While you may rejoice at the onset of summer, your herb garden or the plants and flowers on your balcony will not. They will love the sun in the early hours of the day and they may even appreciate the breeze, but they will face many challenges which you need to prepare them for. A balcony or a hanging garden is not the ideal setting for our green friends so they need special care, especially through the scorching months.
Here are some tips to bear in mind to prepare your small garden using the available space of your balcony.
• Buy herbs and plants that are suited for the environment, the local weather conditions. Be sure of how many you want, buy the pots accordingly and also get the potting mix of the quantity you would use. Too much leftover would be a waste and it will have to be stored there in the garden itself, thus eating away the available space.
• Try to not let your plants or herbs to be clustered together – but not too far. The more distant they are, the more exposed they would be to the sun. Also, placing herbs or plants close enough, say in an alignment of half a foot from one another, will contain the humidity at that place. This will help them grow. Direct exposure to the sun will rob the plants of moisture.
• Always pick herbs that are suitable to be grown in pots, window box, buckets or troughs. You can be as creative as you can but do not let them suffocate due to lack of space. If the roots cannot grow, then the plants will suffer. If the stems are too exposed, then they will lead to root rot. If the leaves don’t have enough exposure to wind and the sun, then they will not be as healthy as they should be. But you cannot have them completely vulnerable to strong winds if you live somewhere that is prone to storms.
• Have a watering schedule. You may water all the plans, just adequately, every morning or split it between early morning and noon. Do not unnecessarily water your plants in the evening and night. The plants need water through the day, which is when it would absorb the most. Dehydrated plants can do little with the water when it is made available at night. The damage is done.
• Choose the best herbs or plants to begin with. Go for garlic chives, coriander, opal basil, rocket, common mint and rosemary among a few others.
