Time for updates - part three - veggies and greens

The vegetables are a big part of my garden.

 so I decided to add some new seeds to the pots.

The two types of beans I have are doing  well,

Remember the tomato seeds? 

These are the tomatoes and the cucumbers now.

Spinach

Mint

Basil

I also got some cauliflowers and two larger tomato plants. In the top left you can see the garlic and onions. For some reason, the garlic stopped growing :(

Also, I planted a potato and it grew like a weed :)) I realised it was getting far too tall very late so now I have a potato that is almost a meter tall :)) On its left are the white radishes.

 

I planted some bettroot a few days ago

Quick updates

While I'm waiting for another package of flowers and plants to arrive, I was checking out the plants and I have some good news:

Dianthus is blooming nicely - I placed it on the windowsill outside my balcony. I was worried because we had a few cloudy days, but they seem to be doing fine.

Same with the onions and the garlic I planted - they sprouted and they look really good. I am looking forward to use green onions that I grew :)
They will probably be good to eat in a week or so.

But the greatest thing is that my strawberries are flowering :)
Specifically, the climbing strawberries I bought from Sieberz all have flowers now.  I am worried because they didn't grow as many leaves as I expected - the type I bought are supposed to grow bigger. I am pretty sure I'm supposed to pinch the flowers to make the plant grow, but I don't have the heart to do it. I'll just let me do whatever they want.

The ones I brought from back home don't seem to plan on flowering, but they are multiplying - growing offshoots that I cut and planted in separate pots. Pretty soon I'll have a lot of strawberries - I just ordered 5 more plants from Gradinamax.ro :p

I also ordered Fresia bulbs, a dwarf blackberry plant and a spicy pepper. 

I hope this weekend I will be able to work on setting up some space for others pots, I'm running out of horizontal space so I plan on setting up a vertical stand for the strawberries.

I'll post updates once I have them :)

New plants or why I shouldn't be allowed to go shopping unsupervised :)

So, yesterday I needed milk and bread and I went to the MEGA IMAGE near my apartment. I knew it was a bad idea to go alone, because there is a florist shop there :))

So, I bought a coffee plant, an orchid and two other plants that I think might be Coleus (I asked the florist to show me the plants that don't need sunlight, because I plan to keep these inside my room)..

So yes, I really shouldn't be allowed to go shopping unsupervised :)) (on the bright side, I did remember to buy milk and bread :P).

I am really curious to see if the coffee plant will grow bigger - I always wanted one. 

I am a little scared about the orchid, I never had one and now I have to find the proper feed for it (since they can't be potted in regular soil).

And to also post an update, the onions seem to be doing great, the ones I planted last week started sprouting nicely.

Wish me luck :)

Cooking and planting day :)

Today I started to cook something and of course I ended up planting stuff. Sounds crazy? Not really.
First, the garlic - I found that some of it started sprouting so I decided to try to plant it to see if it will grow.

There was some room left in the pot so I added a few ornion seeds also, because I bought a lot of it and I'll feel sorry if I don't use it.

By the way, the other batch of onions I planted a few days ago is sprouting nicely.

After I finished with the garlic, I went back to cooking and found that some of the potatoes also sprouted.

So, I decided to use the last large pot and the last of the soil to plant the one in the middle, since it seemed that it really wanted to become more than food :)

I know that sometimes you can cut a sprouted potato into pieces and plant them after a few days, but I didn't have the patience so I planted the whole thing.

I had to look up online if I'm supposed to plant it with the sprouted part upside or not :)



I tried to grow potatoes like this last year also, but the problem  was they didn't grow any leaves, just a very long stalk (and by that I mean it went up to one and a half meters...) . I tried to give them more light, different soil, but no leaves showed up. The two plants I got died in the aphids infestation I keep mentioning.

I plan to add more soil to this one once it grows a bit (and once I manage to buy more - seriously, I think I should consider buying a patch of land with the amount of soil I'm using :)) ).

Since I had my hands in the plants, I decided to plant the tomatoes also.

I started them from seeds and I made a mistake and added too many seeds in the small paper cup I used. My excuse is that I didn't expect all of the seeds to sprout - usually, when people try to sprout not all seeds manage.
Apparently the seeds you buy are far better - all 10 plants sprouted, even with the improvisation I did to give them enough light and heat.

