This year, in early spring, our sunny balcony will have sweet peas, snow peas, and spinach. Come summer, we’ll be tending tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, perennials, and wildflowers.
We chose the vegetables simply by those that we like to eat. We chose the flowers hoping to attract hummingbirds and bees and other pollinators.
All of these vegetables and flowers are supposed to require full or part-sun conditions. They will be planted in City Picker and EarthBox container planters.
Here are the specific plants we will be planting this year (with the source and the number of days to harvest or bloom in parentheses):
March-May
- Peas, Oregon Sugar Pod (Ferry-Morse seeds, 60-65 days)
- Spinach, Teton (Ferry-Morse seeds, 48 days)
- Sweet Pea Flowers, Royal Family Mixed Colors (Ferry-Morse seeds, 65-90 days)
May-September
- Cucumber, Sugar Crunch (Burpee seeds, 57 days)
- Smaller size, thin-skin, high-yielding, slicing cucumbers.
- Sweet Pepper, Costa Rican (Burpee plant, 70 days)
- Prolific red-green peppers on sturdy plants.
- Sweet Pepper, Slovana (Burpee plant, 65-70 days)
- Compact plants with smaller size light green peppers.
- Sweet Pepper, Mama Mia Giallo (Burpee plant, 80 days)
- An early yellow-orange sweet pepper.
- Sweet Pepper, Thunderbolt (Burpee plant, 65-80 days)
- Large sturdy plants grow red-to-green long tapered peppers
- Sweet Pepper, Good as Gold (Burpee plant, 72 days)
- Green to gold sweet peppers
- Tomato, Sun Gold (Burpee plant, 65 days)
- Golden cherry tomatoes, indeterminate
- Tomato, Sweetheart of the Patio (Burpee plant, 68 days)
- Red cherry tomato for containers
- Agastache (Hummingbird Mint) cana Rosita (High Country Gardens plant)
- Raspberry pink flower spikes
- Lavandula (Lavender) agustifolia Vera (High Country Gardens plant)
- Lavender scented flower spikes on a cold-hardy plant
- Salvia Ultra Violet (High Country Gardens plant)
- Drought, cold, and heat tolerant with purple blossoms
- Stachys coccinea Mountain Red (High Country Gardens plant)
- Red trumpet shaped flowers, supposed to attract hummingbirds.
- Wildflower mix (Sierra Club seeds)
