At long last: a new gardening posting \o/
Because all my ordered plants finally arrived last weekend (with bugs again, argh, fucking organic gardening companies, AAAAAAAAAAARGH), I realized it might really be time to show you what survived and what didn't and what I bought in April at Berliner Staudenmarkt (a plant market at Berlin Botanical Gardens that takes place annually in April and September) and what finally arrived. Unfortunately, I couldn't show you the full progress of my seedlings from early Spring because the SD card with the pictures on it mysteriously disappeared. Alas. Here we are.
So, first some general "this is what the balcony greenery looks like this year" pictures (please disregard the clutter, Dad won't let me declutter the balcony because "we want to move to a new place eventually, anyway". This has been the same for three years now...):
We're starting on the right, with the scraggly thing in the purple pot. That's a blueberry plant I bought at Berliner Staudenmarkt and that should have flowered ages ago but didn't (I nearly started weeping when I saw my sister's blueberry plant last weekend. And her strawberries. But that's a different story.) and also has spider mites which I really, really need to start eradicating and I swear, I am working on that. The little blue pot on the blueberry's upper left holds watercress that is doing way better than last year's watercress so that's a plus, at least.
The two pots immediately next to the purple put hold chocolate mint (pot in the back) and orange mint (pot in the front) respectively. They were part of the shipment of plants I ordered online and so far, they don't show any bug infestations but yeah, currently I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop so I'm not too hopeful yet.
Left of the two mint pots, we have the big green pot in the back, which holds this year's attempt at getting lemon verbena, East Indian basil and Aztec sweet plant through summer (the lemon verbena was one of those plants that arrived with a definite bug infestation. Keeping my fingers crossed that snipping off the infested parts came early enough and did the trick). The pot in the front holds another strawberry mint plant since back in early spring I thought last year's plant had died which wasn't the case but we'll come to that plant later). So far, it looks like it's doing fine but yeah, part of the bug infested shipment, so keeping my fingers crossed.
Righty-o, we'll start on the bottom, beneath the strawberry mint pot. Right crate holds the leftovers of my radish seeds (I really, really need to bring out the next batch of seeds, hoping that this time I'll get more than one measly raddish out of the batch I seeded. But Mom said it was really tasty!), left crate holds spinach I should have harvested when it was still good. Now it's too big and yeah... I'll probably try to reseed it and see what comes out of the next batch.
In the little cup with a smiley face above the crates I put the like tree Mom wanted to buy at Berliner Staudenmarkt (and guess who takes care of it now...). It's coming along fairly nicely but even though the seller said it doesn't need repotting for at least a year, I'm gonna give it a nice, new bigger pot with some citrus-friendly soil this week. The lemon tree seed I planted didn't work out in the end, so I hope that at least this one makes it.
The pot with all that visible soil left of the green lemon verbena/East Indian basil/Aztec sweet plant holds last year's orange thyme and curry plant. The thyme's doing fine (although the mega growth spurts from early spring seem to have come to an end since I repotted it), the curry plant's still doing a little straggly but at least it doesn't look dead yet, that's always a plus.
Above the thyme pot on the windowsill we have the chives/tarragon/rosemary pot from last year. Chives are doing great, tarragon is doing surprisingly well (considering I thought it was dead after the winter, so...) but the biggest surprise is the rosemary since it's definitely in the wrong pot (chives need comparatively vast quantities of water while rosemary's better off with water once or twice a week). Probably gonna need to repot it, too, if I want it to get any bigger.
The pot with the little butterfly stuck into it (the other ones are Dad's) holds a Cape gooseberry plant I bought at Berliner Staudenmarkt that doesn't seem to have realized yet that it's a climbing plant so I decided to give it a bit of a nudge. I'm not sure I'm gonna see any berries this year but it's grown quite a bit since April so I haven't lost all hope yet.
This year's nasturtium, grown from seeds from last year's nasturtium and I'm honestly surprised at how strong it's looking, after a bad period in April when it looked like it resented me for putting it out in the open a leeeettle bit too soon. But yeah. It seems to be over that by now.
Lower left pot holds the pineapple mint from last year which seems to be struggling a bit after such a slow start inside. I hope it gets back on its feet. Upper right pot holds this year's apple salvia and honeydew melon salvia. Last year was a really, really bad year for salvia and I'm not sure they're gonna be happy about where I put them currently but I really hope they'll make it to winter this year. I have no talent for keeping salvia alive and I so want to break that spell:S
Okay, we'll start from lower left this time. The rectangular pot on the lower left holds lemon basil and cinnamon basil but yeah, I don't have much hope for their survival, to be honest. They look pretty scrawny and basil really isn't my forte, either so... keeping my fingers crossed. The white pot to its right holds four little licorice tagetes plants I handreared and honestly, they look almost best of the entire seed batch I did in early spring. They're small but bushy and look fairly healthy so I really hope it holds. I usually hate licorice but I love the taste of licorice tagetes and I hope to harvest lots of it for tea. The plants in the two repurposed cooking pots (East German quality products!) are both of the same strawberry mint plant I bought last year. In spring, I split the root ball (which is usually the way to go if you want to propagate mint), hoping it wouldn't kill the plant and so far, it looks like it's struggling but surviving. Keeping my fingers crossed.
In the lower row, we have two strawberry plants in the pink container (apparently, one needs to nearly drown strawberry plants to get them to produce fruits of half-decent size which I didn't do when they first started to produce them and yeah, that's probably why they are as minuscule as they look) on the left and on the right a new thyme attempt, this time ginger thyme. It came with bugs but I hope snipping off the infested branches was enough to get rid of them. I have high hopes for that plant.
In the pink pot in the upper row, we have two kinds of scented geranium, mint (the bigger plant, orginally Mom's, but guess who's taking care of it) and cola (the smaller one on the left, no joke, it really does smell like Coca Cola). Technically, I should harvest the bigger one for tea or a nice cake topping but I'm still a little hesitant. Technically, scented geraniums are totally harmless but yeah, other geraniums don't seem to be harmless so... still on the fence.
Last but not least, from left to right: four chili plants I probably should repot into a bigger pot (but they don't seem to mind the small pot yet so IDK), a really scraggly, miserable lavender plant (we'll come to that later), the mysterious aniseed hysop (the one that's neither aniseed not hysop but more on that later) and a storebought basil plant I took a bit of pity on.
Now, some individual pictures:
See how lovely the licorice tagetes is developing? Really warms my heart!
A close-up of the ginger thyme. Looks pretty small and I'm still afraid that the bugs got a hold on the plant after all, but so far it seems to be surviving.
See, that's what I meant when I said the strawberries are miniscule...
Oh, also, not potted yet, a cardamom plant that looks like a small banana plant. It's apparently a plant to keep inside but so far, it seems to be okay with the slightly err mediocre weather (temperatures slightly below the twenties, and I mean Celsius twenties). It just really needs to get a pot, something I'll get on this week.
A closer look at the watercress and well, I'm pretty proud of how it developed this year. Not sure if it's mature for a first harvesting yet but it definitely looks better than last year's.
This, dear children, is what happens when raddish seedlings get too big before they start to develop fruits which usually happens when they are put in a too warm environment at the start of their growing period. Not sure if that's edible, to be honest. So yeah. Gonna reseed this week.
So yeah, that's the miserable lavender. I honestly don't know what to do with it anymore. I gave it plenty of water, I watered only sparesely. I gave it fertilizer, I left it out of the fertilizer round. Short of repotting it, I don't know what else to do with it (or honestly, if it's still alive). It got through the winter and started sprouting new leaves in early springs, then I took it inside and gave it its cut around the end of March and it's been shedding leaves left and right since then. The hell do I do with it? Just repot it? Fertilize it more? Water it even less? Seriously out of my depth here.
The aforementioned aniseed hysop in close up. I should have taken a picture on the weekend before I harvested it for the first time to make tea (I snipped off almost all fresh shoots and was doubtful whether I'd like the tea since it smells really strong of aniseed but the taste was pleasantly discrete in the tea itself) because it was really awesomely full and lush but you can see tiny new shoots so maybe I'll take a new picture if they manage to get as big and lush as the first ones. I also hope for lots of flowers since aniseed hysop seems to be a favorite with bees and butterflies (kinda like buccleia plants, probably better known as Schmetterlingsflieder to German reads) and I really do love both of them.
