Advice on Balcony Plants

Hi All,
This is my first post here...I come from the birding forum.

I could use some help with my second floor balcony. I would like to hang planters off the railings and plant something that will grow up a little, but also hang down in a sort of screening effect to provide privacy.

I live on Long Island, NY. My balcony faces west and gets intense afternoon sun. I would prefer not to attract bees since I have a slight problem with that already. Also, something hardy since I'm not home a lot.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. And thanks in advance!!

Dianne, Long Island, NY
www.libirding.com

Ivies will hang down, and vinca ivy will do so the farthest in the shortest time. However, they won't really grow 'up' much (especially not vinca), and while they are pretty tough, not much survives totally drying out in a container. Just how much are you home? Most containers need watering every day. If you're gone for weeks at a time, you can forget growing anything, unless you also get some kind of automatic drip or wick watering system.

Sahoyaref - if you mulch your pots and add some moisture-retaining crystals (eg., "Soil Moist"), you won't have to "water everyday". I never watered all my hundred or so plants (which includes shrubs and perennials) every day and the only ones that might have needed close to that were some Moonflowers that I had growing out of a 6" pot and then, only when we had a heatwave with temps in the mid-upper 90░ F (>30░ C) or higher. LOL

Mulching DOES make a big difference.

I read in another post recently about putting clean disposable baby diapers into the bottom of the pots on the balcony to retain the water. Apparently they have similar polymers to the crystals. But this is getting off the subject.

I love sedums and lots of them will hang down nicely and don't need much water. There are a lot of different kind and bloom colors too. You can put them with the ones that get tall, also, together, and it looks nice. If you want little care and watering, stick to the succulents.

Hi Dianne,

I'm visiting here from the Hummingbird Forum. Since I have a balcony, too, I thought this would be an interesting place to look around. :o)

Like yours, my apartment has a second-floor, west-facing balcony. For the past three summers, I've hung 4 large baskets, each container including a single, flowering "central" plant and 2 vinca vines. The vinca vine grows fairly rapidly, eventually touching the balcony floor or beyond. It does add a touch of privacy, but isn't a total screen. However, it's enough for me.

If more privacy, bright sun, and/or intense heat is a concern, you could consider doing what some of my neighbors have done and hang a roll-up bamboo screen (or something similar). Don't forget to clear this with your apartment office first. Some of them frown on any "additions" the residents wish to put up.

Here's the type of screen my neighbors use, although in this picture it's hung indoors rather than out:

If you desire plants only, be sure to buy hanging plants and set out a number of large containers with flowering annuals that grow fairly high. I keep geraniums, salvia, fuschia, and others in pots. (And, yes, I do get hummingbirds up here!)

Good luck!

Katy

mmm... interesting subject. my S balcony is in beton and it became a real furnace last year. I was thinking about growing some thick hanging plants on the outside to keep it as cool as possible. I am neither terribly fond of ivy, nor of what in italy is called "american vine" (a strong climber that gets very red in fall, maybe it's your "vinca vine"). any other suggestion? maybe some evergreen (not to bother my lower neighbours too much with fallen leaves)? something very heat resistant but nice... maybe even flowering??? (has anybody used clematis for such a purpose?) am I asking too much ? ah, I was forgetting: the building office doesn't like trellis or anything hanging outside, except plants, so it should be pretty strong by itself... uhmmm, it sounds a "mission: impossible" thing, I know :-(((

Trilli - I think the vine that gets red in fall is the "Boston Ivy" (it also loses its leaves) or possibly "Virginia Creeper".

I think clematis would be great for some hot locations, as long as you keep the roots cool. I have seen many pictures of clematises in Europe that are trained on a trellis attached to a white wall and they seem to do just fine. The type they use is usually the "group 1" or "group 2", which bloom mostly on old wood, so the vine itself becomes a "trunk" with branches (they are pruned to shape only and not cut down to the ground each year like "group 3").

thank you jenny, I will try ! I already love clematis (I have tried with a couple of "group 2" on a wall and the result is very satisfying). With your encouragement I want to see what it will be like, hanging down rather than climbing up.

