Creating a Perfect Edible Balcony Garden in NYC

After this year’s seemingly never-ending winter, I was excited to see seedlings appear at our local farmer’s market last month. This was a welcome sign that it was finally time to begin planning my edible balcony garden in NYC. I had been making a long list of all the crops I wanted to grow and started mapping it all out in early Spring. I knew that I wouldn’t have enough space for everything, but here’s what I finally settled on.

Growing herbs on a north balcony

Some herbs are so versatile and essential that I always include them in my garden. My “must-grow” crops are rosemary, thyme, mint, and sage. I've planted them on my north-facing balcony to give them only partial sun. I love being able to just walk out and clip herbs whenever I’m cooking in my kitchen. Many of these can be difficult to grow from seeds, so I bought them as seedlings this year with the exception of my rosemary plant. It actually survived the winter and is still growing well. Both the rosemary and mint have their own container, while the sage and thyme are sharing the lower level of the vertical planter we bought this year.

I use fresh rosemary in pretty much everything—from soups, stews and pasta, to lemon-rosemary cookies and rosemary caramel sauce. For thyme, my preferred variety is lemon-thyme which has a less earthy flavor than the standard variety. It’s especially good with all kinds of seafood and vegetable dishes.

Spearmint is my mint variety of choice. I do appreciate the aroma of some of the other kinds, especially chocolate mint, but for cooking, nothing beats the versatility of spearmint. I use it in desserts and drinks, but we like it just as much in a Vietnamese noodle salad or our favorite watermelon-feta salad.

Finally, sage is the herb on this list that I probably use the least, but it's very easy to grow. The flavor in sage is so strong that I only need a small amount, so it makes sense for me to grow it. It isn’t economical to buy a bunch at the store when I would probably end up wasting most of it. My favorite uses for sage are mixing it into fresh bread, frying it until crisp as a garnish for pasta, or drying it for use in holiday stuffings later in the year.

Growing tomatoes and chili peppers on a south balcony

I tend to grow mostly herbs on my balcony garden, but there are two other crops which I always include: tomatoes and chilies. Both are well suited to being grown in containers and very versatile in the kitchen. This year, I’m putting both of them on my south-facing balcony to give them maximum sunlight exposure.

For tomatoes, we chose two varieties of small yellow tomatoes, each getting their own separate container. In previous years, I think our tomato yield hasn’t been very good because the container we planted them in was just too small. Hopefully we will see a difference this year! We generally prefer to grow cherry tomatoes, as we usually eat them raw in a salad or as a snack. If we have a bumper crop I might roast them in some olive oil and garlic for an easy summer pasta sauce.

Unfortunately, due to my limited space, I’ll never have the abundance of summer tomatoes that some of my friends with large backyard vegetable gardens have. Such is the life of an urban gardener, but we always try to get the most out of the space we have.

I chose two types of chili peppers this year: Cayenne and Thai chili. These both have their own containers. I planted three Cayenne seedlings transplanted into one large container and one Thai chili seedling into a slightly smaller one.

Cayenne peppers are the fresh form of the powdered cayenne that is commonly found in kitchen spice cabinets. Fresh cayenne is slightly hotter than jalapeño peppers, but less so than habaneros. I’m not sure exactly how I'll use them and this is my first time growing them, but I look forward to experimenting. I have, however, used Thai chilies plenty in my life. The small, spicy chilies are great in all kinds of Southeast Asian dishes. They'll be nice to have around whenever I need them.

Experimenting with new crops on my balcony garden

I’ve also got three planters of lettuce started in a vertical planter. Growing lettuce on my balcony is new for me and I’m curious to see how much I’ll be able to produce in a small area.

I’m also trying out some other crops for the first time this year. One of them is fresh fenugreek leaves. Most people only know fenugreek as a spice, but it's also a leafy green that is widely used in Indian cuisine.

Commonly used in its dried form, it is hard to find fresh even here in the city. The fresh leaves can be mixed into all sorts of Indian dishes including dal, curries, and paratha. I’m very excited to start using them! I’m also growing lemongrass and shiso leaves for the first time—two things that I love to cook with.

Finally, I’ve already planted seedlings of Kkaennip, or Korean perilla, in my largest container. I’ve grown them for the past four years, but this time I'm growing them from seeds that I saved myself from last year’s plants. They are one of our favorite things to cook with, so I really hope they grow well again this year. 

With some thoughtful planning and utilizing both north and south-facing balconies, I've created my dream edible balcony garden in NYC this year. I've already started clipping herbs for cooking and I'm excited to see my vegetable harvests in a few months.