Raised bed on the balcony
The best tips and tricks
© Alison Hancock / Shutterstock
We also garden without a garden! Here you can find out what you should pay attention to with a raised bed on the balcony.
Cheers to the balcony bed!
Those who do not have a garden but have a balcony can just as easily go to the hobby gardener with a raised bed. Growing vegetables works great there too! If that’s not reason enough, here are even more advantages:
- You can make good use of your compost.
- Your plants get more light and heat.
- Snails have little chance of beating down on your vegetables.
- You save yourself the hassle of bending and kneeling on the floor.
- Less weeds, more yields – yes!
A raised bed is available in smaller versions so that you can easily find space on a balcony. You can choose between raised beds made of wood, metal, plastic or stone – and those who are talented can even build one themselves. The raised bed is ideally 80 or 90 cm high and has feet so that it is not too close to the ground and frost has no chance. A raised bed on castors could also be useful, so it can be moved quickly.
Even if you have a big balcony you should keep an eye on the load and do without a bed that is too big! We explain here what you should fill and plant in the raised bed.
Fill the raised bed on the balcony correctly
For the optimal growing conditions this will be Raised bed layered in four layers (from bottom to top):
- Drainage: pruning, e.g. B. branches and twigs
- Filling layer of foliage
- Compost layer with half-ripe compost, straw or animal litter
- Plant layer: Plant substrate
A loft bed on the balcony won’t be as deep as one in a large garden. The bottom two layers can be a bit thickerthan the top two. However, the substrate should not be scattered too thinly so that the plants get enough nutrients.
It is ideal to be filled in autumn, the lower layers rot over the winter, which means that the bed sinks. That way the plants would also sink in, but not all of them can take it! But spring can still be used for filling.
Over the years, the loft bed will continue to sink in, but you can make up for this by filling it up with compost. The raised bed is renewed every four to five years.
Plant the bed
If you now think that you are simply planting a huge amount of radishes because you love to eat them, now comes the disappointment: Even with a raised bed, the crop rotation should be adhered to, i.e. plant high-consumption in the first year, medium-consumption in the second and low-consumption in the third ( then the radishes finally come into play!).
A selection of suitable heavy consumers
Heavily consuming plants need a lot of water!
A seed kit with 16 types of vegetables can be found here.
Suitable middle eaters
Possible weak consumers for your raised bed
Tip: You should know this about planting radishes, planting herbs and planting garlic.
There’s a seed kit here with ten different herbs.
Flowers in the raised bed
Growing vegetables is just one way of doing things, of course, planting flowers is the same.
- Heavy consumers are z. B. sunflowers, Tulips or chrysanthemums
- Central consumption z. B. Dahlias or snapdragons
- Weak consumers such as Azaleas or begonias
You can be sure of a colorful feast for the eyes on your balcony ?.
You can find even more suggestions on how you can design your balcony, information about balcony coverings or what a worm box actually is and does here.
In the BRIGITTE Community you can exchange ideas on the topic of plants.