Thursday 11 October 2012

Goodbye bountiful* balcony

*barren

 This year I decided I would have an Edible Balcony.

My balcony is like a sun trap. It catches rays all day long - how could anything not grow on my balcony especially if I remember to water and talk to the plants!

I'm going to turn into a farmer(ess) and start blaming the wet summer for the poor produce.

First up, my strawberries. I got lovely healthy plants that showed a lot of promise, but delivered a lot of disappointment.







What the hell is THIS?!


I planted 10 (TEN!) sunflower seeds and cared for and nurtured them. 


And out of the TEN seeds I planted, just 2 fought their way through and managed to show signs of life 


They took about 4 months to blossom, but it was worth the wait. They were beautiful and really, really cheery. I was quite selfish and instead of sharing their happy faces with my neighbours I turned them so they were looking in the window and facing me hehee.


These flipping herbs. I grew these from seeds. They took AGES. Every day I checked on them. I talked to them. And I was delighted when little shoots of hope appeared! 



Eventually they were put outside for just an hour or so a day to acclimatise to what would become their new environment. I handled these seedlings with kid gloves! If I had wanted something that needed so much attention I would have had kids! Or a cat. 



And they got stronger and more robust. I made room for them in my herb box with my chives and sage. And then they gave up and died! 


Tomatoes. Come on tomatoes, you won't let me down will you?! 


I can't really complain too much about my tomato plants. They produced a reasonable yield (hark at me with the farming lingo!), and I got around 20 baby tomatoes altogether. 



I'm not sure what I'll do next year. I might just plant 100 sunflower seeds (and maybe ten will grow) as I got to most pleasure out of them. 

How did your garden grow this year? :) 

Say hello on twitter @karenstrunks


2 comments:

Dave Harte said...

Why not try putting in some garlic? You would plant it now as it likes to be over-wintered (doesn't care how cold it gets). Might be something to keep you interested over the winter. Just get a single bulb from a garden centre and then plant as many of the cloves as you can fit in.

Karen Strunks said...

Thanks Dave! I would never have thought of garlic, but I do like it. And as you say, it'll give me a balcony interest to tide me over until the spring.

I think I can see one primrose coming up. I might get a few more for a bit of colour.

I hope your allotment provided lots of goodness this year! I went along to a National Trust country house the other week (I can't remember which one!) and I had never seen an allotment like it. It had every vegetable you could think of and was blooming. Mind you, they seemed to have a full time team work on it!


Thanks for the tips! :)

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...