Balcony Garden (Part 1)

Since I first moved to Sydney in 2008, I have maintained a balcony garden.  They have invariably failed as I was pretty terrible at watering or maintaining them.  The poor things just died.  Since the beginning, 2 plants somehow survived.  An Apricot Nectar standard rose, and an Arabica coffee tree.

Watering was a problem as I was having to truck several watering cans of water through the bedroom to the north facing balcony.  It was reasonably successful with tomatoes and herbs being produced, when I remembered to water it.

In 2011, my husband and I moved to Drummoyne into a much larger unit with a balcony three times larger than our previous one.  The first year was spent ignoring the pots, emptying a few out, clearing out dead plants and generally forgetting to water the plants unless they looked sad and desperate.  A couple of months ago I thought that I might like to reestablish my balcony garden but knowing my laziness with a watering can, I knew I needed some sort of irrigation system.

These pictures above are the second attempt at a balcony garden.  The coffee tree (at rear left of the r) picture) is now bigger, but wind damaged and suffering a bit from being in a saltier environment.  The lavender, sage, rosemary and strawberry pot have all perished.

I started looking around the internet to see what there was in the way of information for practical balcony gardens.  There are many, many websites on balcony gardening, but they all kind of depended on either an outside tap and hose system (which I don't have) or a water can, which I know I am dreadful with.

Then the revelation happened when I found the Urban Green Survival blog, I noticed that Dean (the blog owner) had my ultimate solution.  A 100L plastic water storage tank and irrigation pipe with irrigation heads.  So with this in mind the new look balcony garden on the much larger balcony was planned.