Balcony vegetable planting guide | Vegetables that can be grown without seeds

Recently, many people’s friend circles have been flooded with various balcony vegetable gardens. This fun and practical trick can not only add a leisurely atmosphere to home life, but also satisfy urban residents’ yearning for close to nature.

Other people's balcony vegetable garden (Xiaohongshu @ echo's north balcony garden)

I see so many experts among my friends, and all kinds of vegetables growing happily and pleasing to the eye, but as a novice, I either don’t know where to start, or I end up turning the “seller’s show” into a “buyer’s show”, which is quite extreme!

What to do? What to do? Don't worry, if you master the following methods and principles, each of us can have a balcony vegetable garden.

Part 1

Start growing vegetables with onions and garlic

The troubles of growing vegetables at home are nothing more than the failure of the vegetables to survive, low yields, and trouble. Correspondingly, our requirements for planting have become easy survival, short cycle, and little care.

There are actually many vegetables that meet the above requirements, such as bean sprouts, leeks, shallots, sprouts, water spinach, lettuce, amaranth, lettuce, spinach, etc. In as little as 3-5 days and as much as 20 days, you can taste the vegetables you planted yourself.

But considering the difficulty of planting, for novices with no planting experience, onions and garlic are the only entry-level choices.

Part 2

Is there magic behind the fast growth of onions and garlic?

Although growing onions and garlic won’t give us vegetable freedom right away, it will definitely make our food more delicious. Want to grow vegetables but worried about the lack of sunlight on the balcony? No problem! Small planting area? No problem! No fertilizer? No problem! Even no soil, no problem!

As long as there is a little stock at home, we can perform the "regeneration" magic - remove the leaves of the leftover onions at home and leave only the white part (5-7cm). For garlic, you can directly tear off the outermost skin and divide it into garlic cloves.

Onions and garlic to be planted

Put the processed onions and garlic into a wide-mouth container, whether it is a disposable cup or a half-broken beverage bottle, as long as it can fit in. If conditions permit, try to choose a transparent container so that the plants can receive more light and grow faster. If you have a plastic egg box at home, you can achieve batch operation and build an onion and garlic paradise.

The magic tool for growing onions in bulk - egg box

The next most important task is watering. It is best to let the tap water for planting stand for 1 to 3 days in advance, because tap water contains some chemical additives, mainly chlorine for disinfection and sterilization. The water just taken out may have a certain amount of residual chlorine. Although the impact on the human body is very small, if it is used directly for hydroponics, it will damage plant cells and affect growth. When watering, immerse the onion above the root and the garlic about 1/3. Then choose a corner with good light. The south-facing balcony at home is a good choice.

Change the water once a day, and after about 3-4 days, you can see new green leaves growing out. After that, change the water every 2-3 days, and basically every day they will have visible changes. After about two weeks of planting, we have the privilege of cooking noodles with chopped green onions.

What is even more surprising is that onions and garlic can be harvested repeatedly because there are cell clusters at their roots that can divide. The cell clusters reproduce very quickly, so even if you cut off the leaves on top, new shoots will soon appear. This is absolutely a sustainable green development.

Part 3

Advanced Vegetable Growing: Regenerating Vegetables

With the experience in growing onions and garlic, you can advance to the leafy vegetable field, which allows novice vegetable growers to show their skills, because fast-growing leafy vegetables have the advantages of shorter growth cycle, faster maturity, and relatively simple management.

The "killer weapon" in this field is regenerated vegetables. Cut off the relatively intact roots of leafy vegetables such as lettuce, Chinese cabbage or romaine lettuce, leaving about 5-8cm, and soak them in a large glass bowl or flat plate. As long as you change the water every day, it will grow roots and new leaves in about 5-7 days. At this time, transplant it into soil specially used for vegetable cultivation (available on the market and at a low price).

Because the roots of this type of plant also have cell clusters that can divide, and the plant tissues contain all the substances necessary for rooting, including auxin and other rooting inducing substances, under suitable environmental conditions, many adventitious roots will quickly form and grow into entire plants.

Subsequent maintenance is also very simple. Basically, you just need to water it every two or three days and keep the soil moist enough. It can usually be picked in about a month. If you are interested, you can search for specific details on the Internet.

No need to grow seedlings, diverse vegetables, and recycling. If you follow this path, you can even grow onions, potatoes, cabbage, sweet potatoes, radishes... In other words, we will open up our own vegetable supply station.

Regenerated vegetables (Public account @牡药美鉴笔记)

Seeing this, you may ask, why do leafy vegetables need to be transplanted into the soil in the later stage of planting instead of continuing hydroponics?

It turns out that fast-growing leafy vegetables have a stronger demand for nutrients during their growth because they grow fast. If you want to grow strong and big vegetables, the nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other nutrients provided by tap water are far from enough. In addition, you also need to supplement boron, iron, copper, magnesium, zinc, molybdenum and other trace elements. But this is a little more difficult and costly for novices, and requires more energy to maintain.

Part 4

Is soil really essential?

Facts have proved that hydroponics is not only feasible, but also has obvious advantages. Hydroponics is the first choice for supplying fresh vegetables in special environments such as space stations and Antarctic scientific expeditions where there is a lack of "soil". Hydroponics is also the preferred cultivation method for large-scale plant factories.

In fact, even in the soil, plants can only absorb mineral elements in ionic form. Therefore, as long as we add the mineral element ions needed by plants into the solution, the plant roots will absorb them from the solution, and the plants can still grow healthily. In addition, through this method, we can also accurately control the types and quantities of mineral elements.

Plant factory image source (CCTV13 News Live Room: Chinese Academy of Sciences built the world's largest plant factory)

Even without soil, you can still grow vegetables; even without experience, you can still grow vegetables, so don’t underestimate hydroponics, and don’t underestimate yourself. When you can only move around in a small space every day, when you are fed up with the anxiety in your mobile phone screen, pick up a kettle, squat down, and watch a touch of new green sprout and grow, it is like a ray of sunshine into your heart, warm, healing, and full of hope.

Produced by: China Science Expo

Author: Yin Chunmei, Institute of Subtropical Agriculture Ecology

The article only represents the author's views and does not represent the position of China Science Expo

This article was first published in China Science Expo (kepubolan)

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