In which I finally talk about plants again.
Okay, then, it's dry as bones (apparently, this summer, we only get rain on Sundays, and I'm not even joking) and too often hot as hell (not right now, but both April and May have been the hottest months on record, and June shapes up to be the same) so I decided to take some pictures of this year's gardening adventures before we're not allowed to use water for plants (this isn't a joke. Outside of Berlin in some regions of Brandenburg, people are already forbidden from using tap water for anything else but the most necessary. People basically have to watch their gardens whither and die before their eyes. It hurts even having to think about it. And we're only in June. Normally, this kind of thing might happen in late August. Climate warming is a fucking bitch).
Anyway here we go with this year's crop, and please keep your fingers crossed that I'll see all of them through to the end of summer.
We'll start with the balcony. So far, gardening is going exceptionally well (except for the greenflies that keep trying to ravage my plants) which is why it would break my heart if the current dryspell would go on for the rest of the summer and have serious repercussions for our drinking water.
This year we have a few old friends, like the blueberry and the physalis I've managed to keep alive for four years or so now:
Yes, the physalis has yellow leaves, no, I don't know why it keeps doing that. It's been doing that for years now, and it's still alive, so it can't be that bad? The blueberry seems to have some persevering fungus or something, because it always comes back strong in spring, has lots of blossoms and then starts getting brown leaves and most of the blossoms die without producing fruit. Then, at some point, it starts growing fresh leaves again but no blossoms and I really have no idea why that is. I'm honestly just happy that it hasn't died yet... We also have a pot of strawberries I bought last year and the cardamom plant which seems to be unhappy since last year. I assume it's a fungus but have no idea how to get rid of it. Basically, I'm just hoping it'll run its course at some point without killing the plant *sighs At least the peppermint geranium seems to go steady. Now, if someone could tell me how to propagate it? Anyone here who does know how to do that?
Some new friends then:
Technically, the plants in the left pic aren't new friends because I've had all of them before. The most left is called "Olivenkraut" and apparently, there's no English name for it except santolina? It's called "olive plant" in German because it smells extremely of olives and tastes like them, too. I had one in 2016 but couldn't keep it alive so I made a new attempt this year, giving it more sun and hopefully less water and taking it inside come winter. The other two are variants of tagetes - one smelling and tasting of licorice, one kinda smelling like tangerines. I've had both of them before but since they're annuals, I have to seed them new each year. They grew really well this year and I hope I get a lot of tea out of them. In the right picture, there's an actual first attempt: Hokkaido squash. I seeded eight of them (six in the pot pictured, two as a joke in of Dad's pots). The two in dad's pots are doing well but have relatively small leaves and grow pretty slowly. Of the six seeded in the pot pictured above, one went outside to the little raised community beds in the backyard (we'll come to that later), and three died of various causes (mostly due to accidently snapping the stems *sighs). I had a bit of trouble with them when I put them outside, only to fortunately realize that the two in Dad's pot were doing way better and were mostly hidden from the sun, so I tried putting my pot in the shade, and look at those leaves. I can already see buds forming, too, so I'm hoping that I'll get at least one or two squashes out of them.
On the left, in the blue pot, there's a sweet potato which I bought at Mom's urging at Staudenmarkt Berlin in April. I planted it before looking up the best pot size with the result that this pot is definitely not big enough so I know have a tremendously weel growing plant which probably won't produce anything worth mentioning. But I took two cuttings and planted them in the raised beds (I also have a third cutting that I should probably plant soon but I keep forgetting it *sighs) so there's hope yet for an actual harvest of sweet potatoes. On the right, my chili plants. I seeded three variants, one of them purple (the one in the front). The third variant didn't sprout for a long time but I do have one shoot I probably should put on the balcony, too. I also have a tiny, tiny, tiny gardenia shoot from the same seeding session I forgot to photograph, so if you want to see it, just comment ;) Anyway, the chilis that did sprout are doing really, really well currently, probably enjoying the hellish temperatures (not for the next couple days but it's coming back on Friday...).
In this, we have another new one in the left, a tomatillo plant. It has a really weird smell and I have never eaten a tomatillo in my life but apparently, it loves its place on the balcony and as you can see, it's developing blossoms, so maybe I'll even get fruit. In the right, we have two kinds of fruit salvia (honeydew melon and orange) in the pots on the right and two agastaches (mint and licorice) in the pots above that. The feathery leaves in the upper right corner belong to a cicely plant. It's being assailed by greenflies and I'd really love to use it but I'm not sure what happens once I cut one of the two leaves. I think it's a pretty hardy plant but I've never actually had it before...