So, that's it, folks. I'll try to keepyou posted as summer progresses. Everyone keep your fingers crossed that the blueberry plant survives the mites, the strawberries get bigger, the lavender gets better and none of them succumbs to bugs or fungi. And now please excuse me, I need to get one of my female Sims back together with her ex-husband although he doesn't even deserve it. I'm just really sentimental (he's her college sweetheart and wooing him was pretty hard work). So, yeah. What's cooking on your balconies and in your gardens? Tell me!
So, first some general "this is what the balcony greenery looks like this year" pictures (please disregard the clutter, Dad won't let me declutter the balcony because "we want to move to a new place eventually, anyway". This has been the same for three years now...):
We're starting on the right, with the scraggly thing in the purple pot. That's a blueberry plant I bought at Berliner Staudenmarkt and that should have flowered ages ago but didn't (I nearly started weeping when I saw my sister's blueberry plant last weekend. And her strawberries. But that's a different story.) and also has spider mites which I really, really need to start eradicating and I swear, I am working on that. The little blue pot on the blueberry's upper left holds watercress that is doing way better than last year's watercress so that's a plus, at least.
The two pots immediately next to the purple put hold chocolate mint (pot in the back) and orange mint (pot in the front) respectively. They were part of the shipment of plants I ordered online and so far, they don't show any bug infestations but yeah, currently I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop so I'm not too hopeful yet.
Left of the two mint pots, we have the big green pot in the back, which holds this year's attempt at getting lemon verbena, East Indian basil and Aztec sweet plant through summer (the lemon verbena was one of those plants that arrived with a definite bug infestation. Keeping my fingers crossed that snipping off the infested parts came early enough and did the trick). The pot in the front holds another strawberry mint plant since back in early spring I thought last year's plant had died which wasn't the case but we'll come to that plant later). So far, it looks like it's doing fine but yeah, part of the bug infested shipment, so keeping my fingers crossed.
Righty-o, we'll start on the bottom, beneath the strawberry mint pot. Right crate holds the leftovers of my radish seeds (I really, really need to bring out the next batch of seeds, hoping that this time I'll get more than one measly raddish out of the batch I seeded. But Mom said it was really tasty!), left crate holds spinach I should have harvested when it was still good. Now it's too big and yeah... I'll probably try to reseed it and see what comes out of the next batch.
In the little cup with a smiley face above the crates I put the like tree Mom wanted to buy at Berliner Staudenmarkt (and guess who takes care of it now...). It's coming along fairly nicely but even though the seller said it doesn't need repotting for at least a year, I'm gonna give it a nice, new bigger pot with some citrus-friendly soil this week. The lemon tree seed I planted didn't work out in the end, so I hope that at least this one makes it.
The pot with all that visible soil left of the green lemon verbena/East Indian basil/Aztec sweet plant holds last year's orange thyme and curry plant. The thyme's doing fine (although the mega growth spurts from early spring seem to have come to an end since I repotted it), the curry plant's still doing a little straggly but at least it doesn't look dead yet, that's always a plus.
Above the thyme pot on the windowsill we have the chives/tarragon/rosemary pot from last year. Chives are doing great, tarragon is doing surprisingly well (considering I thought it was dead after the winter, so...) but the biggest surprise is the rosemary since it's definitely in the wrong pot (chives need comparatively vast quantities of water while rosemary's better off with water once or twice a week). Probably gonna need to repot it, too, if I want it to get any bigger.
The pot with the little butterfly stuck into it (the other ones are Dad's) holds a Cape gooseberry plant I bought at Berliner Staudenmarkt that doesn't seem to have realized yet that it's a climbing plant so I decided to give it a bit of a nudge. I'm not sure I'm gonna see any berries this year but it's grown quite a bit since April so I haven't lost all hope yet.
This year's nasturtium, grown from seeds from last year's nasturtium and I'm honestly surprised at how strong it's looking, after a bad period in April when it looked like it resented me for putting it out in the open a leeeettle bit too soon. But yeah. It seems to be over that by now.