Year after year I tried growing all kinds of plants that one would normally find in Danish gardens on my south-west facing balcony. Without much luck. -The problem was that I used the normal kind of hangers, which don't have enough room for soil (and I therefore had to water at least twice a day). Instead I've started using self-watering pots, containing 10-20 liters of soil and a couple of liters of water. Buy white ones, as colours absorb the rays from the sun, heats the soil, and end up killing your plants. With these containers my problems are over. In one of the pots I've planted a clematis. The first one died. Most clamatis likes sun on the leaves and the root in shadow. To mimmick this I've planted one in normal soil, and put 10 centimeters of bark-chunks on top. This keeps the soil moist during the summer and helps keeping the temperature even during the winter. I've given it a tower to climb on, and from there it's spreading its vines onto the rail, sceening the other plants a bit. In the other pots I've had succes with paeonies, verbascum and liatris spicata.

VGtar - it is possible that the clematis that you thought died, was not dead at all. Sometimes they will wilt and appear dead, and then the next year, they will sprout and grow like crazy.

Glad to see that your newer one is doing well. :-)

jenny - You had me going there for a few seconds. -Could I have thrown out a perfectly healthy plant? - As I had bought the plant in summer, the following spring it was dead. The variety was Clematis Montana rubens. In may they get lots'n'lot's of pretty pale pink flowers on "old wood" e.g. stems that were developed the previous summer.
If anyone is thinking of growing this Clematis on a balcony, they should give it a pruning after flowering, (maybe leaving one or two stems to grow on the rail) otherwise it might soon grow too big (in a garden they can grow to be twelve meters!).

Yes - you could have had a perfectly healthy plant. Except that it was busy growing roots first rather than producing vines above the soil, and might have come alive the following year. When they do that, many people think they have died (but they haven't). I have read many many posts on the Clematis Forum about these vines doing that. And when they did finally sprout, they grew almost out of control. ;-)

So I would say - give the clematis at least 2 years before giving up.

Jenny - Oh no, say it isn't so, I would hate to have thrown away a perfectly healthy and (for my budget) expencive plant. Allthough I think it would get to big for my tiny (2,5 m^2) balcony in a nearby future (the new one is not nearly as wild). Finding gardenweb, has given me SO much inspiration, and I think I'll start filling the whole thing up, with as many plants as I can get my hands on. I have an old aquarium that I think will make a nice little greenhouse to give a head start for some annuals next spring. Seeing, that plants on a balcony don't just have to be plants on a balcony, but can actually become a little world of their own, I think, is going to have a huge impact on how I spend my time and money in the future. Buy the way, I have to tell you (as everyone else) that I LOVE your garden, Jenny. I would love to become as good at this, as you are.

Got into a little side track there. Wanted to say, that I gave my mother some seeds this spring, I took them before it (maybe) died. However I just couldn't find them last year, but now I did, and maybe she will get something out of them even though they are a bit old. Then the money for the plant haven't been a total waste, after all.

Don't worry Jesper - all of us have had to through growing pains learning how to deal with our plants. I had 2 clematis back when I first moved here 10 years ago and thought both had certainly died - and one I hadn't even had chance to put in a new pot and it sat out in its tiny pot all winter with no water and in a corner. Imagine my surprise when I was about to throw it out and it sprouted. I kept it in its little pot (while I was still in shock), gave it some water, and it actually bloomed. LOL At the end of the summer, I was too busy and never got it repotted and had no place to really put it at the time and gave up, determined to try again later. The result later was a plant that is now 4 years old and looked like this last year:

There are 2 in the same container - a new one that I bought last year which bloomed like this:

This spring, the new one tried to sprout a little and stopped. I have left the stems expecting that it will sprout either later this year or next year since it was a tiny baby when I planted it.

