Adventures on my Balcony: Yes, I made an icon, just for this.
Okay, not only for this, since I'm kind of hoping to be at least semi-regular with posting anything to do with gardening but yeah, I still have a lot of free icon space and I guess I can be generous with it?
Anyway, this is about me rediscovering my love for messing around with soil and seedlings and puttering about on (my parents') balcony this year. I did a lot of puttering on my own balcony back when I still had one and I kind of let it slide when I moved back in with my parents (since Dad loves puttering around on his balcony, too and he's been there longer so it was always kinda his territory, you know?) but this year, Mom bought a gardening magazine about herb gardening and I discovered the wonderful world of internet plant shops and woooooo, lots of wonderful plants on our balcony and all for meeeeeeeeee! (Dad gave me space, with the words "You have to take care of them!" Plants are my family's pets...)
But, okay, let's start from the beginning, shall we? Because, in the beginning, there was a mini hothouse, plus pots and seeds for basil, parsley and cheeves and it looked like this:
Cute, huh?
Unfortunately, one of the glass panes cracked and now I'll have to go looking for someone able to repair the hothouse for next year.
Anyway, at least the seeds all sprouted. At first. And it looked like this:
Unfortunately, they never made it to adulthood :(
They were, however, my step back into the world of gardening and next came dill and different basil seeds, which, at first looked like this:
Awwwwwwww, cute! And they did make it to adulthood! Yay! Look how big it got:
And uh now it's not big anymore but there are interesting other plants in the pot (at least one of them was not intended. Where the hell did it come from?):
So, next step: ordering seeds and plants from Rühlemann's \o/ In seeds, I got nasturtium (Kapuzinerkresse), common watercress, Japanese waterpeper (or whatever it's called in English, LEO just gave up) and mustard seeds. Nasturtium and watercress went really well, Japanese thingy... not so much and I still haven't tried the mustard stuff. I still might, though. Anyway, picture, nasturtium first.
Aw, toddler nasturtium:
Look, nasturtium is making its first steps outside (to its right side, a baby licorice tagetes):
After some trials and tribulations (vine louses love nasturtium), it looks like this now:
There are even a couple buds, finally! Other people's nasturtium is already blooming the fuck out of it, mine is late, as always *rolls eyes
And now, watercress. It looked to lovely in the beginning (and then it didn't *sobs I guess that experiment didn't go too well. And yes, that other stuff is parsley):
A couple weeks later, my plants finally arrived. In order of the following pictures, now and then: chocolate mint (mint plant with a hint of chocolate, kinda like After Eight), strawberry mint (mint plant with a hint of strawberry), licorice tagetes (tagetes that really does taste like licorice and I mean it really tastes awesome and I hate licorice!), lavender, apple salvia, honeydew melon salvia and guava salvia (yes, okay, I admit it I just really love hybrid salvia with fruit flavors), curry plant (no relation to the spice but it smells heavenly) and orange thyme (yes, okay, I just really love hybrid plants, period):
(chocolate mint on the right side, that other plant is an ordinary mint but due to yucky little bugs, I can't use either of them at the moment. Will have to do that nettle solution stuff, after all *rolls eyes)
(amazing how bushy it became. Apparently, regular clipping really works O_o)
(it looks weird now, doesn't it? O_o)
(iiiiiiiiit has blossoms now! I'd almost give up on them! Question: does clipping faded blossoms work to inspire new blossoms with lavender? Anyone know anything?)
(bottom left: apple salvia, bottom right: guava salvia, upper middle: honeydew melon salvia. It looks, uh, weird now. They all keep having dark spots on their leaves but the guava salvia already had wonderful little blossoms them you can pluck and suck :D Also, apple and guava salvia both make really awesome tea!)
(curry plant left, thyme right, and look how bushy both are now ♥ Thyme never made it past a couple weeks on any of my balconies before and look how strong it's still going. EEEEEEEEEEEEEH.)
So, that's enough herbs, isn't it?