The seeds turned into small plants very fast and they started growing roots through the bottom of the paper cup so I figured it was time to plant them.

I used a large pot since I know tomatoes grow big - I also plan to build a support system when they become taller.

The only thing I didn't have the courage to do yet is thin the plants - the advice is to pinch the smaller sprouts and leave only 1-2. My problem at the moment is that all of them are the exact same height :))

So I'll wait a bit until I start thinning them.

This is the before and after picture - I added a picture of the seeds I used for reference. I chose the heart-shaped tomatoes because as far as I know they are smaller so they can be grown in a pot.
I also have some cherry tomatoes seeds but I'll start those a little later, once these start growing.

Let's hope for the best :)

Vegetables

This is a big category and the main reason I started to garden in my balcony :)

I am growing carrots, radishes, white icicles, two types of beans, green onions and I recently started with cucumbers and tomatoes.

These are the carrots. I chose a deep rectangular pot for them, to allow for room for the roots to grow. However, I realised after they sprouted that I added far too many seeds, but I didn't have the heart to thin them, so I'll wait and see what will happen.

I bought random seeds from the Hypermarket and they sprouted really fast in regular potting soil.
It's important to plant them where you will let them grow, because you can't transplant the carrots.

I keep them on the balcony edge and water them every day, because potting soil dries up fast especially if it's outside, in the wind.

They seem to grow slowly, but I am happy with the result so far.

I also have two pots with what we call "one month radishes" - the seeds are supposed to turn into full grown radishes about 6 weeks.

Same type of pot - deeper to allow the radish to grow below.
I didn't make the same mistake with these, I added fewer seeds and thinned them out a little once they sprouted.

I did notice that, compared to the radishes grown in a garden, the stems of these are very slim and breakable. It might be because of the soil or it might be because of the lack of light.
Not sure, but I'll wait and see what results I get.

I planted these about 4 weeks ago and they seem to be dong well - I also water them everyday, for the same reason (potting soil dries really fast).

These are the two types of beans I have. I planted them at the same time, but the green version sprouted later. I plan to add a support for the yellow type once it grows more leaves, as it's supposed to be the climbing type.
Like you can see in the left, I usually put a plastic bottle over the seeds until they get some serious leaves, to help them grow (it keeps the humidity, protects it from air currents and keeps a higher temperature).

These are the white icicles (as far as I can tell, it's a mix between carrots and radishes). I don't remember ever eating those, but my sisters gave me the seeds and I said I'll try to grow them.

Same type of deep pot used for carrots and radishes. I also thinned them once they sprouted.

They don't seem to need much direct sun, these grew very fast on the opposite side of the windows (about 3 meters away).

From what I read on Pinterest, the root plants (the ones that grow the edible part below ground) don't need as much sun as tomatoes for example.




The green onions I planted two days ago, from seed onions.
I tried to grow them from sprouted onions (Pinterest recommended using kitchen scraps as a way to build a windowsill garden, but they failed miserably - see below :p).

Now I have a large quantity of seed onions planted, so I'll come back later with updates.

I tried to plant them in a rectangular pot with less soil, so they have a way to go until the edge - I don't need them to grow to mature onions, I like the green type better and I hope the room they have will protect them from air currents until they are stronger. I keep them on the balcony edge also and water them every day. I bought the seed onions from Leroy Merlin (home improvement store), it was about 1 euro/500 g. 

Like I mentioned at the start, I recently started cucumbers and tomatoes from seeds and let me tell you, it was unexpected that they actually sprouted :))

Behold my seedling kit! 

Those are the tomato seedling - they reached this stage in about a week. I have very little hope of being able to grow those tomato plants, mostly because I don't have enough sun in my balcony. Also, I chose the wrong type of seeds, the tomatoes are far too big to grow in a pot.

But I also bought seeds for cherry tomatoes and I'll try with those as soon as I manage to buy more soil and adequate pots for them.

The cucumbers grew faster and yesterday I moved them to their own pots with the supports I improvised (in the second picture you can also see the current state of the cherry stick, because I can't call it a tree yet :p).

I'm pretty sure I'll have trouble with the type of cucumbers I planted, these seem to be the large type. I also have seeds for the gherkins (the smaller size used for pickles) and I'll start those when I start the cherry tomatoes.

On to the leafy greens!