Here's another picture of the cicely plant and, in the lower right corner a pot with burnet and French taragon (which is, as I have discovered, completely different from the Russian tarragon I've had for a couple years now. Russian tarragon tastes only very, very faintly of anything else but "vaguely green" while French tarragon has a an actual, distinctive (very yummy) taste) that'll hopefully make it over the winter. The burnet was Mom's idea and it doesn't really taste of anything despite "green leaf" but it's a nice taste and it grows like a weed, so I don't mind it. In the last picture, we see this year's buddleia. I had to let go of the old one because apparently, it didn't survive the freeze period in February so I had to order a new one. It looks like it's doing well, so I hope it'll get some bees on the balcony (we used to have to wild bees nests on the balcony but it looks a little like they'd been abandoned, after all. I kinda hope to get some bees back.). In the crate in the lower right corner, there's a new seed variant of basil I decided to try but I'm honestly not convinced. I love the taste and smell of fresh basil but this one's pretty weak on both accounts. Next year, it's definitely back to either Genovese basil or African basil but definitely not that one.
Okay, so, that was the balcony. This year, I also have two pretty big raised beds in our huge backyard (because I asked the co-op to put them there), working as a miniature community garden. I have a key for the freshwater tap in the backyard that I'm sharing with one of our neighbors and apparently, the kids playing in the backyard are really curious about what we're doing when I'm down there planting or taking care of the plants. This is what it looks like from our entrance to the backyard:
The beds are by that tree on the left. The yard in itself is not exactly what you probably envision when you hear "backyard" in an urban setting. It's surrounded by blocks of buildings made out of precast concrete (kinda like a house made out of Lego) and genuinely huge (a lot bigger than inner city backyards). It has a fully sized playground in a pretty big sandbox, some trees... and my two raised beds.
Up close, the beds look like this:
On the left, there are potatoes planted by neighbors (on the far left of the picture), strawberry corn (the cobs are supposed to be red and smaller than usual cobs), sweet potatoes and strawberries, seen on the far right in the first picture. In the right bed, there are (from left to right) radishes, parsley (planted by the neighbors), kohlrabi, two kinds of carrots, parsnips and another squash plant. I realized that I must have mixed up the seed rows, so now it's a bit of chaos :')
In a closer look:
Here's the potatoes the neighbors planted (they sprouted like two days after planting, that was almost scary) and on the right there's the corn, then the two sweet potato plants (I'm really, really excited to see what'll come out of that because I'd never believed they'd actually grow here but they're doing quite well and I can't wait to see if it holds until harvest time) and six strawberry plants. They're doing semi fine (it's two variants, and so far, only one is carrying blossoms and developing fruits) so I'm cautiously optimistic.
As you can see, the squash is doing pretty fine which is surprising since it had a bit of a hard time when I planted it originally, and I discovered that it was nearly snapped at the stem just last week. I was a little desperate and covered the wound with a bit of soil for lack of better ideas but that actually seemed to have done the trick and so far, it's doing quite well. I only have to look out for greenflies so I guess I'll have to go down and wipe them off sometime this week. You can also see a bit of the chaos that comes from seeding without clear lines :') I also had seeded spinach next to the radishes (that have already been decimated by harvesting. They're good but really sharp in their taste. Sharper than supermarket radishes, holy cow!) but somehow, that never made it which is a little sad. The parsley the neighbors seeded is coming along a little shyly but it's coming on at all which is a bit of a miracle for me. I've never had the fortune of making parsley seeds sprout so seeing them doing it makes me happy. All in all, I think I'll soon finish harvesting the two lines of radishes and will seed another round to see if I can get them to sprout and grow like that again and I'll see to getting back a bit of order in the chaos of the other seeds.
For a first time of gardening with raised beds, it's going nicely so far and the big destruction that I feared - because basically everyone can come into the yard and there's no fencing or anything around the beds - hasn't happened yet. There's been little community activity but a lot of the people living in the blocks surrounding the backyard have seemed very interested. Dad suggested I write a little article for the co-op magazine to promote the idea and I think I might just do that. All in all, people really liked the idea and with a bit more organization, this could actually become my very first longtime community gardening project \o/
So how are you doing this summer, plant-wise? I know that there are a few green thumbs among you (also a few black thumbs?). Are you more of a "I like to eat what I plant" person or more of a "it has to be pretty" person (funny enough, between me and Dad, I'm the "I want to eat stuff" person and Dad's the "I want it to be pretty" person) when it comes to planting? Are you more of a traditional gardener or do you like to try new and "exotic" variants? Let's talk gardening!
(because the alternative would be talking world politics, and that'll only end in impossibly rants that can be summarized in "Donald Trump is a fucking dick" so... really, let's talk gardening instead)