So I've been really getting into gardening lately. Well, not really getting into it, but kinda really getting into it.

I've always loved it, from digging up worms as a kid, to building a pond with water features and trees around it as a teenager, apple trees, gooseberries, flower corners and so on. Even now, living in a concrete city of lifeless souls, I managed some years ago to precariously balance a few pots outside my apartment window with some wooden boards, and yielded myself dozens of tomatoes, cherries, beans, sunflowers, cucumbers and a spattering of other things... All in little pots.

So with that successful memory... how hard can it be to do it again?

Apparently, pretty damn hard!

Plants aren't what they used to be

It was with extreme fortune that I found my current apartment in downtown Shanghai. For a comparatively decent price (£760/$1,050 per month), I have myself a fairly straightforward 1 bedroom place, but it also comes with a TON of perks for gardening:

• A personal rooftop which almost matches the entire area of my apartment outside my bedroom window
• A personal balcony so long that it's kind of a catwalk, running the entire length of the apartment, the rooftop AND the neighbour's apartment! I'd say about 30m from end to end
• A private, never used bamboo garden directly beneath (I'm on the second floor), growing overhead, with trees and more blocking the ugly concrete buildings outside my back door.

It's beautiful, all things considered.

Looking Left directly from my back door... Smash chilling on a dirty wooden pallet among the bamboo

Looking directly forwards from my door, I'm meat with a bunch of leaves almost smacking me in the face from a tree that has seemingly doubled in size since I moved in 3 years ago

Looking left, a bunch of cables disappearing into the wilderness, with some big ol' trees in the background. behind that, even bigger, human concrete trees

So naturally, when I moved in and immediately wanted to start up a little garden on the roof, I was severely shocked and disappointed when everything I attempted died almost immediately. Why? Oh, only the worst heatwave ever.

Shanghai was suddenly hitting 42-43C day after day after day without a cloud in sight. If I didn't water the plants every 30 minutes or so, they would start withering and dying, their shadows baked into the concrete. It became unsustainable, and so if I went out for the day, that was basically the end of that.

Since when were plants so pathetically weak??

Meanwhile, a weed-type TREE set root underneath the steps of my back door somehow, grew its bark horizontally, twisted up to the sun and reached over 2.5 metres high before I even saw what was coming. I axed it down to a nub assuming it would be a dead stump, only to find it grew back even bigger than before in no time! A second, even more excessively brutal axing put an end to it.

...is what you'd expect, but instead it just decided to keep thriving as well as ever, just foregoing height for a wide, bushy approach instead. I've decided to let it continue as such until the roots destroy the foundations of the building.

How can this unknown tree that came from nowhere be so resilient to a literal axing to death, while also being exposed to the same sun, wind, rain, and frost that all the other plants succumb to within 5 minutes?

My latest crop attempts are a perfect example. A few weeks ago it rained. A lot. About a week of typhoon. The raindrops were, admittedly, quite large at some points. But I didn't expect them to literally destroy my carrots! They might survive, but a look online says it might take them over a week to un-flatten themselves from this brutal beating from water droplets.

Since writing the above, some of them have bounced back a little, but who knows what fate will meet the carrots underneath?

My tomatoes failed to flower and generally grew skinny and lame, which I have concluded from a bunch of research that the balcony didn't provide ENOUGH sunlight. So they get scorched into dust, or they whine and complain about not being scorched into dust.

UPDATE - I pulled out most the tomato plants that were starting to get blight and otherwise just being generally pathetic. However, this one - the largest - is finally starting to grow flowers!! Whether or not they'll turn into tomatoes this late into the summer is another thing entirely, but at least it's trying ^__

My cucumbers have fallen victim to aphids and have been incredibly stunted in growth, with zero actual cucumbers forming, though at least it's flowering to the best of its ability. Ants have been trying to clean up the infestation, but I only added pesticide when it was pretty much too late. After months and months, both plants are barely a metre in height while all the others around the neighbourhood are crawling across phonelines and up buildings.

Pests successfully removed! You can see the damage done at the bottom. This apparently might also be due to overwatering, or underwatering. Not much I could do about that, given that it's been raining almost constantly for the last month. However, on the right you can see the newer leaves are growing stronger and larger than ever, from the stem that is getting thicker and with bigger flowers than before. If pollinated right (I've tried to do it myself but I'm not sure yet), I might even get a single cucumber!

My strawberries got stuck at about 1cm height with no more than 4 leaves for the longest time. Only now, at the tail-end of summer, have they decided they would actually like to thrive. Pretty much the opposite season to when they ought to have tried that.

This one is my pride, as it only recently decided to burst into growing action. IF flowers and fruits turn up this year, I'm advised from the internet to remove them, allowing more energy for greater growth. Then, next year it should have an even greater yield. Let's see how it goes

My pepper plants just decided to grow 6 inches tall and call it a day with a few leaves, despite having all the nutrients and heat and sun and space they might need. Not worth any pictures here!

So far, my 'garden' has been a quizzical disaster, doing its damndest to survive under the conditions. I admit I'm a little proud of its efforts.

THAT BEING SAID,

I have enjoyed every moment of it. Learning the problems and conjuring up solutions is the best way to improve. And the more problems I look up, the more questions I end up with:

• What kind/mix of soil
• Which season/s are right
• How wet/dry should it be for each plant
• Which bugs are good/bad
• Which fungi are good/bad
• What the hell is mulch
• How much of any given thing is too much/too little
• How long to germinate
• How to mimic winter (blasted lavender)
• How to pollinate bug-free
• What colour of indoor lighting
• How much water for LED-lit plants
• How many hours of light for LED-lit plants
• Where do evil caterpillars sleep

And so on...

I admit that my first batch of seeds were more of a casual interest. I just tossed a bunch of seeds in the first bag of soil I could find and poured water on them to see what happened. After seeing them fight for their lives in vain for so long, I got fully invested. I've bought boxes and sacks of soil, lights, mini-greenhouse coverings, seeding according to instructions, and I have big plans:

• IF the carrots survived all the rainfall, they should produce in a few months.
• As winter approaches, put in PEAS
• Start with lavender in the fridge for a month
• Add a bunch of mint somewhere which should just grow regardless
• Bell pepper and chili pepper seeds inside
• Strawberries can move indoors too
• Let the tomatoes and cucumbers die

And, well, who knows what else I'll try. Everything grows so slow I'm always so tempted to add more. The more research I do, the more interesting it becomes.

I honestly don't particularly care about getting any veggies from the process; It's not like I'm trying to go off-grid and be some homesteader in the middle of one of the biggest megacities on the planet. I just like to see things grow.

Any other suggestions that might be fun, lemme know!