Balcony garden update

Time again for another tour through our balcony garden. Lots of green things are sprouting (or perhaps more accurately described--growing wild...) in every container. We've been picking away at a few of the crops (like the parsley, strawberries [neither shown here]) and others are getting close. We're also making mental notes of what to include (and exclude) in our garden plans for next year.

Potatoes! The stalks are huge. We've had to prop them up they're so big (and they've been bent over in the wind). Shall I mention again how hopefull I am to have a decent crop of purple potatoes? As long as the aphids Andrew's found on the leaves don't eat up these delicious tubers before we do.

Carrots. We aren't going to continue with our carrot attempts next year. Sure, we have some stalks popping up, but they're taking a lot longer to mature than what they should and there's only about a dozen sprouts in each tub. We might replace the carrots with more potatoes, or more zucchini.

Tomatoes! No problem here. We have tons of tomatoes ripening on both these plants plus more on the two upside down, 'whimpy' tomato hangers. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with these--maybe make a tomato-pepper spaghetti sauce?

Tomatoes in varying of states of ripeness. I wish they could all ripen at once so I could do a big harvest and make something substantial. Oh well.

Blooms on the beans, or are they peas? I'm not sure. It's one or the other. They're rather pretty at any rate, but no vegetables spotted on this plant as of yet.

Blooms on the other bean (I'm fairly certain about this one) plant. It's not as pretty as the purple flowers, but I've already pulled a few yellow beans off. Since my harvest was all of five beans I just chopped them up and threw them in a salad.

A full-view of the peas and beans climbing up their trellises. Some of the leaves are getting a little sun burnt as you can see, but otherwise they're growing quite happily.

Our over ridden red onion box. So here's a problem, we don't know when we're suppose to harvest the onions. The shoots are huge and drooping all over place, but how much is actually growing below the surface? I have no idea, I guess we'll leave them for now. More rouge peppers are popping up here (in the back is the mini-jungle of hanging tomatoes).

The blooms on the red onions.

Peppers. We have tons of these growing--beside the ones that seem to want to crop up spontaneously on their own (again, a product of using composted soil). If they reach full size we'll have plenty to roast up with the tomatoes into something outrageously delicious.

And then there's the red lettuce that decided to sprout in the pepper box--not that we put it there on purpose. It's grown fantastically, better then the lettuce we intentionally planted and seems to be a good companion plant for the peppers. We've been picking it periodically and adding it into our salads.

Banana peppers. We picked these up on a whim when we went to the Kuhlmann's Greenhouse and Nursery in the spring--they should probably be picked soon.

Rhubarb! I'm still occasionally picking stalks and adding them to my stash in my freezer. One day I will bake them into something fantastic, maybe muffins? I definitely won't have enough to do jam.

Ciao,

Andrea

Balcony garden 2011: Update!

To be completely honest, Andrew does most, if not all of the gardening. I'll occasionally water the plants, or offer my thoughts if requested, but otherwise it's pretty much up to him. It's not that I don't want/don't like to garden, it's that right now I have a major editing task, and whenever I'm home I pretty much want to be on the computer working (I haven't stopped cooking yet, but depending on how things go over the next couple of weeks...I might). Regardless of my lack of attention to the garden it's pretty green out there. This spring/summer has been a bit weird (cool-ish temperatures, lots of rain) but the vegetation around Edmonton doesn't seem to mind (nor do the mosquito). Let's hope things dry out and warm up a smidge so things can keep growing.

Our parsley taking over the box with our garlic.

I hadn't realize how much the parsley had flourished until Andrew pointed it out earlier this week. I figured I better start using it, so in it went to both lunch (lentil salad) and dinner (pasta) on Saturday.

Our red onions with something else sprouting in the box, I think it looks like a tomato plant.

We should probably to do some weeding given there are foreign plants growing in just about every box on the balcony. However, just because I think something needs to get done, doesn't necessarily translate into actually doing it. Besides the maybe tomato in the onion box, there are some other smaller sprouts that might be peppers...I guess that's what we get from using our compost soil (besides really healthy plants).

Can you see it, the strawberry? I don't think we're going to have too many to harvest.

I'm not sure we'll be able to do much with the strawberries besides pick them as they ripen and eat them. Oh well. The hanger bags seem to work reasonably well, but some of the strawberry plants started out scraggly, and being hung 12 floors above the ground, exposed to the wind doesn't seemed to have helped. Not surprisingly the plants that came from a local nursery are doing much better than the ones that came from Canadian Tire.

Our pumpkins, surrounded by lettuce, which we should probably start using.