Don't worry though - if you hang around here long enough, you won't be able to walk along your balcony! LOL

Jenny, what are you supporting your clematis on to get such a nice mounded look?

PV - it was on a dead japanese maple. This is what it looked like its very first year when I planted it back in 2001:

The maple had some very weepy branches and I trained the vines along those branches. This past winter, the trunk of the maple finally separated away from its graft and fell over. LOL I am now using an old tomato cage to train it on. It looks like this today:

The flowering parts of the vine are now forming at the very top and I will try to feed them around the front as they get longer. I noticed that since it has started forming flower buds, its vine growth has slowed quite a bit. Poor thing has to try to reach out above the thing across from it, which has suddenly added a foot of new growth for some reason (yes, my lilac... LOL - the clematis is sortof visible to the far left edge of the photo):

I remember the dead japanese maple! My second year jackmanii is flowering like mad; I was supposed to re-pot it this year, but never got the chance. Seems like I looked out there one day and it had grown a foot. So it's climbing two 2-ft. stakes and one 4-ft stake at present. Don't like it's shape, so I'll try and train it next year.

On a kinda side note: a friend gave me a root of "The President" this year. It was growing really well and even had a bud, until my resident pigeon daddy decided he wanted the leaves for his nest. He left me with about 6" of injured, leafless stem.

But that little thing is starting to grow again! Amazing! I don't know if I'll see a flower, but at least it's still alive.

Question - do you think I could grow both of them in, say, a 14"- 16" pot?

What's with the lilac? You're gonna have to hang the clematis from the ceiling or something .....

Japanese maple, that is so funny... don't get me wrong, it's tragic it died of course. What killed it?? -The wind?? Hope I'll have more luck with it than you did.
You see the reason I think it's funny is I've decided to try one myself. Any advice? I had decided to go to a gardening center saturday to get one, but something came up. -Now I'm going to go tomorrow instead. I just love those itzy-bitzy read leavez. If it doesn't work, I can allways use it as a trellis like yours.
PS. I HOPE I'll get a balcony filled with so many plants that I can barely open the door. That's the plan anyway. The balcony has allways been really minimalistic, but since I allways sit by the window/door rather than ON the balcony, I've decided to make the hole thing into a GARDEN rather than a balcony with a chair and a few half-dead plants.

PV - I know what you mean about the pidgeons using your balcony for "building supplies". Note that you, like I, have become the pidgeon "Home Depot". LOL I caught one (I have a feeling it was one of my "babies" from 2 years ago) getting nesting material from my ledge (some pine needles since I use them to mulch some things).

I think with the clematises that you have, 1 per that size container would probably be best. As it is, mine is in a 21". LOL

And that James McFarlane lilac is supposed to be able to grow 8ft - 12ft (or probably more), so I guess it wants to get to that height. It's already about 5ft tall with that sudden surge of growth. But I expect that it would run out of soil before then... although it wouldn't surprise me that its roots have gone down through the container's soil shelf holes and are heading for the resevoir below. LOL

VGtar - I bought that tree back in I think, 1999. I had it on the sunny but exposed part of my balcony and that winter was a bit brutal wind-wise (and it most likely hadn't established well enough). It then got a late frost and the leaves that were just sprouting got blasted back. It never leafed out that year. The next year, it started sprouting from the graft below the soil and that was the end of that for the top. The little sprouts (which had small leaves but not as cutleaf as the top) hung on for a couple years and finally went bye bye 2 years ago. Meanwhile, I put the clematis in there and it has pretty much taken over.

And if you want a completely FULL balcony like so many of us who post here have, just hang around here for a little while. It won't take long! LOL

Hi Guys!
I'm in here for a quick dash, so many forums I have yet to discover.
I saw Jenny's posting regarding 'soil moist' and felt compelled to add my bit to it.
I found this product at High Country Gardens the last fall and decided to take a chance, I remember making a search for it here and not coming up with anything,
( they since then changed the name to soilmoist- when I bought it was called 'broadleaf G4')
** It goes under numerous names, I later discovered

I paid about 8$ for a pound and It looks like little white granules and is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Really, if I could have printed that with bigger letters I would..

