From patio gardening to balcony gardening, demotion or is it actually a good thing?

So we moved to a new apartment.  Everything about it is better than our previous apartment, except that while I had a small patio for growing things in pots, I now have a small balcony for growing things in pots.

Pros:
I'm too high up for slugs to find my plants and climb into my pots.
I'll get less "volunteers" and I'll be more likely to get to grow the plants I actually intend to plant.

Cons:
I won't get surprise edible plants showing up in my pots anymore.
I get way less sun, its more like growing in a forest now because we have some very shady maple trees which we can't really prune.

Did you notice that the lack of surprise/volunteer plants in my pots is both a pro and a con?  Yes I did that on purpose.

I will be getting some new boxes that attach to the balcony railing and hang over the side, to maximize growing space.  So I'm looking forward to that.  I will probably have to arrange the pots and boxes in odd ways so as to maximize the sun exposure there is in the mornings.  I'm nervous that I won't be able to grow as good of a variety of plants anymore due to more shade.

I guess my question is:  What are some things I should know about balcony growing that are different from patio growing that I haven't listed above?  What to expect?  

Depending on your location, you might not get as many pollinators and may opt to choose self pollinating varieties or do hand pollination.

If you are not allergic to bees, and a wasp nest is built in the corner on the ceiling of your balcony, you could choose to leave it alone for the pollinating effects.

You might consider vertical gardening to maximize space. I gifted my mother a GreenStalk garden tower for Mother’s Day in 2022 to place on her balcony. The first photo is the day we planted. The second photo is 1 month later. The third photo is 2 months later. We had so much fun with so many plants growing in a compact space.  

Mom gives each new visitor to her duplex a tour of her ‘garden’ and always gets a laugh and oohs and aahs. She changes out many of the annuals each year, however petunias self seeded, mums wintered over and came back as wells as a variety of sedum.

During storms and early frosts, she rolls the tower back under the ceiling. She even has a frost cover and shade cloth that fits it just in case.

Argh, can there really be any con to gardening, of any scale???

Think of many hanging plant/pots holder things.  Dollar and a Quarter Tree stacking grow towers, wall brackets for pots.  I'm sure that you will find ways!!


Peace

Balconies can be really windy. It depends if you have a roof or not. My balcony is closed on 5 sides and only open to the south, so it's relatively sheltered. But people I know have had trouble with small tomato plants being ripped out for example.

Sunlight is important as you've already mentioned. Depending on your arrangement, you might end up with a sunny spot right next to a very shady spot. Plants will fight over the sunlight, leaning into each other's growth paths.

I've had a lot of fun growing things on my balcony. It really feels like a tiny little spot of nature. And it's so much cooler in the summer than before. (Right now it's a bit dirty because I just harvested and replanted potatoes)

Thanks for the tips guys.

I think my biggest concern about it is the dappled sunlight, it gets dappled sun from about 6:30am-1:30pm at this time of year, I just hope its enough, I positioned things in front of the utility closet where we store our camping stuff because that's where a good solid chunk of sunlight appears there around noon and stays for a while.  So I'm sort of rotating things so they get more sun when they're young and have less leaves with which to absorb that sun.  Things like that, but it has been less than a month and so I'm trying to observe and learn.