Trouble in the balcony garden

So I have a few plants that aren't doing well.
For example, the spinach and the lettuce just refuse to grow, so I kept reading and looking for reasons. Apparently, the main problem is that I planted them too late in the spring so now the plants are bolting instead of growing leaves.

Small leaves but tall plants for the spinach

Basically, because the temperatures are too high (it goes up to 30C already in the area) the plants are trying to grow flowers instead of leaves. A solution is to keep them in the shade but I was considering moving them inside the room and keeping the AC on during the hottest part of the day and see if it helps.
It really annoys me that I seem to be failing at the vegetables that are supposed to be the easiest to grow :(

The garlic seems to have the same problem - I planted it late, the greens went up to about 5-7 cm and now they stopped growing. I really hate that :( I don't want garlic cloves, i want green garlic, I love it, but it seems it's far too hot for it now.

Bottom line is - I will have to try to re-plant the spinach and lettuce later in the fall when it gets colder.

Another issue I mentioned before is that my radishes aren't creating bulbs, even if the leaves are big and healthy. I found an article  that mentions several reasons, out of which i think my problem is too much nitrogen in the soil. I have been using a fertilizer in the water for my plants but it's a multi-purpose one, so it might be that the radishes have too much of it. I am pretty sure it's not the bolting problem, even if it's getting to warm for them, because they don't seem to be flowering, just growing leaves.
I honestly have no clue how to fix this - I'll probably try to plant a new batch and not fertilise it at all. Maybe that will help.

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

My first harvest and my failures

I harvested the first "crop" today :))
It's an icicle - basically a type of radish that doesn't have a red color on the outside - I've never seen this type before and the picture on the seed package made me think it's a white carrot at first.

To be honest, I think it was supposed to grow for longer, but I was really excited o I pulled one out to see what it is.
The others seem to be doing really well - I planted them in a really deep pot so they should grow pretty long.
Now for the "not-so-good" - the other type of radishes I planted, the usual round red type, have really big leaves but no roots are thickening. I am not sure it's because they are too crowded, because I thinned one pot and left the other as it was.
I am upset because it's supposed to be an easy vegetable to grow in containers - mine seem to have too thin stalks and no roots.

Also, my Camellia is dropping the buds - I am not very worried yet, because I read that this happens sometimes when the plants have too many buds - and mine really has too many for its size.

for the moment, that is it.

New seedlings planted and a general picture

I planted new batches of cilantro, dill, lettuce, carrots and seeds for cherry tomatoes and chilly peppers.

There are also new batches of basil planted and I moved the strawberries and the radishes inside, because it's getting too hot for them outside and they started wilting.

I also bought a celery root with leaves because I was unable to make it grow from seed (apparently it takes forever and I don't have the patience for it).

My balcony is becoming very crowded on the sides, so I will have to step up with the vertical plans. I need to go to a home improvement store to buy some chains, new pots and other things.

Overall, I'm very happy with the way it's coming around and pretty soon I will start harvesting stuff.


So here is a cure picture with the cat included :D

I also managed to buy some oregano from Mega Image and I planted the cuttings - surprisingly, they seem to be doing very well. This is my "herb garden" - Mint, oregano, basil, lovage, dill, parsley and celery. The rosemary is on the windowsill behind it.

I also bought a yellow begonia and planted it in a bigger pot.

That's about it for now :)

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!