticulturist, journalist, and life-long vegetable gardener. Learn about growing edibles and sign up for his free e-zine, Homegrown in Toronto, at www.The-Locavores-Garden.com.