Planting calendar

I started my balcony garden because I wanted to see if I can grow fresh vegetables, but I did make some rookie mistakes. After I got in trouble with some of the crops I actually started researching and I found a very nice calendar for planting.

As it can easily be seen, most of the things I planted very very late, so they aren't doing as well as they should.
So, I am planning better for the fall.
For example, I plan to try again in the fall with cold season crops - spinach, lettuce, radishes, rucola, carrots, cauliflower, peas and beets, because they seem to be doing better with lower temperatures.
I do have a batch of carrots that I moved inside and they seem to be doing well. I also planted a type that grows small round roots like a radish instead of the long one, I hope it's not too hot for them to grow. I'll move them inside just in case.
However, the tomatoes are doing absolutely great and so are the cucumbers and beans - today I actually noticed that my green beans are starting to show up!
So, if you are thinking about growing veggies, plan before you sow :))

Also, I'll add a list of useful links

http://www.tobuildagarden.com/
http://www.gardeningdata.co.uk/index.php

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.

Advice from a begginer

Ok, I have been following a lot of articles, blogs and websites about gardening and I tried to use some of the advice - not all of it good.
So here are a few of my tried and failed or successes:

- seedlings - since I only use a few pots, I don't need a large amount of plants or seedlings. I use a normal desk lamp and a plastic container, plus egg cartons to sprout seeds.

Now, the advice I followed and I should't have - DO NOT PLANT the seedlings with the carton. I did that and the seedling barely grew. The ones I took out of the carton are twice as big.
The carton-planting might work in the garden, but in a container, you need to remove it to promote root growing.

- seeds - the first time I planted store-bought seeds, I planted too many of them and they all sprouted - which means I wasted a lot of them, since most of the time I had to pinch off the plants.
So now I only plant 3-5 of them in a carton, just in case they don't sprout.

- watering and fertilizer - no matter what type of soil you use, plants in containers dry up fast, so I spray water on them every day. On the soil, not the plants! Most of the plants do not like water on the leaves and it promotes fungus, so try to avoid wetting the leaves. This means choosing bigger pots so that there is room. Also, I add a small amount of fertilizer in the water (half of the recommended dose) because the nutrients in the potting soil are exhausted after about 2 months and the plants need them.
Also, I water them with tap water that was kept in bottles for at least a day to remove the chlorine.

- soil - I use the cheapest version of potting soil, but I add slow-release fertilizer every 3 months to it. There is a granulated type that dissolves in time (I have the one recommended for strawberries, but it works for anything).
I also have a few pretentious plans :) I bought a bag of orchid soil for an orchid and now I use the rest of it for acid-loving plants (the rhododendron, the camelia, the blueberries and so on). I mix it with regular potting soil because it's acidic so it lowers the PH of the mix. You can also add a spoon of apple vinegar in a liter of water and use it for them (trick I learned from a florist).

- pots - I try to not spend too much, so paying a lot for a big pot is against my nature :) I use plastic buckets and garbage cans for the plants that have deep roots and small buckets (from yogurt and sour cream) for others. You just need to wrap them in colored paper or even duct tape to make them look pretty. The only rule is to poke holes in the bottom to allow water to drain.

That's about it so far :)
I'll add more later.