Choosing the right seeds for your balcony

Seedy Saturday is coming up and it’s that time of year to get ready for gardening, if you haven’t started already!

Some seeds should be planted indoors in March so your seedlings are ready by the time the weather warms up enough to plant them outside.

But what if you can’t decide what to grow, and don’t know where to start?!
Here are some pro tips for choosing container garden seeds.

If you’ve never gardened before and find this post has too much information for you, then check out balcony gardening for beginners with just 5 easy plants to get you started.

Why grow from seed?

• For the joy of witnessing a seed germinate… and the reward of watching it grow as you take care of it

• Grow foods you might not be able to find as plants/seedlings … heirloom seeds are amazingly diverse!

• You decide exactly the amount and varieties of the plants in your garden

• Be more connected to your garden and be part of a most beautiful process!

• Growing from seed might inspire you to save seeds and help preserve rare or endagered plant varieties

• If we take care of the seeds, the seeds will take care of us.

Pro-tips: choosing seeds for your balcony

Here are some quick tips to help narrow down which seeds to grow in your balcony!

I’ve included specific suggestions for seed varieties, but keep in mind that there are many, many varieties and lots of seed sources to choose from! I encourage you to find your own favourites and try lots of crops that aren’t on this list.

• Local seed suppliers are best: locally grown seed is best adapted to the local climate and micro-climate.

• Remember, open-pollinated (not hybrid) seed varieties will “breed true” meaning that they’re best for seed saving.

• I always recommend organic seed sources: they’re healthier for us, for the environment, and for the seeds!

Always keep in mind the growing conditions in your garden (such as sun or shade) - and then these tips will point you towards the right seeds to grow in containers!

Note - tomatoes and chilis grow best with LOTS of sun! And eggplants MUST have full sun and heat to be worthwhile garden choices…. while salad greens like lettuce and spinach do best in cooler weather and shadier spaces.

1. Look for small varieties (value in space)

Most vegetables have a smaller version of themselves… carrots, for instance: not all carrots are long and thin (requiring deeper pots). The carrots on this list are small and round, best suited to producing well in containers.

When looking through seed catalogues keep an eye out for seed varieties that include “mini”, “patio”, “dwarf” or “compact” in their name.

Basil: Dwarf Greek, Emily, Fino Verde, Globette, Spicy Globe

Carrots: Oxheart, Paris Market Atlas, Parisienne, Thumbelina

Dill: Fernleaf, Ella

Kale: Dwarf Blue Curled Scotch Kale, Dwarf Siberian

Lettuce: Babmi, Breen, Dragoon, Little Gem, Oscarde, Pomegranate Crunch, Newham, Pandero, Spretnak, Tennis Ball, Tin Tin, Tendita, Tom Thumb, Truchas

Beans: Bush beans for most compact plants
(Climbing beans for using the vertical space)

Eggplant: Little Fingers, Shooting star, Japanese White Egg, any of the eggplants with smaller “fingers” fruits.

Marigold: French types, gem marigolds, Brocade, Gypsy Sunshine, Lemon Drop, Queen Sofia

Nasturtium: Dwarf Jewel Mix

Onion: all kinds of scallions or bunching onions, Egyptian Walking Onion, Pompeii, Purplette

Radish: Cherrybelle, Easter Egg, Rivoli

Sunflower: Big Smile, Dwarf Sunspot, Gold Coin, Teddy bear, Suntastic

Turnip: salad turnips, Tokyo market turnip

Hot pepper: Aurora, Nosegay. Hot peppers generally produce well in containers and there are so many beautiful chilis to plant!

Sweet pepper: Doe Hill, Hungarian Cheese, Little Bells

Cherry tomatoes: all Cherry tomatoes tend to produce better in containers than those with larger fruits. Most of them are tall vines that need vertical support to grow.

Bush tomatoes: Brookpact, Czech bush, Mountain Princess, Baxter's Bush, Ana Aasa. Bush varieties are especially good for high winds.

Mini tomatoes: Baby, Bogus Fructa, Hahms Gelbe Topftomate, Orange Hat, Micro Tom, Patio, Red Robin, Tiny Tim, Whippersnapper, Yellow Dwarf … and many, many more!

2. Look for short-season crops (value in time)

Since space is so limited in containers, think about maximizing your harvest in TIME! The shorter time a crop takes to produce, the sooner you can eat from it, replant and eat again! This is called succession planting.

Baby greens are one of the quickest harvests - lots of the salads listed here will be ready to harvest as baby greens in about 30 days (like chard, lettuce and kale). I love picking some of what I plant when they’re baby greens and then leaving the rest with more space so they can continue to grow to full size.

Here are some of the faster-growing crops for balcony planting. These will all grow in sun or partial shade; the leafier crops being good choices for more shade. But even North-facing balconies with only a bit of direct sun are able to produce some beans!

Amaranth 40 days

Arugula 35 days

Bush beans 45-50 days

Beets 55-60 days

Chard 50-60 days

Cilantro 55 days (leaf)

Dandelion 50 days

Dill 45 days

Fennel 50-60 days (leaf)

Fenugreek leaf 30 days

Kale 55-60 days

Lambsquarters 60 days

Lettuce 50 days

Mizuna 40 days

Mustard 40-55 days (leaf)

Orach 40 days

Radish 30 days

Salad turnips 35-40 days

Sorrel (sour leaf) 60 days

Spinach 40-55 days

The number of days listed above, called DTM (Days To Maturity) is a guideline for how long it takes from planting to harvest. Remember that growth will slow down in colder weather.

Speaking of cold weather: sometime in April before it’s even warm enough to work the soil, I like to sprinkle some seeds outside for cool-weather leafy greens (like lettuce, spinach, dandelion, mizuna, mustard or dill). These will grow very slowly at first, but just let the rain and the time do their thing, and then enjoy some spring salads in late May and June. This early seeding, no-maintenance approach works best for balconies that are uncovered and open to getting rained on! And cool weather is a great time to sow lettuce and spinach which don’t grow so well in heat.

Seedy Saturday is going virtual this year!

My favourite place to get seeds and learn from other gardeners!

Coming up on February 27th… click on the picture to check out Toronto Seedy Saturday!

This year, all of the separate GTA events have banded together to offer ONE joint event with workshops, seed vendors, exhibitors and MORE.

Lots of local seed exchanges are being organized on a small scale that will be covid-safe, so you will have a chance to trade the seeds you have already collected, and request seeds for trade!

Source: Seeds of Diversity’s “How to Save Your Own Seeds” available at https://seeds.ca/sw8/web/books

What about last year’s seeds…?

Before you buy new ones, first grow the seeds you already have!

Did you seed-save last year, or have extra seeds in packets you have? Most seeds will last for more than a year, so don’t throw away that old seed! Some seed lasts for a long time, like tomato seed, which can be good for more than 10 years!

You can trade seeds at local Seed Exchanges! Find out about them at Seedy Saturday.

If you find old seeds around, and aren’t sure if they’re still viable (able to grow) try a germination test: put 10 seeds in a wet paper towel and keep them inside a plastic bag in a warm place for a few days or a week. See how many germinate! If it’s 1 in 10, that’s a 10% germination rate. Now you can still sow your old seeds, but use 10 times more than you need, knowing that they won’t all grow!

Orach: a seed for container growing

If you’re unfamiliar with orach here is your chance to learn all about it! It’s a short season crop (it grows fast!), giving you that value in time, and is also a small plant for that value in space. It comes in 4 different colours and is one of the first plants to come up in spring. Best of all, once seeded it grows by itself!

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