A couple things I would add to this. First is that I will never stop singing the praises of indeterminate varieties of tomatoes. If you’ve only got space for 2 plants but you want to harvest tomatoes for months, get indeterminate varieties, and make sure you prune them well.
Second is that particularly on a high balcony, water is going to be important to manage. The sun isn’t intense in Copenhagen, but further south, the combination of sunlight, heat, and wind can dry out plants and soil very fast. My balcony (its actually a porch) isn’t that high, but the sun gets pretty strong, and it gets hot. This is compounded by the fact that my porch is painted black, and you can easily feel how it is significantly warmer due to that paint. Obviously, keeping an eye on watering, or setting up irrigation (which is what I do) is a solution. Other things that are helpful are bigger pots, thicker pots (ceramics do better than thin plastic), and covering the soil with something light colored like straw.
Wow, this is very useful information! Thank you for sharing. I’m interested in your irrigation system… Can you tell us more about it? (or maybe even make a community post about it :P)
Also, for those who aren’t familiar:
“One of the classifications you often see on a tomato plant or packet of tomato seed is ‘Determinate’ or ‘Indeterminate’. In a nutshell, these terms describe whether the actual plant grows like a bush (Determinate) or like a vine (Indeterminate).” Source
Determinate grows until it reaches a set size, puts out all its flowers, then all the tomatoes ripen around the same time. It’s great if you are a farmer, or you have space for many plants to stagger when they ripen, or if you want to can tomatoes. Indeterminate puts out flowers as it grows, so you have tomatoes at all stages at once. I had a single cherry tomato plant that easily gave me 300 tomatoes this year.
Maybe I will make a post about the irrigation. It really helped my gardening cause before, I’d inevitably travel for a week during the summer and come back to a bunch of dead plants.
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