Step-by-Step Guide to Growing Your Own Soup on Your Balcony

Start with Research

Before you start actually setting up your soup patch on your balcony garden, you will need to do some research and get things ready beforehand. First, you need to select the soup you would like to grow; it could be minestrone, tomato or any other soup that you fancy. We recommend starting with a basic soup with minimal ingredients if you are a beginner.

Once you’ve decided on the soup, look up a recipe and make a list of all the ingredients you would require. Make sure to add the herbs as well as the vegetables required so you have a complete list of all you will need to grow in your patch.

Now that you have your list of ingredients do a bit of research on how to grow each of them. Make a list on all that you would need to grow each ingredient, starting from the seeds, soil, size of the container and fertilisers required. We also recommend taking note of the kind of sunlight, drainage and watering requirements for each of these, so you are fully prepared to start cultivating your soup patch.

Now that you’re done with all your research, and you’ve made your notes and lists, we can move to the next stage of setting up.

Setting Up Your Soup Patch

In order to set up your soup patch, start with ordering all the supplies you would require, including the seeds, containers, soil and fertilisers. You could buy these online or from your local nursery. Once you have all your supplies, pick out the perfect location on your balcony, with full or partial sun and set up your container. Make sure the container has adequate drainage and start the cultivation process.

You could also buy plug plants instead of seeds to get a head start. These should be available at your local garden centre and doing so will take away the risks associated with cultivating from seeds.

Caring for Your Soup Patch

Once your balcony soup patch has been set up, you will need to ensure that each plant is watered regularly and monitor its progress every week. You could assign the task of watering and caring for the patch to your kids to get them involved in gardening. You would also need to weed out the plant so that they don’t hinder the growth of your soup patch plants.

If you see the plant dying out, you may want to check if it is getting an adequate amount of water and sunlight. You could also add in some fertilisers to ensure steady growth of the plants.

Harvesting Your Soup Patch

Once your plants are ready to harvest, use the right tools to harvest the crop to prepare your favourite soup. We recommend using a sharp knife to slice through smoothly without leaving damage to the plant so that it can continue growing for the next batch of soup from your soup patch.