Haha, noooooooooo, it's not. In early June, we visited a herb nursery at Kloster Lehnin and uh, we probably shouldn't have done that since uh, a couple were really begging to go home with me. In order: pineapple mint, celery, lemon verbena, aztec sweet bush (that's probably not its name but yeah, LEO gave up again), clove basil (I love making tea with that stuff, seriously, it's awesome) and ginger scented geranium.
(pot in lower left picture: upper left: lemon verbena, upper right clove basil, bottom: aztec sweet bush, riight picture is the geranium, according to the herb nursery owner, you can also eat it but I uh still have trust issues. It does smell great, though.)
And when I thought that we're really well provided with plants you can eat... my parents' and my birthdays (my mum and I share a birthday and Dad's birthday is three days later) rolled around and my parents' friends like all thought giving us plants was the idea... In order (and how they look now after painful laboring): a crate of salad, a crate of basil and two personally grown tomato plants.
(look at how big that tomato plant is (and no, it doesn't have too few leaves, it's supposed to look like that after careful "Ausgeizen", which means removing leaves so that the plant will put more energy into producing fruit than producing leaves) and look at my baby tomatoes, eeeeeeeeeeeh)
So, yeah, that's it. There's also another put of mint and a pot with supermarked bought cheeves, tarragon and rosemary but those are technically Mom's since she always buys them and then never takes care of them and I took pity on them *sighs
But yeah, I uh kinda probably might have gone overboard a little but Dad had so much space on his balcony and for what else than plants that you can eat do you have a balcony for, anyway? And yeah, there are also plants that are there for looking nice but those are Dad's forte and Dad's job, so, no pictures :P
Or is anyone really interested in that? Because our balcony is more of the uh hippie variant and Dad refuses to buy new furniture ("What's the use if we're going to move out of here, anyway?" First of all, you can take furniture with you and second, you don't even know when you move out, let alone to where, Dad!) so uh... it's not the prettiest of all balconies? But it's seriously big which is why it pisses me off that Dad won't let us buy new furniture... but that is another story altogether, so uh, let's just end it here, huh.
So, uh, are you a gardner? Any adventures in gardening you want to share?
Anyway, this is about me rediscovering my love for messing around with soil and seedlings and puttering about on (my parents') balcony this year. I did a lot of puttering on my own balcony back when I still had one and I kind of let it slide when I moved back in with my parents (since Dad loves puttering around on his balcony, too and he's been there longer so it was always kinda his territory, you know?) but this year, Mom bought a gardening magazine about herb gardening and I discovered the wonderful world of internet plant shops and woooooo, lots of wonderful plants on our balcony and all for meeeeeeeeee! (Dad gave me space, with the words "You have to take care of them!" Plants are my family's pets...)
But, okay, let's start from the beginning, shall we? Because, in the beginning, there was a mini hothouse, plus pots and seeds for basil, parsley and cheeves and it looked like this:
Cute, huh?
Unfortunately, one of the glass panes cracked and now I'll have to go looking for someone able to repair the hothouse for next year.
Anyway, at least the seeds all sprouted. At first. And it looked like this:
Unfortunately, they never made it to adulthood :(
They were, however, my step back into the world of gardening and next came dill and different basil seeds, which, at first looked like this:
Awwwwwwww, cute! And they did make it to adulthood! Yay! Look how big it got:
And uh now it's not big anymore but there are interesting other plants in the pot (at least one of them was not intended. Where the hell did it come from?):
So, next step: ordering seeds and plants from Rühlemann's \o/ In seeds, I got nasturtium (Kapuzinerkresse), common watercress, Japanese waterpeper (or whatever it's called in English, LEO just gave up) and mustard seeds. Nasturtium and watercress went really well, Japanese thingy... not so much and I still haven't tried the mustard stuff. I still might, though. Anyway, picture, nasturtium first.
