Starting up the balcony orchard garden
Checking how my aromatics survived the winter, and preparing new plants.
All year round, my balcony is my garden. What’s best about it, is that it doesn’t have a roof, so it gets really a lot of sunlight. For the first time since I live here, I plan to use the power of this light to grow my own summer veggies.
I told you earlier that I prepared compost from kitchen scraps and weeds throughout the winter:
This compost is now perfectly matured. I keep adding organic matter but only coming from weeds I take out of my pots. No more kitchen scraps. And I place the incoming stuff separately from the ready compost, in a basket on top of it:
To know more about composting in the balcony, check these out:
Enough with the compost. Let’s go see the plants!
I first checked all the plants that should have survived the winter with no problems.
Let’s begin by checking the aromatics. Mint began sprouting out of the soil already a month ago. Melisa as well. My rosemary plants are perfect and flowering. Thyme, which I got from the mountains, had a hard time but is starting to show new leaves. Also some oregano that I brought from a remote lake, is also looking good. As well as my two sage plants, one yellow and the other green, and my lavenders.
Wow, I hadn’t realized I had so many aromatics! Now, what other aromatic plants should I get? Basil is a must, I think.
What else is already around? Let’s see.
Oh, strawberries are flowering a lot! They don’t seem to care about the roots of this acacia taking over the pot:
Among edible weeds, there are some dandelions around. I will eat them right away in tonight’s or tomorrow’s dinner.
And then, what to plant?
I want to plant plants that make sense. Such as weird varieties of tomatoes or peppers. I planted seeds of some remarkably sweet peppers, but I forgot to document that with photos. Maybe when they germinate.
I also just planted four different kinds of cherry tomatoes, from seeds extracted from some exquisite tomatoes we had last week:
Working in a nice setting
It was inspiring to do all this work surrounded by flowers:
Because you know, my balcony usually bursts in colors…
Coming up next
I’m carefully deciding what plants to buy, and I’m designing a wooden rack where to hang pots with more plants. Plus maybe some seeds will have germinated? I hope so!
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