Our pumpkins are growing, the zucchini is not and I have no idea why. The zucchini grew no problem last year (until it drowned...). Oh well. I've got pumpkin recipes for pastas and a super delicious cake, so if we get a few small-ish ones I'll be happy.

Our peppers are sprouting!

The peppers are coming along nicely. I don't think we'll do anything special with them besides cook and eat them. We planted a hot pepper variety as well, so if by chance they succeed we'll save them for something...not sure what as I'm not a big salsa fan.

The rubbarb growing like a weed, as it's apt to do.

The rhubarb totally makes up for the strawberries in my mind. I really need to harvest some of it soon and at least freeze it until I've got a nice big supply then make jam or pies or cakes or muffins or, or...I can't wait.

Our potato blue box, filled to the brim. I really, really hope we get some more potatoes this year.

Look at that, just look at it. If that box isn't full of potatoes this year I will break right down and cry--just watch me. I'll video tape it. We hilled them, and the foliage looks as happy as can be, so maybe? I guess only time will tell.

Beans! I honestly don't remember which ones, but they're starting to climb.

And finally beans. We planted a bunch of different varieties and don't remember which one's which--I'm hoping it will become more apparent when we harvest and eat them. They're looking pretty happy right now and they're starting their accend up the trellises. Hopefully they won't get too much sun in their spot and fry like we've had happen in our earlier attempts to grow peas.

Ciao,

Andrea

Balcony Garden 2011: new and improved!

Because we just can't help ourselves, Andrew and I have expanded our growing plans for our balcony garden yet again. I'm not so sure this was the smartest decision ever since our success so far has been relatively limited. We harvested about ten tiny potatoes, a dozen twisted carrots, a couple of small (but crisp) peppers and one zucchini last summer. Grant you, as I've discussed before, last year's weather made it difficult for even proper farmers to cultivate their crops, and we did produce edible vegetables so I guess that's enough of an incentive to plunge ahead with our plans for this year. So, if you're willing to indulge me, come along for a 'tour' of our garden.

View of the balcony, stage left. We have two hangers, the red for strawberries, the green for whimpy tomatoes. We tried to start the strawberries ourselves, and we're still trying, but they're tiny and if they'll ever be ready for outdoor life it won't be until next year. We bought starter plants from Canadian Tire instead. Ditto almost exactly for the tomatoes. Below the hangers, attached to the railings, are our peppers. Yet again, ditto. We tried to get plants started on our own, but they dried out and died when we were away in Florida. Further below on the ground are: a clump of fiddleheads, potatoes (purple), carrots (also purple), rhubarb and an assortment of grasses. More on these later.

Balcony view stage right. Same hangers, but underneath we've got garlic (growing like crazy) and onions. We had some very dry starter onions in our closet, which we threw in the green planter for the heck of it. After two weeks (or more, I've forgotten) we hadn't seen anything break the surface, so we tore them up and replaced them with fresh seeds we grabbed at the market. Below, in the blue bin are more carrots (these ones are regular orange) and the circular planters you can see just at the bottom hold pumpkin and zucchini (one set in each centre container) and lettuce around the rims. The buckets off to the side are the home of various beans.

Our lettuce. We only put it in last week, but it's already doing quite well.

The rhubarb has come through two winters of being left out on the balcony (unlike Andrew's poor grape vine, which didn't make it). I can't wait for it to thicken up so I can make some jam, or a pie, or something. I imagine there will probably only be enough for one project.

Those tiny green sprouts are our purple carrots. Pretty much all of the seeds I planted are now poking out of the dirt in both tubs. There should be enough room in these containers for the carrots to grow properly this year.

Fiddleheads! I was excited to see these at the market this weekend, and they were four bucks for a bundle. We don't really know how to grow it, but we'll figure it out somehow. One of the booths had asparagus, but it's supposed to take a couple of years for asparagus to reach a harvest-ready point, so there wasn't much point in bringing any home when we don't expect to be in Edmonton for more than two years.

We've already added on a couple of inches of dirt to our potato box and they just keep growing. I'm crossing my fingers that when we dig them up in September, we'll be rewarded with enough potatoes for two meals...maybe? I'd just like to find potatoes bigger than ping-pong balls? I really, truly, thought we were going to have a blue-box full of potatoes last year, I just don't want to be as disappointed with our harvest this year.

The garlic--I kind of wish I'd planted more. I suppose we could if our other crops fail, we'll see how things go.

And that's our garden. I'll report on how it's doing later on in the summer--and try to take some better pictures next time. I was in a bit of a hurry on Monday, plus it was gray and gross outside.

Ciao,

Andrea