Sometimes it’s hard figuring our how much sun you particular balcony or patio gets. Afterall, you’re probably at work for part of the morning and all of the afternoon, and don’t want to spend your weekend glued to your balcony taking notes about the amount of sunshine it gets.
Well, I just came across a device that is made for you called SunCalc(you can purchase it from Burpee Seeds). You simply place SunCalc in a pot or the ground in the area you would like to measure. Make sure the face is parallel to the ground. Start off in the morning (between 7am and 9am) and leave it in place for 12 hours. When you retrieve it at night one of four lights will be illuminated, indicating whether that particular location gets either full shade, partial shade, partial sun, or full sun. SunCalc can then be reused in another location.
If your gardening space has walls on two or more sides, I would place the SunCalc in the middle front, middle back, and each side of your space. The walls may either shade or reflect sunshine for all or part of the day, and you may have different amounts of sunshine in different places, even on a small balcony. I would also test your garden in spring and fall, because the movement of the sun and change in the amount of leaves on nearby trees may also affect the amount of sun your balcony gets.
If you’re plants are struggling and you suspect the problem is that you selected the wrong type of plant for your amount of sunlight, this is definitely 30 bucks well spent.
