6 organic tips for the balcony garden
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Modern city gardeners want to harvest healthy, uncontaminated fruit and herbs and therefore avoid chemicals. With these tips you too can become an organic gardener in your balcony garden.
More and more people want to cultivate their own balcony garden sustainably.
Because: Organic gardening is good for the city climate and biodiversity, saves our wallets and improves our ecological footprint.
We have put together the six most important tips on organic balcony gardens for you.
1. buy high-quality soil for your balcony garden
It is better to spend a little more money on your potting soil and buy peat-free soil in organic quality.
Cheaper soil is often not structurally stable and sometimes even contaminated with unwanted foreign bodies such as glass, stones or plastic residues as well as heavy metals.
For climate protection reasons, peat should be avoided as far as possible.
By the way, the absence of peat must be declared on the packaging,
but this is not yet a matter of course even with organic soils.
A special, low-nutrient growing soil is recommended for cultivation or herb growing.
If you have used good potting soil in your balcony garden,
you do not have to completely replace it in the planters at the beginning of the season every year.
It is often sufficient to remove the top layer from the pots and refill with fresh soil.
The old potting soil can still be used for modest summer flowers, as long as it is not just dense root network.
Simply mix it 1:1 with new substrate and pep it up with compost, worm humus, bokashi (fermented organic waste), horn shavings, horn meal, horn semolina or soil activators.
2. produce your own fertilizer
A practical natural cycle begins with the placement of a worm box directly in the kitchen or on the balcony.
Leftovers left over from cleaning vegetables can be disposed of directly in it.
Thousands of earthworms in combination with millions of microorganisms transform this organic waste into valuable worm compost with which you can fertilize all year round.
In addition, worm boxes are very easy to maintain and can be stored even in small rooms.
And the best thing is: Worm boxes do not stink! Instead, they exude a very pleasant forest smell.
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worm worlds.com The worm humus has a dark color and smells earthy. With its balanced nutrient ratio it is considered one of the best organic fertilizers. It should be stored moist and dark after harvest and consumed after six months at the latest. |
3. use planters made of natural materials
Plastic is undoubtedly a practical material - but for reasons of nature conservation and waste avoidance, you should still avoid using it, as only a relatively small proportion of plastic waste is still recycled.
For our grandparents, planters made of baked clay, galvanized steel or hardwood were still taken for granted.
These alternatives are still available today, even though they are perhaps somewhat more expensive, heavier and more unwieldy than plastic containers.
If you still want to use plastic pots, you should prefer products made of recycled material.
4. buy seeds and plants from organic farming
The typical organic gardener also dispenses with chemicals when growing his plants.
Meanwhile there is a wide range of vegetable and fruit varieties that come from organic farming - not only seeds but also young plants.
If you are looking for something special for your balcony garden, you should look out for old, seed-solid varieties.
They may not quite match the modern F1 varieties in yield and also in flowering,
but they are often more robust than these and optimally adapted to the climate if they come from the region.
It is also important to promote the diversity of varieties, because many old country varieties, especially in vegetables, are now threatened with extinction.
You can find what you are looking for at plant markets, seed festivals, exchange markets on the Internet and from specialized seed suppliers.
5. flowering variety in the balcony garden
Don't just plant geraniums and strawberries, but ensure that your balcony garden is planted with a variety of species.
Mixed cultures have the advantage that your plants are more robust and less susceptible to diseases and pests.
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MSG/Leonie Pricking The flowers of the chives are also very popular with bees |
If you want to offer insects a source of food, you can create a flowering wildflower box.
Of course, cultivated varieties can be just as attractive plants as the wild species - but "open", i.e.
unfilled flowers are important so that the insects can get good access to the nectar and the plants can also provide them with pollen.
You should also ensure that your balcony garden is in bloom throughout the entire season.
For example, plant bulbs in autumn so that insects such as wild bees can find food in early spring.
6. so the balcony garden becomes even more animal-friendly
Do not cut off the plants in autumn, as they form winter quarters for insects.
On such "untidy", not over-cared-for balconies, birds will gladly stop by and pick out seeds.
Be confident that if aphids are infested, after some time the so-called beneficial insects such as ladybugs and lacewings will appear and decimate the aphid colonies.
With an insect hotel on your balcony you can ensure that the beneficial insects find a suitable winter home and are also directly on site in spring.
The only important thing is that you hang it up in a sunny, rain-protected place.
Also provide suitable food and a water bowl for birds - even outside the winter months.
And: Stick so-called Bird Tape on your window panes, so that the reflecting glass surfaces do not become a deadly danger for the birds.
These are adhesive strips with which the panes become visible to your feathered friends.
They should not be more than ten centimeters apart.
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