Harvest ugh..Tuesday and Update!

 It's been too long since a post. In my defense, I share a camera with an artist in school. Certainly not a photographer, with this cheap camera, but he does like to photograph his work as he's working on it. On top of that, we spend lots of our "down" time up in Pennsylvania with my in-laws, and my sister, and my last excuse is that the weather is FINALLY nice, and I just wanted to enjoy it!

Weather has been chilly in the mid-40s to 50s, but today we got a hot 80 something!  I'd like a week or two in the 70s, but I'm not complaining.

For harvests, this picture of the lettuce was the only one I could find of what I've harvested. We've had quite a bit of lettuce, and a bunch of basil.  Thursday, I anticipate harvesting all of the spinach in preparation for fresh plants, and the need to free up some of the space for things like squash.

The rest of this post is pretty picture heavy. I just wanted to have an actual document of where things are in the balcony garden right now.

  Topsy Turvy strawberry planter has been hung, and can now rotate to get sunlight.

 This poor planter has been reseeded already, and still nothing will sprout and stick around. Not sure what's going on with it, although tonight when I went out to get these pictures, I had to remove a cigarette butt and ashes from this one. The joys of having 7 floors above us, I suppose.

 My Dwarf Tophat blueberry bush is loading up with blossoms, and today was the first day I saw any leaves starting to open up.

Early Tristar strawberries are starting to recover from some of the awful cold nights we got for a while.

 Look at all of this spinach we'll get to eat! I've got a spinach and artichoke dip recipe I want to use a lot of it for. Many of the leaves are larger than my hand.

 My Fort Laramie strawberry plants in the Topsy Turvy from Henry Fields are looking nice.  I know this isn't the ideal way to grow them, but it at least will hopefully give me a handful of berries.

I made my very first 5 gallon bucket self watering container today.  I don't have all of the necessary tools in our apartment (like a SAW to cut that PVC pipe shorter), but it will work.  I followed Jeff's instructions at Our Engineered Garden for the design.

 My wintersown plants are all making their appearances, and got a day with the lid off. The jalapeno just sprouted this week, but the tomatoes and marigolds have been there for some time. These are all just back ups, but I wanted to attempt the process.

Lastly, just some sweet little lettuce seedlings. It'll be nice to have more in a month or so!

Harvest Monday

I have a harvest for Harvest Monday again! The Aerogarden was needing a trim, and my hubby expressed interest in a salad from the balcony, so he got one.

We harvested a few leaves from the plant in the front left a few days ago. This is actually Red Sails, though you certainly can't tell that from the picture. It is still growing like crazy though! The plant in the  front middle is the Tristar strawberry plant. It's doing really well, and much better than the ones planted outside so far.

Overwintered lettuce and spinach pre-harvest.  The weather forecast this week gave me enough reassurance that these plants will bounce right back even with a heavy harvest.

Fresh, crisp lettuce for some delicious salads!

Side note: I understand why lettuce can be so expensive when I remember, and experience, how laborious the process of cleaning each individual leaf can be. It was still the best tasting salad we've had in a long time though!

To see what others are harvesting, head over to Daphne's Dandelions, and check in on others and their Harvest Mondays!

Gardening Bug

My gardening bug has me again.  This season is a new zone for me, and a new (quite a bit smaller) garden in containers. I've been researching and learning a lot of things from scratch. I'm going from a supposed 5B (I always planted sooner than recommended) to 7A.  The last frost dates, however, indicate a later last frost date here in Alexandria than in St. Louis. Besides those differences, everything is in containers, and has its own microclimate being that I'm 9 stories up, and actually tucked away from much, if any, wind.

My lettuce, spinach, and green onions have all overwintered well on the balcony.  I frequently run out for a few clippings of spinach and scallions to add to my morning omelet.  I gave most of the lettuce a good trim a week or so ago to clean out the burnt leaves, but all of the plants seem to be putting out plenty of growth.

My Aerogarden is in full swing again. It's about time to harvest some lettuce! I am growing three kinds of lettuce, two basil plants, and a strawberry plant in my Aerogarden right now. I found an excellent Thai recipe for Red Coconut Curry, and it uses a lot of basil. I have never had much of a use for the basil I've grown, but the $2.49 I've been spending on a small container for this recipe meant that basil was a priority for the Aerogarden planting!

Here is a lone lettuce seedling I pulled from the Aerogarden when I bought some strawberry plants, and decided to try one out.  I couldn't bear to just trash this, so I'll eventually transplant it outside.

