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You are here: Home / Garden Tours / Garden Tour: Marcelle’s bountiful balcony

Garden Tour: Marcelle’s bountiful balcony

October 24, 2008 by Andrea Bellamy 6 Comments

The Basics

Gardener: Marcelle Stone
Location: Spokane, WA, United States
Size: Edges of an 8 foot-by-12-foot balcony (tried to keep the weight over support posts)
Orientation: West-ish
Zone: 5b
Years gardened: Three
Style: Let’s see what we can grow in a pot.

The Details

Inspiration: British window boxes
Favourite element: End-of-summer overgrowth
Favourite plants:
Herbs: Lemon balm, parsley, mint, cilantro
Biggest challenge: Weight: This is a balcony garden. Aphids also figured–let’s say prominently–this year. Many thanks to Warren Wessels for his help on this, and all, fronts.
Biggest save: Free bee-and-frog visits: The frog eats bugs, the bees pollinate. How the frog found the garden/climbed up to it is a mystery.
Biggest splurge: Not-really-necessary Wellington garden boots.
Advice for others: Start somewhere: There is a lot of information out there and it can seem daunting (there seem to be a lot of ways to do things wrong). Let the plants surprise you with how hardy they can be. Expect to make some mistakes but count on a lot of pleasant surprises.

Herbs such as mint, cilantro and parsley mingle with nemesia and cucumber.

Marcelle mixes ornamental with edible for a lush effect – while restricting the weight to the edges of her balcony.

Yes, you can grow carrots in containers. These look like ‘Thumbelina’ to me.

Peppers and nasturtiums are obviously thriving on this sunny deck.

See more photos of Marcelle’s balcony here. Thanks Marcelle for sharing your garden with us!

The Heavy Petal Garden Tour is on a roll! I’d love to post a new garden every Friday, but I need your submissions. Want to join the fun? Find out how!

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Filed Under: Garden Tours, Veggies & Edibles Tagged With: balcony garden, garden tour, gardening, spokane, vegetable, washington

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Laurel says

    October 25, 2008 at 8:02 am

    Beautiful! Proof that container gardening on a tiny balcony can work :)

  2. kate says

    October 25, 2008 at 8:49 pm

    What a beautiful balcony garden Marcelle has. I like the mixture of flowers with herbs and veggies.

  3. Lindsay says

    October 27, 2008 at 4:53 pm

    Nice container garden! I was interested in the aphids comment – how did you control them? I had awful aphids this year. I know the nasturtiums are there to absorb the aphid influx, but I like to eat mine, and it was impossible, especially since I had to constantly spray them with soap. Any ideas? Great post.

  4. Marcelle says

    October 28, 2008 at 2:05 pm

    Andrea: You are right indeed. The carrots are Thumbelina.

    Laurel and Kate: You are most kind! You brought a smile with your comments.

    Lindsay: The short answer is that I sacrificed a sweet pea plant (aphids loved it, and they left my tomato plants alone). I hand-picked the aphids off the plants every night (possible because my garden is so small)to keep their population down.

    I grabbed any ladybugs (ladybird beetles) I saw and put them on the aphid-infected plants as well (some sources say ladybugs eat aphids). I wouldn’t say that I had this down to a science. It was mostly “read around and try it.”

    :)

  5. Andrea Bellamy says

    October 29, 2008 at 4:35 pm

    Lindsay – I can definitely commiserate on the aphid front. I’ve been battling them on my euphorbias for the past three springs and finally decided to pull them out. I’ll have to see if I have the same problem next year now the euphorbias are gone.

    I’ve tried the nasturtium thing (I called them “sacrificial nasturtiums”) but found they just attracted the black aphids rather than lure away the green ones that were my original problem. I also have done the ladybug thing, which worked wonderfully but was quite expensive ($15 for one small bed). I think other than supporting healthy plants through creating healthy soil the best treatment for aphids is still the soap-and-water approach. Tedious, but it works. Although I sympathize – I wouldn’t want to eat soap-laden blooms either!

  6. tina says

    October 31, 2008 at 11:47 am

    Those carrots look great! And in a pot? I can’t even grow them in the ground:(

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