Aw, toddler nasturtium:
Look, nasturtium is making its first steps outside (to its right side, a baby licorice tagetes):
After some trials and tribulations (vine louses love nasturtium), it looks like this now:
There are even a couple buds, finally! Other people's nasturtium is already blooming the fuck out of it, mine is late, as always *rolls eyes
And now, watercress. It looked to lovely in the beginning (and then it didn't *sobs I guess that experiment didn't go too well. And yes, that other stuff is parsley):
A couple weeks later, my plants finally arrived. In order of the following pictures, now and then: chocolate mint (mint plant with a hint of chocolate, kinda like After Eight), strawberry mint (mint plant with a hint of strawberry), licorice tagetes (tagetes that really does taste like licorice and I mean it really tastes awesome and I hate licorice!), lavender, apple salvia, honeydew melon salvia and guava salvia (yes, okay, I admit it I just really love hybrid salvia with fruit flavors), curry plant (no relation to the spice but it smells heavenly) and orange thyme (yes, okay, I just really love hybrid plants, period):
(chocolate mint on the right side, that other plant is an ordinary mint but due to yucky little bugs, I can't use either of them at the moment. Will have to do that nettle solution stuff, after all *rolls eyes)
(amazing how bushy it became. Apparently, regular clipping really works O_o)
(it looks weird now, doesn't it? O_o)
(iiiiiiiiit has blossoms now! I'd almost give up on them! Question: does clipping faded blossoms work to inspire new blossoms with lavender? Anyone know anything?)
(bottom left: apple salvia, bottom right: guava salvia, upper middle: honeydew melon salvia. It looks, uh, weird now. They all keep having dark spots on their leaves but the guava salvia already had wonderful little blossoms them you can pluck and suck :D Also, apple and guava salvia both make really awesome tea!)
(curry plant left, thyme right, and look how bushy both are now ♥ Thyme never made it past a couple weeks on any of my balconies before and look how strong it's still going. EEEEEEEEEEEEEH.)
So, that's enough herbs, isn't it?
Haha, noooooooooo, it's not. In early June, we visited a herb nursery at Kloster Lehnin and uh, we probably shouldn't have done that since uh, a couple were really begging to go home with me. In order: pineapple mint, celery, lemon verbena, aztec sweet bush (that's probably not its name but yeah, LEO gave up again), clove basil (I love making tea with that stuff, seriously, it's awesome) and ginger scented geranium.
(pot in lower left picture: upper left: lemon verbena, upper right clove basil, bottom: aztec sweet bush, riight picture is the geranium, according to the herb nursery owner, you can also eat it but I uh still have trust issues. It does smell great, though.)
And when I thought that we're really well provided with plants you can eat... my parents' and my birthdays (my mum and I share a birthday and Dad's birthday is three days later) rolled around and my parents' friends like all thought giving us plants was the idea... In order (and how they look now after painful laboring): a crate of salad, a crate of basil and two personally grown tomato plants.
(look at how big that tomato plant is (and no, it doesn't have too few leaves, it's supposed to look like that after careful "Ausgeizen", which means removing leaves so that the plant will put more energy into producing fruit than producing leaves) and look at my baby tomatoes, eeeeeeeeeeeh)
So, yeah, that's it. There's also another put of mint and a pot with supermarked bought cheeves, tarragon and rosemary but those are technically Mom's since she always buys them and then never takes care of them and I took pity on them *sighs
But yeah, I uh kinda probably might have gone overboard a little but Dad had so much space on his balcony and for what else than plants that you can eat do you have a balcony for, anyway? And yeah, there are also plants that are there for looking nice but those are Dad's forte and Dad's job, so, no pictures :P
Or is anyone really interested in that? Because our balcony is more of the uh hippie variant and Dad refuses to buy new furniture ("What's the use if we're going to move out of here, anyway?" First of all, you can take furniture with you and second, you don't even know when you move out, let alone to where, Dad!) so uh... it's not the prettiest of all balconies? But it's seriously big which is why it pisses me off that Dad won't let us buy new furniture... but that is another story altogether, so uh, let's just end it here, huh.
So, uh, are you a gardner? Any adventures in gardening you want to share?