Planted so far, I've got radish, spinach, lettuce, and snow peas. I also grabbed a few strawberry plants from Home Depot this weekend, and I'm trying my hand at some wintersowing.  I decided that since my apartment doesn't really allow for the room to have my full light set up (nor plant many tomatoes/peppers), I'd go this route with a few varieties.  I ordered a few plants from Henry Fields, (and will have to share some of those even!) but decided back up plants never hurt.  I threw in some jalapeño, Green Zebra tomatoes, marigolds, Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, and some saved Cherokee Purple seeds that came from a tomato I got from seed given to me by Jeff at Our Engineered Garden.   All of those seeds went into a divided gallon milk jug and a water bottle, and now they're just waiting.  We'll see how they do! I like the idea of not really having to harden the seedlings off when the time comes.

Well, this post has gotten wordier than planned, so that's all for now. 

The Balcony Garden and the Move

Our move to D.C. started back in June, where I ventured alone to start my new job. I got an amazing job as a mother/baby nurse, but they wanted a June start date. We had not anticipated moving until August, and our house needed to be dealt with before we both were able to move. 

I spent the first six weeks of my time here in Woodbridge, VA with my husband's cousin and her roommate, who graciously offered me a bedroom and allowed Heidi to join me. I got to try about five ripened cherry tomatoes before our move, and had to leave the rest of my fully planted summer garden. 

July marked our 5th wedding anniversary, and my husband surprised me with a grocery bag full of tomatoes. He brought anything that looked like is was about to ripen. I was able to share some delicious tomatoes with my new housemates, and couldn't have gotten a more appreciated gift.

I brought along a sucker from one of my last Cherokee Purple seeds from Jeff at Our Engineered Garden. It went through a lot (including over 100 degree heat by being left in a car in PA during my move here). My husband also later brought our watermelon plants in a container, and my dwarf tophat blueberry plant. 

Planting my balcony garden was a pretty high priority with the move, and I had it seeded within the first week of our moving into our apartment in Alexandria. 

Here are some recent pictures of the garden:

So far, I've got my Cherokee Purple tomato plant, Zucchini, cilantro, radishes, green onions, garlic chives, blueberry plant, snow peas, spinach, and several types of lettuce.

Peas, lettuce, and spinach

I recently removed the watermelon plants from this bucket, and replanted with lettuce and spinach seedling which are making their appearance.

First pea blossom! (Strange to see a CAR in the background below the plants)

Romaine lettuce

Red Sails lettuce seedling growing on the left from Daphne at Daphne's Dandelions, radish seedlings on the right

The radishes (and hidden spinach and lettuce) in white planter near the railing had originally been in the other over-the-rail hanger, but with watering, it was bending the wires which had me too nervous to put it back. So until Spring, when Dollar Tree carries the other planters again, that side is going to be an empty eyesore. 

This is the first (and only) Cherokee Purple tomato to pollinate on my plant. I didn't think it'd happen after all that it has been through, but I'm excited to see it even though it probably won't have time to ripen before frost.

And here is the second salad we're going to enjoy from the balcony garden!

Harvest from the Balcony

This is the first salad harvested from my Alexandria, VA (D.C.-ish) balcony garden. I've got full containers I'll upload pictures of when I get a chance. The hubby has not been great with sharing the camera lately, as he uses it a lot at school. I think I'm finally to a settled enough point where blogging about my balcony garden is a bit more feasible.

I've got lots growing (relatively) and have had the opportunity to identify another type of aphid, and ladybug eggs in the process. Pictures to come.  All this on a 9th story apartment balcony. I miss my yard and my house, but we're making this work!

100th post and a Garden Update

It is officially my 100th post! I absolutely intended to get to this post before the start of 2012. Quite a bit late on that one... A lot of people do exciting giveaways and things like that when they hit these milestones. If I had something worth giving away, I would.  If I think of something, maybe I'll do one on a random day.

It was getting dark out when I ran outside to snag these photos. Sorry for the low quality.

Here are my scallions, red onions in the back right, Burgundy bush beans, radishes and lettuce that have come up. I planted a few more rows to the left of this area yesterday with cilantro, more lettuce, more radishes, and more beans, to try to stagger some of the harvest.

Tomatoes and peppers, yearning to be in the ground with more space.  After this weekend, they'll be planted. Tomorrow night's low is in the 40s, but I should be safe after that, and the plants are ready to be in the ground. I've got some blossoms on some of the tomatoes starting to form, and that's never happened before I put them in the ground before. I've been pinching off the ones I see.

My dwarf tophat blueberry bush getting acclimated to it's first of what will probably be several pots.

The lettuce and spinach growing down the center of the garden. I seeded several more feet of this yesterday as well. I love blending the red and green lettuces.  The red lettuce really doesn't get touched the way that the spinach does right next to it. 

Mammoth broccoli plants for April.  I did some clean up of most of the maple seeds since the last picture that was taken. They are just about 1.5 to 2 ft tall now. They're about a month and a half ahead, if not more, of what they were last year. I'm certainly not complaining. I love broccoli, and I'll love getting to use that space for pole beans when they're through!

