Balcony box and terrace cultivation course

Venla, the service and administration manager at Helsinki Adult Education Center, tests the college's courses and visited our Balcony Box and Terrace Cultivation course.

I am one of the thousands of city dwellers who dream of a lush and productive balcony, roof or terrace garden, growing boxes in parks and yards, and guerrilla farming in the nearby forest. Herbs, salads and tomatoes are collected from the urban dream balcony during the summer for cooking, and plump potatoes are lifted from the growing boxes at the end of the summer. In the best case, the harvest is still left in storage for autumn: the kitchen shelves are filled with pretty herb jars and the freezer is bulging with kale and strawberries collected from the balcony.

Feelings and experiences about urban farming

I know people from Helsinki who have succeeded flawlessly in urban farming, but I believe I speak for many when I admit that the production on my balcony remains quite symbolic, despite great enthusiasm and enterprise. Time, energy, ingenuity and memory do not want to bend to the demands of plants, and it is not possible to properly familiarize yourself with the instructions specific to each species. Aporia takes over the mind of a balcony grower, and the plants themselves do not give satisfactory answers about the reasons for their decline. It is easy to blame the balcony for the wrong direction of the wind, the weather or the neighbor who was responsible for watering. However, disappointments about aphid-ridden chilies, lettuce leaves that died from drought, fruitless tomato plants and thread-thin chive stems are forgotten during the long winter, and one always heads towards the new growing season with strong optimism.

This spring, there may be some reason for optimism, because after the Balcony and Terrace Cultivation course organized at the college in March, I was literally bursting with enthusiasm, and I can hardly wait for the moment when I can open the bags of soil I have been storing on the balcony again and scoop black soil into jars and boxes of different sizes.

“Horticulturalist Marko Ahola had arrived in Helsinki from Ostrobothnia on Tuesday evening to guide us bewildered city dwellers through the secrets of cultivation. During the lecture, a huge number of things were covered, from choosing a pot and pre-growing seedlings to the uses of different herbs and wintering plants. The guiding principle of the evening was that you can in principle grow any variety on your balcony and terrace, starting with fruit trees and berry bushes, as long as you ensure that you have sufficient nutrients, heat, light and moisture.”

Venla

Service and Administration Manager, Helsinki Adult Education Institute

Successes, failures and aha moments

With Ahola's guidance, we went through the most common plants suitable for balcony cultivation and the most important tips for their care. The course focused primarily on useful plants, which was an emphasis that I liked, at least for me. As the lesson progressed, the listeners also dared to tell about their own successes and failures and ask for tips for next summer. The pace of progress was brisk, but the thick paper towel distributed helped to recall the lessons later on. During the evening, I had several aha moments, starting with the fact that I had not understood the importance of fertilization at all before. The gardener advised fertilizing the plants every day if you want them to produce at least some kind of harvest. It is recommended to use liquid fertilizer mixed with irrigation water as fertilizer, but used coffee grounds are also suitable as a companion to irrigation water!

My thumb is already turning a little green!

I still have a long way to go to become self-sufficient, but I believe my own farming success will improve a bit next summer. I have also learned the hard way that the amount of light on my balcony is simply not enough for certain varieties, so I no longer try to force myself to grow heat-loving tomatoes, chilies and sunflowers on my shady and windy open balcony, but instead focus on herbs, cabbages and salads that thrive in partial shade.

Finally, a checklist of the things that became most important to me during the course:

• You can purchase seedlings directly from a garden store if you don't have enough time and patience to germinate the seeds.
• Accustom indoor seedlings to the outdoors gradually; the best success is achieved by increasing the time spent outdoors daily and initially bringing the plants indoors at night.
• Pots that do not have holes in the bottom should be perforated or, alternatively, provided with drainage. Small stones and pot fragments placed in the bottom will prevent water from accumulating and the roots from rotting.
• The best time to water plants is in the morning before 8 am or in the evening after 21 pm. Use standing water for watering! Water primarily into a saucer, which allows the plants to absorb the water more easily through their roots.
• Fertilization that, when used with irrigation, promotes flowering and crop formation
• Lettuce easily collects air pollution, so it should be placed on a slightly lower level on the balcony and other plants should be placed on the upper levels to protect the delicate lettuces.
• Tomatoes and cucumbers should preferably not be grown next to each other, as the tomato will make the cucumber wilt (the same goes for storing them in the kitchen!)
• Herbs and lettuce grow bushier the more you cut their growth.
• You can help plants pollinate by tapping their flowers with a pencil.

I wish my fellow farmers a bright spring and a green summer!

Text: Venla, Helsinki Adult Education Institute

Photos: Zoe Schaeffer and Jonathan Kemper, Unsplash