Starting a balcony garden is a lot easier than you think. There’s a loveliness to outdoor life that doesn’t fade away. Fall, it’s the best time for apartment gardening.

And February and March are just such a great time to begin planning your apartment garden. You can put up the vegetables before the winter and save yourself a lot of work in the spring. You can also start them later in the fall and save yourself even more work. That’s because vegetables can mature faster than most plants.

Your balcony or patio is perfect for growing vegetables in small spaces. They’re out there year round in most places. With luck, you’ll be lucky enough to live in an area where they get plenty of sunshine. That means you won’t have to hire a gardener to keep your plants alive. It also means no raking, no weeding, no mowing, and no digging.

Most of your gardening tools will come with small spaces. The larger pots and pans will have a shallow slot to hold soil and the drainage holes to make sure water drains properly. But keep in mind that soil in small spaces expands a lot, so you’ll want to use pots that have lots of drainage holes or you’ll end up with water clogging holes. Use lightweight pots that can stand on their own. Don’t use a large ceramic bowl with a hole in the middle.

Once you’ve selected what you want to grow you can choose containers, raised beds, or a combination of both. If you’re not sure, go outdoors and try some of the starter plants in pots or raised beds until you know what you want to do. Once you know what you want to grow, you can then start shopping for the containers, pots, and the soil that you’ll need to cultivate those plants. Once you’ve got your soil and containers ready, you can start preparing the balcony for its first growing season.

A balcony vegetable garden is great for apartment dwellers who don’t have room to grow their own vegetables. One of the biggest challenges apartment dwellers face is limited sunlight. Raised beds provide great solutions because they allow sunlight to filter through the foliage and into the soil. But even if you don’t have the room for raised bed gardening there are other ways you can grow vegetables in a balcony apartment. One option is to grow your vegetables in solids, mini-garden style containers that come in all kinds of shapes and sizes.

Potlids can also be grown in small spaces by using hanging baskets or planters. You can buy cheap plastic or wooden planters from a big box store and just line them up along the wall. Just be sure you have plenty of support for your hanging baskets and planter beds. Hanging baskets and planters also make it easy to move your gardening tools from one place to another as you may need to pick up and move some of your heavy gardening machinery.

When you’re ready to get started on your balcony garden, you need to buy your seeds and starter plants. Choose the plants you want to grow and then plant them in pots provided by your balcony supplier. Keep in mind that it’s a good idea to get advice before you start planting anything. This advice can really save you a lot of time and frustration in the future. If you do decide to buy your plants from a balcony shop or supplier, be sure to check the garden supplies section because these are usually full of helpful information, products and catalogues.