After the final pot-up of all my plants (fyi I have tomato, basil, and chilli plants), my balcony gardening journey was far from finished, of course. What followed was the steps that only show up once the plants are settled and you’re paying attention day to day.

Here are a few lessons I picked up along the way, jotted down for my future self in the garden. And maybe they’ll come in handy for you, too.

Basil Likes to Stay a Little Thirsty

Basil prefers its soil on the drier side (just for a little while). It likes the top layer to dry out a little before the next drink, so I water it less often than my chilli and tomato plants. Once I stopped treating all three the same, the basil looked much happier for it.

The Flowers That Wouldn’t Fruit

Once the flowers appeared, I assumed the rest would be easy by keep watering, keep fertilizing, then sit back and wait for the fruit to arrive. It didn’t work out that way, especially with the Capsicum annuum. I watched flower after flower drop off without ever becoming a chilli.

The culprit was most probably: the location. My plants live on a glazed balcony, which means no bees drift in and barely a breeze reaches them, so they never get the natural pollination that wind and insects usually provide. Some people say it’s normal to lose a share of flowers, since not every bloom turns into fruit. I’ve come to believe both things are true: not all of them were ever going to make it, and mine also weren’t being pollinated properly.

Once I acknowledged the issue, I started pollinating every flowering plant myself by either with a cotton bud or simply by giving the plants a gentle shake whenever I wandered over to check on them. Sure enough, a few days to a week later, some of those flowers finally turned into chillies.

A Tomato Tale: When in Doubt, Add More Soil

This one was all about my tomatoes. I have three tomato plants, and one of them was noticeably slow to fruit while the others were already coming along. Checking on it regularly, I noticed I could catch a glimpse of the roots peeking through the surface, a sign it needed more soil to cover them, so the plant could reach more of the nutrients stored below. I topped up that pot, and not long after, several tomatoes began to appear on the once-stubborn plant.

Throw Away the Watering Schedule

Summer in Finland this year was a wild ride, at least through June and July. One week brought a heatwave; not long after, the days turned grey, sometimes raining from morning to night. Watering the same amount across such different weather made no sense.

So now, the first thing I do after waking up is check the soil to decide whether the plants need water at all. During the heatwave I watered every two days; in ordinary Finnish summer weather, every three does the trick.

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That’s all I’ve learned so far, and I’ll keep updating this post as my balcony gardening journey continues.