Hi sthlmgreen and welcome!!! I know how you feel regarding wind on the balcony. I am on the 18th floor and have found that the place on my balcony with the most sun is also the windiest, but that is the only place where I can grow my veggies (due to the area having the most sun and enough room to grow these plants). This is what I just planted last Tuesday (the 2 large and 2 medium containers with shredded newspaper as mulch): I had started these from seed - the tomatoes - "San Marzano", "Big Beef", "Snow White" (a cherry tomato) - and am growing tomatillos from seed. I started them in plastic yogurt cups that had clear lids and then I transfered them to 16 oz plastic drinking cups, and finally to 1 gallon nursery containers before planting. I had some extras after I gave one of my sisters some so I ended up jamming 2 plants per container, trying to keep the larger plants in the larger containers and smaller plants in smaller containers when crowded together like that. The containers I am using include storage bins from Rubbermaid - the 14 gallon size. The smaller containers are Rubbermaid containers made for vegetables that I bought years ago but that they no longer sell. The one thing about the storage bins is that when filled with soil, they are very stable and don't blow over on days when it is very windy. I do know what you are talking about when you mention how the plants can snap in the wind or the leaves can wilt. Every year I try to put something on the windy side of my veggies that will block the worst winds, and this year I am trying my paniculata hydrangea (the shrub in the corner in the above picture). It is now 4 years old and is getting somewhat battered, but so far it has done the best as a wind block of anything that I have tried in the past without much damage to itself. Plus it is the type of hydrangea that does best in full sun, so it is getting alot more sun than it used to get on the other end of my balcony. I want go to the local large hardware stores to see if I can find some plexiglass that I can use to be the windblock instead of my hydrangea. The one thing that I want is something that won't block the sun but will block the wind, and the plexiglass should do that. In your case, I would just remove the withered leaves and any totally broken branches - BUT tomatoes are amazing plants and sometimes you can tape up a broken branch and secure it in place and the branch will heal and grow just fine! When I was hardening off my tomatoes in their small pots, one of my Snow Whites had bent in half and after I kept tying it on a stake and it kept flopping, before I finally planted it, I taped the bend with some tefllon tape (used by plumbers) and planted it so that the taped portion was under the soil in the big container. It totally wilted the rest of that day (you can actually see the wilted plant tied to a stake next to the rail in the gray container closest to the date on the picture). The tomato remained wilted like that the next couple days (it was also very hot here), but as of this morning, after we had some windy rain that soaked my balcony and the plants, it has perked back up again and looks like it's almost back to normal now (don't have my camera available at the moment but will be taking a picture later)! You can actually root broken tomato branches in water or in soil because they can form roots along the stems.

Others have dealt with the actual growing so I'll just mention choice of plants. I would suggest growing crops which give a good yield for a small amount of space and which crop for a reasonable length of time. I wouldn't put peas in this group. You need a lot of pea plants to give anything more than a portion or two of peas. Plus they do not crop for long. Nor would a single kale plant really provide much food. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, climbing beans would all work well as would cut and come again lettuce. Spinach requires a lot of leaves for a plateful as it cooks down massively but it does regrow after cutting. Herbs are good value for a small space too.

Hi Tracy, I had a large veggie garden at the back that this year is going to be turned into a flower garden. We just didn't use much of the stuff that was in the veggie garden so I don't see a reason for it. I do have a greenhouse where I will plant a few things like tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and who knows what else. But I am cutting way back this year. I also plan to plant lettuce somewhere. For fruit, I have 2 kinds of red raspberries and 1 yellow variety. I had everbearing and Kent strawberries....but pulled out all the everbearing ones. I have a huge saskatoon bush....it is a wild one that grows naturally here. And I have 4 blueberry bushes.....if they don't do something wonderful this year...they will meet the shovel. I also planted 2 nanking cherries last year. Well I had one for a few years but the voles got to it last year....so it had to be replaced. I have never seen fruit from the nanking that was here for a few years...it was small when I planted it and I expected to see fruit last year....but.. The new ones were also small, so I will give them a couple of years to see if they will actually fruit here. Sierra

Sorry to say that no such thing exists. Wouldn't that be great but bugs and gardening go hand-in-hand. It is the growing conditions provided hat draw in the pests, not so much the plant. For example, aphids are attracted to plants that are getting lots of nitrogen fertilizer. Maybe too much? Fungus gnats are drawn to the soil of plants that are kept wet. Maybe too wet? Leaf sucking insects are drawn to plants that are wet AND cooling in shade. Maybe too much shade/not enough sun? Moths that lay eggs that become caterpillars are drawn to the nitrogen and odors of all the brassica family. So we have to learn how to create/control the growing environment we provide as much as possible and when using containers that can be more difficult than with in ground plants. Then learn how to prevent the problems that attract the pests. Also more difficult with containers. Some pests will arrive anyway but they can be easily controlled or kept from doing damage in many different ways. Dave