by Emma Stark
I grew up in the country in England, and we always grew food. We always had a kitchen garden—a big one actually, a really big one. It provided almost all our vegetables and a lot of our fruit in the orchards. There was a feeling of community around the harvest. It was the rural countryside in the southeast of England and that was the way of life.
I moved to Los Angeles about 30 years ago. I’ve always lived in apartments here and as time went on, I began to miss growing my own food, and especially that feeling of community. Then I found the Hollywood Orchard a few years ago. I had no idea that had been going on and it was actually an enormous relief to me emotionally, because here were a group of people doing what I used to do and love so much.
There’s so much happiness and sense of community that comes from doing that, and it used to trouble me, all this fruit just going to waste that grows around in the gardens here. So to find a group of people who were actually harvesting the fruit, and doing something useful and valuable with it, and creating a sense of community at the same time, was wonderful. I actually met people who I’ve been living near to for decades and had never met them until I was introduced to the Hollywood Orchard by my neighbor Emilee Moeller, then that led me to the BirdHouse.
I’ve always grown things on the balcony, but at first, I didn’t focus on food because I didn’t think it was possible, really, to grow food on my balcony. Over the years I’ve discovered what worked and what didn’t. I grew a lot of succulents, but you can’t eat succulents, that I know of. And so, I began to slowly develop this policy that everything on my balcony had to be useful, beautiful, and edible, if possible. The only exception was the bougainvillea, but I just found out that people in South America make a fermented soda from it that has medicinal properties, and it is very colorful and pretty. I haven’t made it yet, but I will do.
My balcony has a lot of problems. It’s long, which is great, but it’s narrow, so the size of a pot is always a consideration. There is no sun in the morning, and then around two o’clock, the sun starts to move around, lighting up the fence and the railing, and that gets really hot. As the afternoon wears on, it starts glaring straight onto the balcony and starts to fry everything. But there are areas where it’s more protected and cooler. For example, there’s a tree that blocks some of the sun. So I have learned to use all these things and place my plants depending on what’s going on and what will thrive and what won’t, and sometimes I have to move things around depending on the season.
I have a lot of edible flowers. I tried a Meyer lemon that didn’t make it, and I haven’t had success with lettuce yet because it bolts and goes to seed really quickly because it fries in the sun. But you know, every year I get better at it. Some things make it and some things don’t. I’m developing this kind of layout, for the balcony that will almost be like multiple climates I can use in different seasons.
Calendula do very well.The rose-scented geraniums do great. And surprisingly, so do the bigger begonia and the fuchsia. They’ve done very well. They don’t seem to mind the heat and the sun at all.
I discovered I can grow tomato vines along the railing, because they need as much sun as I can give them, plus they have increased my privacy, which was another consideration because it’s a bit like being on TV in this apartment. You can look straight into the living room from the street. I’ve also got a passion vine that grows the length of the balcony railing that produces amazing flowers and occasional fruit. They provide shade for the other plants and they actually catch some of the heat from the sun.
The violas and violets are fantastic in the winter and spring. They don’t like the heat or direct sun. I have lemongrass that’s very happy—it can take the full strength of the heat—and sorrel doesn’t seem to mind the heat too much either apart from becoming a little leathery.
I grow basil in the kitchen window and I’ve got sage growing beneath the bougainvillea (which I keep trimmed) because of its dappled shade. Under there I grow garlic, mint, parsley, oregano, and chives. I tried dill but I haven’t nailed that yet. I also grow thyme. It likes full sun.
Ginger is really easy to grow. It likes a nice rich soil and not a lot of direct sunlight. You have to get organic ginger and soak it overnight before you can break bits off and plant them. You have to bank the soil up because the new ginger will grow above what you planted.
I water every day in the summer; it takes about 3 gallons. I compost all my organic kitchen scraps at the BirdHouse and Cameron sometimes gives me a 5 gallon bucket of compost, but it’s not enough. I buy an amended soil called Ready Grow Potting Soil, and mix it with the compost. My tomatoes love it.
I’ve had problems with pests, so now I’m developing my anti-pest arsenal. I want everything to be organic and I don’t want to harm bees. A lot of pollinators come to my balcony. It’s quite amazing actually. I have a dwarf lime tree that was inundated with aphids so I bought a little packet of ladybugs from the internet. I released them on the tree, in the evening as per the instructions, and in the morning there was not one single aphid on that tree.
I bought some cosmetic neem oil and made an emulsion I used on my melon leaves, but then a praying mantis showed up and really fixed the situation for me. You have to watch out for those though because when they get big enough they can actually go after your hummingbirds.
I do seed saving and seed swapping, but I also get seeds from Baker’s seeds. They have a wonderful catalog; it’s always worth looking at their catalog because it can inspire you. I’ve just ordered some seeds for next year. They have these little tomato plants that only get a foot high and they get covered with cherry tomatoes which is perfect for me. You can have a little row of them too, and they would look great. They’re very manageable, even for the tiniest balcony or window.
You’ve just got to watch out for tomato hornworms. I am constantly looking for those guys because they can decimate your tomato plant. I mean, you can have a fantastic tomato plant and go to sleep and wake up and it’s gone. And I’ve had that happen. So every day, I inspect for signs of the hornworms. The best way to discover them is by looking above their little black droppings, because the hornworms are the exact same color as a tomato plant. They’re really, really hard to see. I just pick them off and throw them for the birds.
I have two varieties of kumquat trees, but I’m going to reduce that to one kumquat because they take up too much space. I’m going to really go for tomatoes because that’s something I can successfully grow. I’m going to put up a trellis next year and have lots of different kinds of melons, maybe a cucumber, and on the railings I’ve grown peas before. Beans, I think would be better—they have lovely red flowers, which you can eat.
I’ve noticed that the more I grow plants on the balcony, especially ones with the big leaves, the cooler it is inside our apartment. The volunteer melon (from BirdHouse compost) that came up in the ginger pot, had enormous leaves that actually shielded a lot of the sun. It was amazing how much cooler the wall on the inside of our apartment was compared to last year. So that’s quite a big consideration. I’m not allowed to drill holes in the building to attach shade blinds and our building is badly insulated so it gets extremely hot. Next year, I have plans to make my tomatoes grow even higher to shield the sun even more.
A few years ago, I got really into sprouting—kind of obsessively. And, in fact, that was the first time I started growing food here—this is even predating the Hollywood Orchard. It was really upsetting that I thought I couldn’t grow any food here. And so I started sprouting. You hardly need any space and it doesn’t have to be outside. You don’t need any soil. You can just do it in a small area on top of the fridge. You can actually grow a lot of food that way. For a while, I ate almost nothing but sprouts—almost. I did add some things to it like eggs and some other things for an entire two year period.
People kept asking me how I did it. So I wrote this really brief, simple book, Sprouting Is Easy: How to Sprout Raw Food and Save Money (Best Way to Grow Food From Home). This is how you do it. This is what you need. You don’t need to spend a lot of money. This will get you started on growing your own sprouts and you can take it from there, if you want to learn. A friend persuaded me to publish it and it’s now available on Kindle for $2.99, or free if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited.
