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.

Garden Pics

1.Top orange pot - Chocolate Mint
2.Underneath that is a very pretty volunteer plant. I have no idea what it is, but it gets no care (other than water), stays green, and cascades beautifully.
3.Right side is the 'prostrate rosemary.'

Chives - still growing strong, after several years and occasional cat snackings.







The volunteer garlic, with yet-un-sprouted lettuce seed.






Collards (orange pot) and Cabbage, in the green pot.
















And the lettuce mix.

Balcony Garden

As I said, our balcony is covered - it gets full shade after the morning. After researching, I found out that my best chances for food success were leaf & root crops. Personal preference led me to heritage and organic varieties, so I planted an organic 'pot lettuce' mix, 'Grand Champion' Collards, 'Early Wonder Tall Top' beets, and 'Derby Day' cabbage. The experimental volunteer is the organic garlic I bought for cooking, until it sprouted - so it's in the dirt, and we'll see how it goes. The existing plants are chocolate mint, prostrate rosemary (it smells wonderful!) and chives.

So far, the herbs are happy, the lettuce is a happy tangled mess, and the collards & cabbage are doing well. The garlic is just peeking it's tips above the soil. The beets would have been much happier, I think, if I had read the directions right and planted them 8 weeks earlier than I did - for some reason I missed the 'plant 6 weeks before last frost' on the package, and planted them after that. Ah well.