A balcony or a pair of raised beds will not replace a weekly shop. It can reliably supply the produce that is costly per gram and worst affected by storage and transport.
Crops that suit the constraint
- Cut-and-come-again salad leaves: harvested repeatedly from one sowing.
- Soft herbs: expensive by weight and short-lived in a supermarket packet.
- Climbing beans: vertical growth uses little floor area for the yield.
- Chillies and tomatoes in a sunny spot, accepting that both need consistent watering.
The costs to plan for
- Containers and a support structure, largely one-off.
- Growing media, which is replaced or refreshed each season.
- Water, which in a metered household is a real running cost through a dry summer.
- Time — the recurring input that determines whether the bed is still productive in August.
Food safety
Where soil contamination is possible, such as on older urban sites, public health bodies advise testing or using raised beds with imported media before growing edible crops.
No product recommendations appear here. Any kit list published by THRYV follows testing, not a season's enthusiasm.
