A printable kit for people who have never grown food, or who tried once and watched it die. Twelve forgiving plants, a week-by-week plan, and a planting calendar built from your own ZIP code.
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A one-day check tells you which of the 12 plants your balcony can actually grow, before you buy a single seed.
Type your ZIP code. The calendar turns your local frost dates into planting windows for every plant, spring and fall.
A short checklist for each week of the first 60 days: what to sow, what you should be seeing, and when to start picking.
They are ordinary, they are fixable, and each one has its own page in the guide.
Lettuce is content with 3 to 5 hours of direct sun. A tomato wants 6 to 8. The kit starts with a sun check, so you choose plants your space can actually grow.
No holes, or a layer of gravel that was supposed to help and doesn’t. Roots sitting in water rot.
Garden soil compacts in a container until air and water stop moving. The guide tells you what to look for on the bag instead.
Basil is damaged at 50°F. Lettuce turns bitter in summer heat. Planting dates depend on your local frost dates, not on your hardiness zone.
A pot can need water twice on a hot, windy day and none for several days in a cool spell. A ten-second finger test beats any schedule.
It puts those five decisions in order, gives you a short checklist for each week, and tells you plainly what to expect and when.
See what’s insideEverything prints on ordinary letter paper. Open it on your phone in the garden aisle, or pin the pages up by the door.
Eleven short chapters from choosing a spot to your first harvest: sun, containers, potting mix, watering, when to plant, the 12 plants one page each, a week-by-week plan, harvesting, a symptom finder, herbs on a windowsill and a glossary.
Planting windows counted from your own frost dates, for spring and fall. The online builder fills the dates in from your ZIP code.
The 12 plants and the rules that matter most, on two pages to print back to back and keep by the door.
A three-container starter garden, a budget worksheet with example prices, and what to leave on the shelf.
What can share a pot and what cannot, with what is supported kept apart from what is only tradition.
Sun check, pot map, planting log, weekly check, harvest log, seed inventory and season review.
These are pictures of the real pages. Tap one to read it.
Each one has its own page in the guide. Tap a plant to see a few of its facts.
The quickest way to eat something you grew.
The kit is clear about which is which. Here is every plant’s typical time to a first harvest, as published by university Extension services.
Typical ranges in good conditions: the right season and enough sun. Weather, shade and variety change them, and they are not a guarantee. Mint is left out: bought as a plant, it can be snipped as soon as it is growing strongly.
Planting dates hang on two frost dates most beginners have never heard of. This is the lookup the kit’s calendar is built on.
Freeze dates: NOAA U.S. Climate Normals 1991–2020, nearest station with freeze records. ZIP locations: U.S. Census Bureau. Nothing you type here is sent to us.
This is the leaf lettuce page, exactly as it is in the PDF.
The growing advice was compiled from 134 publications of U.S. university Cooperative Extension services, the public, research-based gardening programs of state universities. Frost dates come from NOAA’s climate normals.
Some of the publishers cited
Balcony Bounty is an independent publication of general gardening information. It is not affiliated with, reviewed by or endorsed by NOAA, the USDA or any university, and it is not professional advice for your particular home.
| On your own | With Balcony Bounty | |
|---|---|---|
| Planting dates | Find your frost dates, then count weeks for each plant | Type your ZIP code; the calendar does the counting |
| What fits your space | Trial and error | A one-day sun check matched to the 12 plants |
| How to grow each plant | Scattered across dozens of university pages | One page per plant, same layout, sources named |
| What to do this week | Guesswork | A week-by-week checklist for the first 60 days |
| When something looks wrong | Searching symptoms | A symptom finder that sends you to the right page |
| Keeping track | Memory | A printable planner and a quick reference card |
No subscription. No automatic charges. Sales tax may apply where you live.
14-day money-back guarantee. If the kit is not what you expected, email us within 14 days of your purchase and we refund the full amount. You don’t need to give a reason. Details in the Refund Policy.
No. Balcony Bounty is a set of 6 PDF files (83 pages in total) that you download right after payment and can print at home. Pots, potting mix, seeds and plants are not included.
That is who it is written for. Everything in the kit grows in containers on a balcony, patio, deck, stoop or doorstep. What you do need is direct sun: at least 3 to 5 hours for salad leaves and most herbs, and 6 or more for tomatoes, peppers and beans. The first thing the guide has you do is count your sun, before you spend anything.
It depends on the plant, the season and your weather, so nobody can promise you a date. As a guide, university Extension services give 20 to 45 days from seed for radishes, 45 to 60 for leaf lettuce and about 6 weeks for basil, in good growing conditions. Cherry tomatoes and peppers take much longer and are not part of the 60-day plan.
The Shopping List builds a three-container starter garden. With the example prices we saw on large U.S. retailers’ websites in October 2026, that basket came to $44.28: three food-grade buckets, a bag of potting mix, four seed packets and a bag of onion sets. Prices vary by store, region and season, and the list has a column for what you actually pay.
The calendar is built on frost dates from NOAA weather stations, matched to more than 33,000 U.S. ZIP codes. In places that almost never freeze, such as southern Florida, coastal southern California and Hawaii, a frost-based calendar does not apply, and the kit tells you so and points you to your state Extension service instead.
Yes, if you want to be ready. Cool-season plants are sown weeks before the last spring frost, earlier than most beginners expect, and again in late summer for fall. Buying ahead gives you time to check your sun, find your dates and collect containers. And the guide has a chapter on keeping basil, chives, parsley, mint and cilantro going on a windowsill through the cold months.
It is written for exactly that reader, and it is honest about what goes wrong: too little sun for the plant chosen, pots with no drainage, garden soil instead of potting mix, planting warm-weather plants while it is cold, and watering by the calendar. The guide has a page on each, and a symptom finder for when something looks off. It cannot guarantee your plants will live. It can make the usual mistakes much harder to make.
The kit was compiled from 134 publications of U.S. university Cooperative Extension services and from NOAA climate data, and it names its sources at the bottom of every page, with web addresses at the back. It is a beginner’s guide of general information, not professional advice for your particular home, and the universities and agencies it cites did not review or endorse it.
Email us within 14 days of your purchase and we refund the full amount. You don’t need to give a reason.
As soon as your payment is approved you see a download link, and the same link is emailed to the address you used at checkout. The files open on any phone, tablet or computer and print on ordinary letter paper.
Six printable files, one short checklist a week, and planting dates for your own ZIP code.
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