What would/can you grow on a balcony without much direct sunlight?

I have a balcony on raised ground floor with lots of trees hiding the sun. In the summer I get a few hours of direct sunlight, not enough to get anything flowering. I attempted growing tomatoes, and ended up with the tallest, most useless plant ever. Strawberries were also mostly leaves. There is a planter integrated on the balcony design though, which is nice.
Is there anything with fun leaves I could grow ? Preferably low maintenance and resistant to low temperatures. (not necessarely frost resistant, though better)

Edit: I also generally can’t keep stuff that flowers, hence my request.

silence7, (edited )

Besides the suggestion about shade-tolerant plants, I strongly recommend finding a localized book. Your local librarian likely knows what people use.

This is what gets used in some parts of coastal California, and the suggestions in it might work well in some parts of France, but it’s probably not ideal for where you are.

schmorpel,

Parsley and cilantro might tolerate a more shady growing space. Even thyme might handle less than full sun. Aromatic herbs like rosemary and sage prefer full sun in my experience. A lot of wisdom in the other comments about potting method, frequency of watering, fertilizer etc. I would say larger containers preferably with different plant species will work better. Good soil and lots of organic matter - if your planter is large enough you can feed organic waste back into the soil directly.

evasive_chimpanzee,

Are you looking for edible plants, or decorative? If you just want decorative, there’s lots of options for “shade tolerant” plants. Using planters on a balcony, depending on how much soil, type of soil, and your climate, you probably need to figure out what your watering requirements are. Some places, the soil stays nice and moist, in others, it dries out really quick, so you’d need to adjust your plants to that (and how good you are at watering).

It depends on the potting mix, how it drains (e.g., holes in bottom), how deep it is, material of the planter (ceramics will hold better than plastic or metal), whether rain actually hits it, wind, and sun.

Personally, I get direct sun for a few hours in the first half of the day, but I’m using thin plastic planters, so they get dried out easy. I set up drip irrigation to run during the warm half of the year. I’ve been growing basil, oregano, thyme, chives, sage, chard, mint, parsley, mustard greens, peas, and radishes. I do rosemary, too, but it seems like rosemary never does well in a planter for me. In my experience, it mostly likes being grown in the ground, and left alone.

If you just want something easy that’s also useful, throw mint in there. It grows fine in shade and cold weather as long as you water it, and it spreads really aggressively, and it will put off runners, depending on the cultivar that you can coax into looping around a railing or something. I find that it also likes lots of fertilizer to grow quickly, but I’m not sure which specific element in the fertilizer it needs (e.g. potassium, nitrates, phosphorus).

just_chill,

I don’t really have a plan yet, I am hoping to develop one until march or so. There are already a lot of edible things in the list and they all sound lovely, so that might be the direction I go towards.
Mint is now also definitely on my list ! (at this rate, I will need some smart vertical planting system very soon)

evasive_chimpanzee,

If you plant mint anywhere, just know that it will take up the whole area, and eventually, it will be only mint in the planter. If you want other stuff, too, keep the mint in something separate

Dagwood222,

I live in an apartment. I’ve had good luck with things like sage, thyme, lavender, etc.

just_chill,

I have actually managed to kill mine with mould (?) I should give it another try, but that last one put me off a bit.

Dagwood222,

Good luck.

jws_shadotak,

Water it less, maybe?

All I know about plants is second hand from my wife but I know too much water enables mold to grow in the pot

just_chill,

So many bad decisions were made with the aromatic plants, from the spot they were in, to the soil, the pot… it was doomed to fail.
If I remember correctly, I had three different ones, one dried, one developped mould (spider nest level of mould around the stems of the plants) and one root rot . keep in mind they were next to each other and watered the same. I still don’t know how I managed that.
You could have made a textbook example of that, just don’t tell people it’s based on real life, they wouldn’t believe you.

mick,

Hostas grow well in shade or partial sun. Look for varieties with variegated leaves.

just_chill,

They look so pretty, I want them all !

mick,

Haha, and they will flower too. I have a few pots with hostas and I leave them out year round. They’re perennials, so there won’t be any leaves in the winter, but they’ll grow back in the spring.

rbn,

How about spinach, chard, rocket or goutweed (typically that’s not cultivated but foraged from the wild but tastes great and loves shadowy places)…?

just_chill,

I don’t think I ever tasted goutweed, but I like all the others, thanks ! Also I would probably never have thought about these. So, thanks again.

rbn,

I know a spot at the side of a forest where there’s like an acre of wild goutweed. As goutweed tends to overgrow everything else, it’s really easy to harvest big portions in a short amount of time. I use it the same way as spinach. Either pure with some nutmeg and cream as a separate dish or just added to stir fries, pasta etc.

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