First Harvests

From the garden: A mix of turnip and chard seedlings from thinning our plantings today. Very yummy when we steamed them for dinner!


From the balcony, a scented bouquet. Clockwise, from top left is rosemary, lemon balm (in the 'center'). cilantro, chives, orange mint, and basil. All the herbs were dried for later.

Strawberry season is in full swing, but I don't have pictures because they don't last long enough! Strawberry shortcake desserts, and we have put up 3 dozen half-pints of jams plus dried some as well. And I'll likely put up more - very yummy!

Spring Planting

We prepped the balcony for planting today. The seeds will actually go in on Tuesday, which according to our local planting calendar is a better day for that.



We swept, hung the manger planters, and re-arranged the furniture. The lowest level of pots (black & grey) will be sweet potatoes - I've started a sweet potato in water to grow my slips, since I only need two or three. The two pots above the black pot have herbs in them: Orange mint above and lemon balm below. The one on the grey pot will be planted with collards, as will be another 12" pot near the rosemary. The planters will be planted with cold-tolerant beets, spinach, and a lettuce mix.

The Swiss Chard was planted last spring and survived our winter just fine. I'll add more to this pot, and start adding leaves from them to my spring salads, too.

Lemon Balm:

small acreage

85% of the world’s farms are small farms, smaller than 5 hectares

from Casaubon's Book (blog)

5 hectares is 12.35 acres. I've heard that called micro-farming before, like it's a rare thing. But at the same time, it's amazing how much potential there is in a small acreage. Please read the article the quote is from. Good information, and great for getting one thinking.

Balcony Gardening

I've cleaned the garden, mulched, and re-arranged. I do need to go back out and pull up the collards and cabbage - I lost them to cutworms. I hadn't taken any precautions, now I know better! And they ate them up in less than a week. Next time - toilet paper tubes around stalks, and cornmeal on the soil. Also more crushed eggshell might be a nice deterrent.

The picture shows the lettuce (since bolted) and a new parsley plant from the nursery. The wood in the front just looks nice and is essentially garden sculpture. Both of the garden stands you see were discards from others.

So, this summer I got a few salads worth of greens and a bit of chives. The fall planting will be when the heat breaks in September. I hope.


Related Links:
Self-Sufficiency Garden: Talks about gardening, including fruit trees, in small spaces like balconies and condo 'yards.' Includes specific varieties to try, and sources for them.
Journey to Forever: Very useful site. This page has links to more information and books about kitchen gardening in containers, without necessarily costing a great deal.
What to Plant Now: at Mother Earth News. Shows 8 US regions, and each region has suggestions for sowing (indoors or out) or transplanting, for March to September.
How Much Veg to Plant: at Grow Organic Food. Summarizes how much to grow to feed a family of two adults and three children, in regular garden rows, with suggestions for how much to harvest for each meal. The information can easily be used for most situations, I would think.

Tomato Comparison

Just for fun, since I was only able to do this with two varieties. I wanted more, but they're out of season till fall (at least, at the farm I'm buying these from). The original idea was to try the old and heirloom varieties and compare them, and see which ones I might like to grow. Someday, when I have enough sun :)

Click on the pictures to see them larger.

Omar Tomato

Old family heirloom from Lebanon. This photo ( and the other one) was taken after about a week on my counter, and it's sliced in half to show the structure inside.

Plenty of flesh inside, nice flavor, great general purpose tomato. I did have to toss 2 of them due to rot while I had them. Of course, had I used the fridge, I wouldn't have had so much problem with that. Nice, but I'm not overly impressed.

Old Brooks Tomato

Old variety, not quite heirloom. Good for canning per the descriptions. I used it for a slicing tomato on my sandwiches. Excellent. A sprinkle of basil, and it was so good. No problems with keeping them on the counter for a week, either.

This one I'll look for, when we have the sun....

Independance Day Challenge- Week 7

1. Plant something – transplanted a parsley plant from the nursery, put down mulch on all the pots. Balcony looks very nice now. Checked at the nursery, and confirmed it's really too hot to plant anything until September.

2. Harvest something – Nothing.

3. Preserve something – Still working on a full stock of green peppers (almost done!).

4. Reduce waste – Regular recycling and eating of leftovers.

5. Preparation and Storage – does clearing out 4 boxes of clothing count? One was donated, two boxes were summer clothes I'd forgotten and are being washed & put back in the closet..

6. Build Community Food Systems – Visited farmers market, bought veggies. Brought co-worker with me, and bought food for another on request.

7. Eat the Food – Steamed squash for dinner, sliced cucumbers are now a staple snack. Ate venison from the freezer. Tried fried green tomatoes on the family (neutral reviews).

8. Crafting – Did some clothing repair.

Market Basket & More

Omar Heirloom Tomatoes, Squash, Green Tomatoes, a dozen cucumbers and nearly as many green peppers (most peppers aren't in the picture).

And in the mail:
The seeds I ordered from Sustainable Seed Co. Quick service, and I like that they encourage you to save seeds. Farmer John includes descriptions from old catalogs on his seeds; really neat!
The baskets they are one are the ones I picked up over the weekend - the railing planters. They'll get planted in these later in the year.

Window-box Gardens

I found this article about window-box gardens. It mentions (among other things) that some of the easiest vegetables to grow are lettuce, radishes, beetroot, rainbow chard and rosemary. At our last apartment, I grew basil on the back porch - one pot provided me with a winter's supply. And I use basil a lot; it's one I put in nearly everything.

On the balcony - the lettuce & collards are still happy, and the cabbage is just starting to form heads. I haven't pulled the beets yet but I've given up on them - still just a leaf or two, and 3" tall. I don't think they like southern summers :) I have one happy branch of mint. I really need to re-pot it, and give it some fresh dirt. Hopefully that will perk it back up.

I've also got to go wandering through seed catalogs, and see what I can find that I can grow for winter. Swiss chard, radishes, turnips, perhaps another round of cabbage or greens, definitely lettuce. Remember, when planting a balcony garden. one can always buy sampler packets of seed. I did this when I could, and will get a few plantings from each packet.