Balcony Garden Updates

Plants are all settling in nicely to their pots.

 

Teeny soon to be spaghetti squash!

 

 

 

Cucumbers!

 

 

Balcony Garden - cucumbers

Trying something new with cucumbers this year.  I planted them inside a tomato cage.  I saw examples of this on Pinterest so I figure it's worth trying.  (The water bottle has pinholes in it so when I water I can fill up the bottle and have it wet the soil slower - and hopefully longer so it won't be dry when I get home at night.  Also seen on Pinterest, I did about 1/3 my pots that way to see what happens. It's the one literish size before you tell me the pot is too small.)

weekend's balcony bounty

Sunday's picking - not a good shot- just to annoy my father in law

Seriously, the rainbow chard just keeps growing back after I cut it! I love chard, Curt probably not as thrilled - but I love it in my breakfast eggs so that's where the extra goes.

Bunch of tomatoes - the tiny yellow ones are coyotes.. OMG so perfectly sweet! A few mini red bells made their way to this bowl.

Early wonders, an overripe kermit and cukes.

Mini sweet bells - these seem to cycle one color at a time, had purples early last week, yellows a few days later, now reds.. although some more purples aren't far behind.  Grace these are the mini bells, my goldens, purple and chocolate full size peppers are still most definitely green.

Just some pictures of the balcony garden as a whole

Planting pretty much done

The herb tower was one of the last things I had to do (top tier still waiting for seedlings to be big enough to withstand an actual rain)  Yes, it's a lot of straw, a lot of it will blow away, the rest will mulch it for the summer.



I also got my cucumbers started.  I had some trouble the last 2 summers with the cucumbers, and then it dawned on me - bush cucumbers stay low to the ground and want to bush out, I want the plants to climb the trellis - so I'm back with the burpless (less seeds) vining kind this summer. Cross your fingers!



My micro Tom has flowers!  How cute is it??  (that's an 8" pot if you're wondering.



One last note - I bought this for the front - I love this!! It looks like the backdrop if a sci-fi Martian flick!!!



It's going to drop into the high 40's the next 2 nights, so the HOT peppers and the eggplants will be coming back inside.  Everything else should be ok.

Eggplants & Cucumbers

Two kinds of cucumbers - lemon cucumbers  on the left and bush cucumbers on the right.



Three kinds of eggplants.  From top to bottom  Calliope, Ghostbuster & Fairy Tale.

Hanging Gardens

So here is take 2 on this post.  I tried posting this with my phone and screwed it up somehow. 

This spring has felt like it has rained 3 out of 4 days.  For 3 different weeks it has rained everyday!  I work outside for 3/4 of my day, so trust me - it rained.  there was more than one day  when I did my rendition of the Swamp thing leaving puddles of water behind me as I walked into the building - I looked like I jumped in the pond!  And swam around long enough to really soak up some water - even with a raincoat on.

The rain and the accompanying cool weather has pretty much repressed a lot of the growth on my plants.  I have a bush tomato that actually fought through and has a bunch of tomatoes - but there hasn't been enough sun/heat to start ripening them.  But you want pictures right??



The two outside hanging pots have hot pepper plants in them - three in the near one - 2 in the far one.  The middle basket has an upside down tomato with basil from seed on top.  The planter on the rail has hers (they do well in the wet).  On the ground the closest pot is a rhubarb, then 2 tomatoes then in the long pot is a tomato and 2 kinds of cucumbers.



Here we have the bush tomato, three different eggplants, three sweet peppers in the long pot and a lemon tomato up close.



Here we have a sweet n neat tomato (supposedly it only grows a foot tall- I never grew this , or heard of it before) flanked by 2 hot peppers.



chocolate mint and 2 hot peppers



Two more upside down tomatoes with basil from seed up top and oregano in the foreground.



This tomato hangs above the bush tomato, but didn't make it into the picture - as you can see it is starting to bud.

This week coming up is supposed to hit the 90's by Wednesday.  There is no rain in the forecast.  So, while I will have to water more - I'm hoping for some good plant growth.

Balcony Garden Post 1

Or as Curt refers to it "the upper 40".  It still has about another week of work to get everything settled, but I can show you some of it.  I don't have a picture, but we have sliding glass doors. These open to the center of the balcony.  In the center area, we have 2 chairs and a little table.  During the summer, Curt and I will occasionally have a meal out there, but more often dessert or a snack.  We read out there, Curt plays with his electronic toys, I knit.  To the left, there is not as much sun - although after the power company trimmed some trees there is a fair bit.  To the right is an L shape section that wraps the south east end of the building.  It gets a lot of sun. Peppers and tomatoes love being there as do eggplants.  I start my cucumbers and herbs on that side but move them left by July 4th to protect them from summer's harshness.  