It seems to adjust entirely to the plants moisture needs , releasing as much or as little as the plants want.
I haven't made it to the pots with it yet but my very intense sun beds have all moistloving plants that are doing spectacular. I got pondgrasses with sedums !!
The hostas loves it and grew in girth a good half foot last year.

I really, really think you high sky gardeners are going to be blown away by this,
Besides containergardening , imagine transplanting, and the plants that dislikes water from above....

my mentioned shade growing sunlovers :) get watered once a week here in summer and they grow like gangbusters,
One word of advice though, There is no point in collaring a plant with it, It swells to tremendous proportions and jelly like texture, if it is too close to the surface it will 'float up'

Besides most roots go downwards, if the soil is barren or really hard , I beleive the roots stick around the vincity of the jelly, kind a like having a drink with a straw handy.. ( getting a nice compact bundle of rootball. ?)

The nursery mentioned that the crystals will be effective for approx 4 years and then they decompose. How brilliant is that!?
I think this is a great product but it does not seem to be so well known which is a shame because if it maintaining it's fantastic functions this is almost a revolution. Although, I am only a humble lay man. any mastergardener or chemist might have a thing or two to say about it..?
( any body , anything? I'd love to get some feedback on this product, I know next to nothing about it and have not heard of anybody using it)
Yeahh, I can go on vacation again AND have a garden to come back to..

Jolly greetings to you all.
KLK

Hi Kerstin! Good to see you over here and hope you had a good new year! :-D

Regarding products like "Soilmoist" and similar, from the chemist's standpoint (which I am), they are polyacrylamides and have been used for years for many things from diapers to agriculture. I know a bunch of people here who have posted over the years have indicated they use it and I have as well (and still have some left in my jar). It isn't cheap but then you don't need that much. Too much and it will blob out of the soil. LOL

It along with mulch, has helped with my window boxes during those years when we have really hot summers. I would think that it would help for people who use clay or terracotta pots or even those moss filled hanging plant baskets, with plants that like to stay moist (I don't use clay pots, but plastic or foam that helps with retaining moisture). I would say it works great. However anyone with plants that like it drier would probably do better without it and perhaps just use some mulch if it gets too hot and dry.

Hey Jenny, nice to see you back! Do you (as a chemist), think that it's possible to cut a diaper open, and take the water retaining crystals out, to use as you would with the stuff you get from a jar? Is it the exact same kind of polyacryl-what's it? -You see, I heard of this stuff last year here on GW, but they still hadn't heard of it in the gardening centre (probably because of patents and stuff). I would like to know before I spend what amounts to 30 US$ on a pack of diapers that I otherwise would have no use of. Money that could be spend on a rose I've set my eyes on.

He VGtar - Sorry I missed your message. Been scanning other forums to look for things to buy.... LOL

I have heard of people using the material from diapers to mix with soil or some have even cut the diaper up and placed pieces at the bottom of a container and it seemed to work just fine. It is supposedly the same polyacrylamide, although I expect the stuff used in diapers is a bit purer in quality since it is being used for people rather than plants. You may want to check to see if the diaper actually has that material in it. I haven't been around diapers in years so I'm not sure if it is standard in all brands of diapers or not.

Hope things have gone well with you! Good luck!

Thank you, Jenny. I think I'll give it a try, on some annuals this year. I talked with a friend of mine about it (she's got an 18-months old baby boy). She has been cutting up diapers to find the right brand, since her son has allergies, and she told me that at least one brand here (Libero) contains the "mini-balls" as she has named them, whereas Pampers has a fluffy cottonlike material inside.

I'm a bit scared of what's going on out on the balcony at moment. The winter has been unusually mild here, and due to health problems, I never got around to winter protecting, so the plants thinks it's mid April. And with a coldfront moving in on us this weekend, I guess I'm in for quite a frost-/ thaw thriller the next couple of months.

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