Lower left pot holds the pineapple mint from last year which seems to be struggling a bit after such a slow start inside. I hope it gets back on its feet. Upper right pot holds this year's apple salvia and honeydew melon salvia. Last year was a really, really bad year for salvia and I'm not sure they're gonna be happy about where I put them currently but I really hope they'll make it to winter this year. I have no talent for keeping salvia alive and I so want to break that spell:S
Okay, we'll start from lower left this time. The rectangular pot on the lower left holds lemon basil and cinnamon basil but yeah, I don't have much hope for their survival, to be honest. They look pretty scrawny and basil really isn't my forte, either so... keeping my fingers crossed. The white pot to its right holds four little licorice tagetes plants I handreared and honestly, they look almost best of the entire seed batch I did in early spring. They're small but bushy and look fairly healthy so I really hope it holds. I usually hate licorice but I love the taste of licorice tagetes and I hope to harvest lots of it for tea. The plants in the two repurposed cooking pots (East German quality products!) are both of the same strawberry mint plant I bought last year. In spring, I split the root ball (which is usually the way to go if you want to propagate mint), hoping it wouldn't kill the plant and so far, it looks like it's struggling but surviving. Keeping my fingers crossed.
In the lower row, we have two strawberry plants in the pink container (apparently, one needs to nearly drown strawberry plants to get them to produce fruits of half-decent size which I didn't do when they first started to produce them and yeah, that's probably why they are as minuscule as they look) on the left and on the right a new thyme attempt, this time ginger thyme. It came with bugs but I hope snipping off the infested branches was enough to get rid of them. I have high hopes for that plant.
In the pink pot in the upper row, we have two kinds of scented geranium, mint (the bigger plant, orginally Mom's, but guess who's taking care of it) and cola (the smaller one on the left, no joke, it really does smell like Coca Cola). Technically, I should harvest the bigger one for tea or a nice cake topping but I'm still a little hesitant. Technically, scented geraniums are totally harmless but yeah, other geraniums don't seem to be harmless so... still on the fence.
Last but not least, from left to right: four chili plants I probably should repot into a bigger pot (but they don't seem to mind the small pot yet so IDK), a really scraggly, miserable lavender plant (we'll come to that later), the mysterious aniseed hysop (the one that's neither aniseed not hysop but more on that later) and a storebought basil plant I took a bit of pity on.
Now, some individual pictures:
See how lovely the licorice tagetes is developing? Really warms my heart!
A close-up of the ginger thyme. Looks pretty small and I'm still afraid that the bugs got a hold on the plant after all, but so far it seems to be surviving.
See, that's what I meant when I said the strawberries are miniscule...
Oh, also, not potted yet, a cardamom plant that looks like a small banana plant. It's apparently a plant to keep inside but so far, it seems to be okay with the slightly err mediocre weather (temperatures slightly below the twenties, and I mean Celsius twenties). It just really needs to get a pot, something I'll get on this week.
A closer look at the watercress and well, I'm pretty proud of how it developed this year. Not sure if it's mature for a first harvesting yet but it definitely looks better than last year's.
This, dear children, is what happens when raddish seedlings get too big before they start to develop fruits which usually happens when they are put in a too warm environment at the start of their growing period. Not sure if that's edible, to be honest. So yeah. Gonna reseed this week.
So yeah, that's the miserable lavender. I honestly don't know what to do with it anymore. I gave it plenty of water, I watered only sparesely. I gave it fertilizer, I left it out of the fertilizer round. Short of repotting it, I don't know what else to do with it (or honestly, if it's still alive). It got through the winter and started sprouting new leaves in early springs, then I took it inside and gave it its cut around the end of March and it's been shedding leaves left and right since then. The hell do I do with it? Just repot it? Fertilize it more? Water it even less? Seriously out of my depth here.
The aforementioned aniseed hysop in close up. I should have taken a picture on the weekend before I harvested it for the first time to make tea (I snipped off almost all fresh shoots and was doubtful whether I'd like the tea since it smells really strong of aniseed but the taste was pleasantly discrete in the tea itself) because it was really awesomely full and lush but you can see tiny new shoots so maybe I'll take a new picture if they manage to get as big and lush as the first ones. I also hope for lots of flowers since aniseed hysop seems to be a favorite with bees and butterflies (kinda like buccleia plants, probably better known as Schmetterlingsflieder to German reads) and I really do love both of them.
So, that's it, folks. I'll try to keepyou posted as summer progresses. Everyone keep your fingers crossed that the blueberry plant survives the mites, the strawberries get bigger, the lavender gets better and none of them succumbs to bugs or fungi. And now please excuse me, I need to get one of my female Sims back together with her ex-husband although he doesn't even deserve it. I'm just really sentimental (he's her college sweetheart and wooing him was pretty hard work). So, yeah. What's cooking on your balconies and in your gardens? Tell me!