I don't know about you, but when I start doing something I commit 100% and often than not go overboard. This is exactly what is happening with my gardening this year. Not only did I get a 200 sqm garden, but I also started planting veggies and lots of herbs on our balcony.
The balcony goes through three rooms, so there is more than enough space to do it. Now I'm stuck with watering my crops daily, but it's compensated with their stunning growth day after day. And fresh herbs anytime I need are not too bad either 馃檪 Plus, we have great views from our balcony, so I love spending time there.
I started almost all my seedlings from seeds. Tomatoes were started in the second half of February and I can't be more proud when I see them grow. I have placed them on the balcony one month ago looking poor as they needed more soil and nutrients, and never looked back. They grow like there was no tomorrow, and I feel they are getting bushier and bushier even though I keep trimming them.
Did you know that you can dry trimmed tomato leaves and use them for pizza, pasta sauces or simply to give strong savoury flavour to your meals? Try it and you can thank me later 馃檪
I have 7 cherry tomato plants on the balcony, and today I have spotted first baby tomatoes! This has actually inspired me to write this post.
My husband loves spicy food, so I have planted various sorts of chilli peppers. These are Turkish long red peppers and each plant has already more than 10 buds. I cannot wait for them to flower and change to baby chillies.
These are habaneros. They are smaller sorts of chilli peppers and the plant is smaller too. It took them longer to start off and they don't have buds yet, but I'm sure I will be seeing some soon.
These are our surprise chilli plants. My husband put aside chilli seeds from chillies that he liked during the year and I planted them. Some of them got mixed up, so we don't know what we're getting. How exciting!
Baby kohlrabies are growing next to lettuce as they are great companion plants for each other.
Chervil is a herb that is not so much known around here, so we cannot buy it here often. This is why I decided to plant my own as I love it. It's growing wildly along my Turkish chillies.
I have harvested a bunch of them earlier today for pesto with radish greens. It is oh so delicious!
Thyme is one of those things that I bought already as I had no success with growing it from seeds before. I have planted some lettuce in each box as they are easy to grow, don't take too much space, are happy to be next to almost everything and we can have fresh salad anytime we want.
Parsley from seeds is coming nicely too. It has finally started to get bushier and I will plant some more seeds this week to have continuity in harvest.
Oh my dill! I'm planting pickling cucumbers in the garden and I will use my dill from the balcony for canning. I will also use it for my herby potato salad to go along our barbecue goodies in summer.
Chocolate mint is so strong that I find it difficult to pair with something, so we usually use it in lemonades.
Pineapple sage is probably my favourite herb. I'm allergic to pineapples and we will try to replace the flavour in pina colada with this herb as it truly smells like pineapple.
And this is my tangerine sage. When you rub the leaves you will smell strong scent of tangerines. I'm adding this herb to my crust for over baked cauliflower and it pairs perfectly.
I bought marigolds to plant in the garden, but then I learned that slugs love them, so I kept them on the balcony to protect them.
I really love pineapple, but since I cannot eat it we are looking for replacement everywhere. On top of my pineapple sage I also have pineapple mint. This is probably the easiest herb ever.
I have planted basil around the base of each tomato plant to accompany them. So far they are going well, but I have never had luck with basil as they always got thrips, so I hope that it won't happen this year again.
And more marigolds...
There are not so many strawberries as I picked them before I took the photo. They are good, but not as delicious as strawberries from our garden neighbour, so I need to look up how to make them sweeter. Any ideas?
My balcony garden is my baby as my husband doesn't have time to take care of it on top of our garden, so I'm a proud, but very busy newbie gardener 馃檪
See you next time...