Speaking of cucumbers, here are my three plants and their trellis.  If you look carefully you will see I have a bunch of baby cuke's already.  I will probably knock 1/2 off, to help the fruit that will be left.



One of my tomato plants - a Bush Early Girl - is already up to my hip, and as you can see in this pic, has some little green tomatoes already.




My Container Choice tomato also has several flowers but no fruit yet.





My Miro-tom - the actual world's smallest tomato.





My "pet" as I couldn't get it last year - the Coyote tomato - a low acid yellow cherry. It is starting to bud - but no actual flowers yet.




 

I finally have veggies!

Those peppers on top are called cowhorns - does anyone know how to use them? I never grew them before. I may end up dicing and freezing some of these peppers, I have more to pick tomorrow.





Has anyone grown okra before?? I never have. First off, I was told the plants would be 4 feet tall - see I even was prepared with bamboo stakes. I guess with all the rain they are stunted. They are barely 13 inches tall! But now I realize I do not know how to tell when they are ready to be picked. I sent pics to my FIL -- He grows them every summer.

It isn't raining!!

We actually had a few hours of sunlight this afternoon. I of course spent that whole time in the laundromat because I was too unmotivated with all the rain last week to do laundry. I'm still trying to motivate to bring in the rest of the stuff from the car. So I really didn't get to go out and revel in the sun!!

Yesterday it stopped raining for a few hours and I took some pictures of my container garden. I need some more sunlight so the tomato and pepper plants start growing. Right now the only thing growing is mint, basil and dill weed.

Container Garden Continued

Ok - as mentioned in yesterday's post - here is one of the "baby" cucumbers. You can still see the flower attached to the top. I can't begin to tell you how glad I am I decided to give cucumbers one last try. From now on all my cucumbers will definitely be grown upside down. The white string you see in the picture is the string trellis that is stretching from the handrail to the roof eaves. i am so amazed at those curly things (technical term) on the vine. When I first hung the trellis they had wrapped around 4 or 5 times in less than 3 hours! If I think about it I'll take a picture of them next time I do a container update.
Now here is the biggest of the sweet marconi peppers. I have never grown these before so I am not 100% sure what exactly I am going to do with it once I pick it. I guess it's sweet (hmmm what powers of deduction) so I'll try a piece raw to see how it'll do in salad. And fry up a piece to see about cooking with it. Although darker it is about the same shape as an Italian frying pepper. (yeah, I'm doing good, let's cook based on shape!)
Now I can tell you in no uncertain terms that this pepper here is HOT. It is the Anaheim pepper. I love it in mango salsa, regular salsa, makes a great omelet, spicy tomato sauce. I love it's versatility. Besides the heat it has a spicier flavor than say a jalapeno. My daughter likes it mixed with browned meat(usually ground buffalo) diced tomato and then mixed with velveta or other melty cheese as a dip or w/o the cheese sauce to make nacho's with lots of cheese melted on top!

We "harvested" a cucmber on Sunday!

Wacky girl with her "harvest" . We had our first "non-herbal" harvest on Sunday. The long awaited cucumber was harvested and turned into a yummy cucumber salad. This is not only our first veggie harvest of the season, but our first actual successful cucumber ever! and to top it all off we beat my mom, whose biggest cucumber is currently only 1 inch long. My mom lives about 25 miles east and at a lower elevation, so she usually beats us by at least a week to 10 days harvesting anything. While I don't think I'll be using the topsy turvy planters next year (way to heavy once filled) I am going to be growing my cucumbers upside down from now on.

Garden Update

My bush cucumber is doing really well in it's upside down basket. I had given up on cucumbers because I had never actually harvested one. I have a bunch of flowers, one cucumber is about 2-1/2 inches long.
Here you can see the cucumber I referred to before. I have some net trellising that I am going to hang between the deck railing and the fascia board under the roof to give the plant something to "grab" otherwise I'm afraid it will start vining over to the oak tree, which has a branch about 2 - 3 feet away from the deck. Then I wouldn't be able to get to my cucumbers!!
This is the first tomato which showed up. According to the size on the tag, it has about another inch to go before it starts to (hopefully) ripen. My husband has been eying it, becuase it's a bush goliath tomato, which I got for his sandwiches!

One side of my deck, my herb pot, tomatoes and peppers.

Grape tomatoes in the topsy turvy. I am going to hang some net trellising for it too, 0therwise my downstairs neighbors will get all my tomatoes!