Growing food in a small garden can produce a surprisingly big harvest, whether it’s on an urban balcony, in a tiny yard, or even on a countertop or windowsill. One of the tricky things to figure out is how to water a small balcony garden. Especially since a lot of balconies don't have access to hoses. Our simple solution is just to use a watering can that we fill from the kitchen sink or bathtub. But if we have to go away for more than a day, we set up a simple irrigation system. It is a little bit of work but we basically fill storage bins with water, and then we set up a little irrigation system we could online. There's a small battery powered pump with a timer, and two hoses attached. One hose pulls water from the storage bins, through the pump, and out the other hose, which branches off to up to 15 short hoses with stakes at the end, which are planted into the soil of each pot.
It took a little bit of trial and error to figure out how much water is pumped per minute, and how much water comes out of each stake in a minute. Then we were able to figure out how much water we needed to put in the bins, and how long we needed to run the pump for each day.
Another important consideration when setting up a system like this is to avoid syphoning which could use up all your water at once. So we make sure the first spike on every line is HIGHER than the water source to prevent syphoning.
It feels pretty special to learn and practice the timeless skill of growing your own food and to be able to eat fresh veggies right at home within seconds of picking them. You get to see the full life cycle of it, from seed to seedling, to harvesting and eating. And there’s something deeply comforting and reassuring when you know how to produce food for yourself.
It’s also just a great excuse to spend more time outside, and it gives you a deeper appreciation for all the work that goes into producing the food that we buy and eat every day. But gardening can be a bit intimidating, especially in a small space where you might have limitations on size, sunlight, rules, budget, or even just not knowing how to start.
We’ve been growing food on our urban balcony for the past 3 years and we’ve completely fallen in love with small space gardening. But it has been a steep learning curve and there has been a ton of work, research, and trial and error along the way.
We shared a full tour of our balcony container garden last year if you want to check it out:
https://youtu.be/Vx4UwjKCW5Q
Thanks for watching!
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CREDITS
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Music Credit: Exploring Alternatives
Editing Credit: Exploring Alternatives
Filming Credit: Exploring Alternatives
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