Meguin, how is your garden coming? I am new to balcony gardening, but am a longtime gardener (mostly vegetables). I don't know about the wind conditions, but your balcony sounds like a great spot for herbs and some salad veggies. You can easily grow herbs in pots or one big pot (this is great because the added volume will hold and retain water better) Rosemary, parsley, sage and thyme would be great together. If you plant mint, plant it by itself because it will spread and takeover(a shallow bowl type pot works well). it also wants to stay a little wetter than the other herbs. Most herbs are perennials and if you have a sunny window, you can even bring them inside in the winter to enjoy all year long. You can also grow a luttuce bowl for your rabbits (and you). A mesclun mix is always fun, flavorful and colorful. You can just pick the outside leaves as they mature and keep it going. I would guess any berries would each require their own pot, starting with just a few inches larger than thier original nursery container. Since it is windy, I'd avoid or limit hanging pots. To start your pots, use a good potting soil. Regular soil will be too dense for the pots. Make sure they all have good drainage. Lay a coffee filter over the bottom of the empty pot (to slow water and hold in the soil). Pebbles or even packing peanuts are good for the first layer (1-2 inches) to give the water something to run through. Then add your soil. Most transplants will get buried flush (not deeper than they are in their current pots), so just set them evenly around your pot, and fill in around them with more soil. Press it in lightly, then water thoroughly and fill any spots where the soil has settled. (You can check this periodically too to see if there are any low spots. Plan to water daily since you are getting a lot of sun. I hope you have fun and decide to expand into some veggies for you. Tomatoes and eggplants would be very happy in your sunny conditions (try dwarf varieties). You'll love them. Using the same potting technique, experiment with flowers that make you happy - it's amazing how a splash of color can make you smile.

10 x 10 seems very small, so I would say this would be one of your biggest factors in choosing what to grow. You mean 10 x 10 feet, right? Given your small gardening space, I would say stick with things that really taste much better when they're home grown. A lot of gardenwebbers may disagree with me, but I find a lot of veggies at the supermarket to be sufficient - I can't see how carrots or celery or onions or broccoli etc. could be so much better when home grown (unless you wait for them to sweeten after the first frost, which some vegetables do - you'll learn about that as you read about gardening) On the same note, you could also focus on things that are overpriced at the supermarket compared to how easy they are to grow. Furthermore, you live in a pretty cold part of the country, so you'll be happy to know that there are a few vegetables that laugh heartily in the face father winter. In the taste department, the big ones are tomatoes. Nothing compares to a real ripened garden tomato; the tomatoes at the supermarket are little red lies - they're picked green to be able to ship well and then made red with ethylene (the ripening hormone). Ethylene ripening works well for most (botanic) fruits, but it's pointless if the fruit (the tomato, in this case) hasn't even MATURED yet! Tomatoes are definitely the one thing that all gardeners and even most of the general populace would agree taste so much better when you grow them yourself. I also find that peppers (capsicum) that I grow are much tastier than the supermarket kind. They're much sweeter and more flavorful. But I can get good peppers because it regularly gets pretty hot and humid here in NJ in the summers, and peppers need that to be really tasty. In the price department you've got shallots and leeks. Definitely overpriced at the supermarket. With shallots, you grow them like garlic, plant the "cloves" during very cool whether when the spring is starting and the days are lengthening (alliums are instigated to grow their bulbs by increasing daylengths). With leeks, you'll need to shore up the dirt or provide some kind of cover to blanch the stalks, but otherwise similarly easy to grow like other alliums. And leeks are one of the cold-hardiest crops. You can leave them in the ground throughout the beginning of the winter and harvest as needed. You plant them in the summer to mature in the autumn/winter, just remember they take a long time to mature, about 4 months. And that increasing daylengths rule doesn't apply since the leek is a stalk, not a storage bulb. All aliums have the added benefit that wildlife don't generally eat them. For cole crops/brassicas, I would recommend you start with collards and/or kale. Both these are closer to their wild ancestors and much more pest/disease resistant than their more refined cousins. Kale also laughs in the face of winter. And both these will be sweeter after a frost (by the way, by frost we mean frosty weather, generally when the temp goes below 40). I would also recommend radishes just because they're easy to grow and have such a fast growth rate - they're mature in three to four weeks. I disagree with the previous poster about beans/peas. They're easy enough to grow and save the seed, they're important to the garden because they add nitrogen to the soil, and they're generally well liked by everyone and quite nutritious. Peas can handle a decent amount of cold weather, so they can be planted when it's cold, before the bugs/pests come out. Green beans/snap beans are well liked by most people, but they are somewhat susceptible to garden pests. I would reccomend you try a more unusual, pest-hardy bean, like runner beans, which have the benefit of also being gorgeous. Most beans can be eaten in the "snap" or "green" stage like green beans if you pick them early enough. And like I said, it's easy enough to save the seed - just wait until the pods are dry and collect the dry peas/beans and save until next season. And just remember to soak the seeds/beans/peas in water to speed germination before you plant them next season. You don't need to worry about cross-pollination of different varieties because most legumes (beans/peas) are self-pollinated, ESPECIALLY peas (I just looked at a pea blossom for the first time here the other day in my grandmother's garden - all the flowers parts are protected inside a flower petal shell, so bugs can't ever get to them). Also remember that legumes usually need a support structure to climb up. You might also want to put in some herbs, which are pretty easy to grow. Mints will definitely grow in your area, as will sage, though I think you're at its cold-hardiness limit, and maybe thyme. You can forget keeping rosemary as an outdoor perennial in your bitter cold. I myself love the smell of lemon balm, which I think is hardy to zone 4, but like mint it is a spreader and can become weedy. Lovage is a nice herb that you could grow, though more susceptible to pests than other herbs. And of course the annuals parsley, dill, and cilantro (though parsley is a biennial and I think might survive winters in your are - so you might be able to save seed if you're interested) Above all read up on gardening as much as you can. If you don't understand something, try googling it. Buy some books. I, like you, don't have much room to garden, and have only gardened two seasons, but I read nonstop so I'm pretty well versed on all the how-to's and what-to-do's.

I took your advice and split up all my questions. Thanks and thanks for the advice! All of the plants I purchased were already outside or were in an open air nursery. I'm really pretty convinced my compost was the culprit becase as soon as I got some fertilizer in them they perked right up and the yellowing, stunted growth, and dying foliage lasted for a good 3-4 weeks. I feel really dumb that it took me that long to correct. As far as shade/sun half the beds get mornign sun, all of them get midday sun and half of them get afternoon sun. Other wise they are completely shaded in the morning or afternoon. I've been trying to get a hold of some clean straw fro mulching but having a hard time finding any that is def organic and doesn't have weeds and other junk in it. I had been using shredded newspaper for my alpine strawberries but it was really messy so I trashed it. THe peas are shaded form the afternoon sun almost completely so I thought that might work but apparently not. They aren't dying, they're just not growing...or they're growing extremely slowly. Otherwise they look healthy. Idk what to do with them. I really wanted peas and don't know if I can do them as a fall crop in Nebraska. Again, thank you for your reply.

My pond is running over with plants. Where do you live in South Carolina? I live near Charleston. If you are close enough to drop by I will give you plenty of plants for your water garden. Just let me know. Joyce