 The broccoli has begun to shade the red lettuces planted around it. It's hard to even see the plants from this picture, but they're there!

My zucchini and yellow squash are growing so slowly, I decided to put some new seed in these pots to see if they do better. The seeds that are growing (slowly) are from a old packets.  The squash did so well last year in these pots, so I want to give it a second try. The last pot in that row is my garlic chives with some cilantro growing around the edges.

The peas growing up the fence behind the pots are doing well. Neither these peas, nor the snow peas have any blossoms yet, but it shouldn't be long!

Confession helps

So I guess just confessing that I had no motivation was enough to give me some motivation. A high temperature of 83 today didn't hurt either.

Today, Hubby helped me get the compost moved back to its normal area, and loosen/fertilize the soil. I have a nice sunburn on my back to prove it...

I also planted some additional shelling peas, carrots, radishes, spinach, and assorted lettuce varieties.  I did this part all with the help of this post from Annie's Kitchen Garden.  I had never made seed mats before, and truly only did it for the carrots that I was planting for the first time, and ended up doing all of it with this method. It was rather windy, and it was incredibly quick and easy to do the spacing sitting at the kitchen table, and do the back bending work without seeds or seed packets in hand. Definitely a process that I'll be reusing!

The camera battery was dead when I went to go take an "after" picture of the garden, but truly, it's just a brown soil patch with a trellis at the end, and it'll still be that for a few more days.

I didn't have a true "plan" this year, no diagram to go off of or anything. I held pretty close to my spacing and planting from last year, with slight alterations, just so that I'll shift my peppers and tomatoes a bit. With as small of a space as I have, true crop "rotation" just isn't feasible.  Last year's plan worked well, so I'm glad I put all of the effort into it a year ago.

I'm looking forward to seeing some green in the next week!

Wait Five Minutes... and a little Harvest for Monday

I can't get too upset for too long.  It truly is the case here in St. Louis, if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes. The weather changes quicker than you'd think.  So the snow covered garden did no harm (that I am aware of) to my garden.  Here it is basking in some sunlight (the tomatoes and peppers are still safely tucked inside until potentially the weekend when we're expecting temps back in the 70s)

Before the snow was completely melted, the lettuce was hanging on...

I was able to get a harvest in the middle of the snow storm for another batch of egg drop soup.  I think my scallion harvests are a kind of, "in your face, snow" attempt.  It's little, but it's something, and it's green.

To check out what others are harvesting all over the world, check out Daphne's Dandelions!

I've got little sprouts up all over the place.

Black Seeded Simpson lettuce seedlings- I planted quite a few because it was two year old seed, looks like I'll be doing some thinning!

Spinach sprout

Radish sprout

Something is already eating on one of my spinach transplants-- my spinach never got to this size last year. I'm hoping it does better with this compost! That is, if the bugs leave it alone!

Accomplished

That would be the best way to describe how I feel about the past four days.  I already wrote about how I spent Thursday.

Friday: We got a load of mulch for the front yard, and a load of compost for the garden brought by my brother in law.  We worked incredibly quickly trying to move the yard of mulch to the bed and get it cut in to make room for the compost that was coming, and also to avoid the incoming rain.  It was much cooler, and we were able to get most of the mulch moved before the compost came.  Our next goal was to move ALL of the compost to the garden, because we didn't want a muddy mess on the driveway with the rain coming.  We were able to transfer it all just in time, and after the storm I couldn't help but plant some lettuce, spinach, and radishes.  So I've got 16 square feet planted outside now.  I think I'll be putting in my broccoli tomorrow.  The garden looks extraordinarily neat for my normal standards because the compost makes the bed look just beautiful!

Saturday: I was able to garden vicariously through my friend Mandi.  We made a trip to buy all of the things she would need for two 4 x 8 beds, with one trellis.  We got quite a few heads shakings and feeble wishes of "Good luck" from some guys there. Two blonde twenty somethings carting around lumber is probably not the norm, but the beds turned out beautifully, and we did it all by ourselves!  We brought it all home, painted the boards, built them, and installed the trellis!  All that's left is for her to get soil/compost, and we can start planting in it!

Today, we tackled a new project of painting her shed next to her garden.  We got two coats done before I decided it would be nice to be home for my last day of Spring break, though she did a beautiful job finishing it.

We had another absolutely beautiful day today, and it appears we'll be getting that for the next three.  All of my plants spent the day outside.  It's been nice to have my tomatoes and peppers outside at this stage.  They are as "hardened" off to the sunlight as they could be, which is nice because I seem to burn them when it comes to transplanting time.  My hubby got the rest of the mulch straightened out in the front today. We just checked the compost pile, and it is piping hot in just the three days since it's been moved!

I'm looking forward to seeing some things germinating outside this week! It'll be nice to see some green!

It was so beautiful today, that this was my dinner.  I think I've worked hard enough for it this weekend anyway...