Come May, Come Parents, Come Plants!

Time for a real update! As you might know, one of the biggest problems with maintaining a balcony garden – apart from lack of space – is for me getting a hold of soil. Sure, the nearest place that sells it is only 1.5km away, but you try lugging a bag of soil home without having a car… and I don’t just need one bag – I use around 4 bags (200l) of soil on my ickle balcony!

Luckily my parents are visiting right now as they’re off to the 50th wedding anniversary of some friends (now that’s an achievement!) and they brought the car! So this being a public holiday, yet the garden centers of several of the big DIY centers being open, we went to one of them and bought 250l of soil and 25l of Leca balls. Had also decided that I wanted a tomato plant and 2 more strawberry plants, as the 3 I have didn’t produce anything last year and are quite slow-growing (they’re originally runners from my late grandma’s garden given to my aunt, and I got some runners from her last year). They didn’t get any new tomato plants and the ones they had looked halfway dead so ended up just getting strawberries… that is until I went slightly shopping mad First I decided on buying a mint plant… Can you say homemade mojitos? Then I noticed a funny plant next to it… “curry plant”. Never seen one of those, but smells like curry, and for 10dkk ($2), it can’t go completely wrong. Last but not least I bought a chili plant (fairly mild one)… and carrot, lettuce and spinach seeds. Mum also brought over 5 bell pepper plants from a coworker of hers, who had planted too many, which is nice as it saves me trying to start mine late! Now I’m really only missing the tomato and I’ll have everything I had planned for this year and a bit more.

I just planted and sowed everything, so status is:

• Carrots in one tub
• Beetroot in other tub
• 5 bell pepper plants each in a pot
• Mild chili in pot
• 3 pots of sweet peas, happily growing
• One balcony box with 5 strawberry plants (2 from garden center, 3 from grandma’s garden)
• One balcony box with spinach (this year regular spinach, not New Zealand spinach!)
• Two balcony boxes of lettuce – half of one box is head forming lettuce, the rest is leaf.
• One balcony box of herbs – Curry, mint and basil – basil is from seed, I just decided to move them from a pot today
• One pot of oregano – from seed
• One pot of rosemary – from seed, but they have yet to show. Didn’t have much luck with rosemary last year either, but still think it’s worth a shot
• Missing: Tomato. Will be dealt with asap

Carrots and beets are an experiment. I tried carrots and leek last year but didn’t succeed, and I think it was because the pots were on the floor of the balcony and they didn’t get much in terms of sun and warmth. This year I have tried to raise them up a bit – though currently it’s only a temporary solution, as I need to find another way to keep them raised up than a shoe-tray on a chair

Anyway, pictures! Enjoy!