How does your garden grow?

 

I’ve had these photos sitting in a draft for several days and they’re rapidly becoming outdated, so here’s the first of (likely) many posts about our balcony garden.

Our front porch is pretty large (5′ x 14′ or so, I’d guess), so I knew as soon as we moved in that I wanted to do a little container gardening when the time came.  Cue the longest winter ever.

Now that things have warmed up for the long term, I’ve got several planters’ worth of herbs and vegetables growing; here are the highlights.

Peas

I planted some family heirloom seeds, and not a single one sprouted.  They were a few years old and probably stored in less-than-ideal conditions, so I blame myself for that failure.  I picked up a 4-pack of plants and planted them near the balcony railing, in the hopes that they’d find their way up.  No such luck.  They were clearly getting too heavy for their own good, so I tied them on to the railings, which seems to have helped.  They’re still getting taller, but I’m puzzled by the dead leaves at the bottom.  Those are the leaves that tend to get wettest when I water them, so I’m inclined to think that there’s something in our city water that doesn’t agree with plants.

 

 

Basil

Same problem with the basil: it’s growing quickly (it’s almost twice as big now as when I took these pictures last week), but the bottom leaves are disgruntled.  As long as the rest of the plant looks healthy, I guess I’m not too worried, but curious.

 

Red Bell Peppers

I know, these plants are way too close together.  I didn’t actually want six plants, but that was how they were sold.  I thought I’d plant them and let them duke it out in the planter, and just keep the top three.  (Un)fortunately, they all look good, so it’s time to find a new planter.  All six plants cost less than a pound of red peppers at the grocery store, so it won’t be hard to come out ahead on these anyway.

 

 

Tomatoes

Now on to the real experiment of the year: tomatoes in bags.  It’s been done before, but will it work here?  I’m incredibly cheap, so the idea of using 99-cent Aldi bags is really appealing.  So far, the tomatoes (San Marzano variety) seem to be doing well.  They’re certainly getting bigger and one of them may have the start of a blossom (or maybe that’s just my wishful imagination).  For the sake of next year’s planning: each bag is holding about 1 cubic foot of dirt; whether more is needed will depend on if these work out.

 

Sink or swim, more updates will surely be coming through the summer!

How to color-coordinate your kitchen utensils in two easy steps

Step 1: 

Purchase a new, very white spatula.

This one will do.  Admire how new and sturdy it looks.

Step 2:

Make curry.  For best results, I’d recommend this recipe.  Rely on spatula while making said curry.

Voila!  Here’s what you get! (the spatula, not the husband)

Seriously, though, it’s shockingly and uniformly yellow.  For a while, Johnny didn’t even believe me that it had ever been white.  Lessons learned.

Bonus Grant Wood impression: