Balcony garden 2009: Day 17

I felt really busy over the weekend and for some reason the thought of taking the time to write up a short blog entry on how our garden was doing seemed impossible. (In fact, I didn't leave my apartment from Friday afternoon (~3:00 pm) straight through to Sunday night (~6:30 pm) so why I couldn't spare the time is beyond me.) I thought I had better provide a quick update before next weekend as all kinds of things are growing in our little planters.

The sweet peas (which I frequently mistake for being green beans...) are growing like crazy. I sometimes wonder, if I sat long enough, could I actually see them growing? They have little shoots that coil themselves around the trellis to hold themselves up. In my mind they're like alien growths shooting out and grabbing on to things. Pretty cool.





Carrots. They're coming. They're pretty tiny right now and we've had to weed a bunch out so they'd have room.

The radishes don't appear to be ready yet, despite the fact that the package said it would only take them 2 weeks to grow. I tried to dig one up on Saturday to see if they were ready and well...I couldn't find anything. I guess that means they're not ready.



We've got wee little strawberries growing. I'd guess about half of the plants we sowed have broken the surface so far, I hope the remaining plants will succeed as well. It will be sometime before they're ready to transplant outside.

Finally, the tomatoes are coming along swimmingly. I'm not sure if we're going to let them all grow, or if we'll pitch some of them. I guess it depends on whether or not I can find some rhubarb to plant in our second planter.



Ciao,

Andrea

Balcony garden 2009: Day 8

So far, so good. Our radishes (the bottom row of the planter) are doing well. According to the seed package they should only take 2 weeks to grow, which means that next weekend we could be munching on home grown radishes!


Our peas are starting to come up too, although it will be sometime before they're ready to be eaten. They're still pretty short, but eventually we'll have to start training them to grow onto the trellis behind them.


We have a teeny, tiny carrot starting to grow!

Ciao,

Andrea

Balcony garden 2009: Day 1

Last year Andrew and I attempted to grow stuff on our balcony. It worked, somewhat. We had a lot of delicious green onions and various other herbs. Our peas grew well initially then got fried in the sun and nothing else worked. We decided that we would try again this year and, perhaps foolishly, expand the operation.


Above are our strawberry plant starters. The seeds are minuscule and they have to grow indoors for 10-12 weeks before we can move them outside. We planted thirty-two seeds altogether as we have planters that hold thirty-two plants. I hope we have enough crop so that I can try making jam. The three cartons at the bottom of the picture are tomatoes--for Andrew. Although, if we have any success I might try making some tomato sauce or something.


These planters contain peas (in the back row), carrots (they fill up the planter in the back, and just the middle row in the one in the front) and radishes. The variety of radishes we purchase are suppose to grow in two weeks, so we could harvest our first vegetables in just fourteen days. Carrots take 50-60 days, but if they work out, we might be able to grow a second crop.

I'll report on our garden as it progresses.

Ciao,

Andrea