For the first time ever I’m having a balcony garden!
Before, I used to have only a window sill garden. Which means almost all sills in our home used to be full of pots with herbs.
Well, now we have a proper balcony and it’s all dedicated to eatable greens.
I planted the first seeds around 40 days ago and since then my mini tomatoes grew pretty nicely. However, it was the first time I aimed to grow tomatoes. Therefore, I didn’t know that one package of seeds means around 100 tomato plants. Well, because of that, I now have 60 tomatoes and gave around 40 of them to my aunt. For sure I’ll have to give away 40 more of them to my family and friends. It simply would be impossible to fit them all in our balcony. But I’m incredibly happy about having teeny tiny tomatoes grown by myself at the end of Summer!
Also, I have lots of basils. Four pots of them, which might also be around 100 plants. The good thing is, basils don’t require that much space in the pots. And they also can be grown and eaten quite quickly.
But the number one lesson I’ve learned from this planting experience is that the number of seeds in one package doesn’t mean it’s the number of seeds an ordinary household needs… 100 mini tomatoes are way too much.
Besides, I had a limited amount of paper cups that suited for seeding. So when the quarantine started, I ran out of them and had to look for other options.
On social media, I saw people using paper boxes of eggs for planting. Since I didn’t have any other options, that’s what I used too. However, almost everything that I’ve tried growing in them ended up being very tall and weak. So now I have only one box like that with herbs left. Sadly, others had to go to the rubbish bin…
That’s what my number two lesson learned – do not grow seeds in tiny cardboard boxes, better use normal pots straight away.
Because of that, I now have seeded lots of herbs once again. This time in the normal pots and I hope they’ll grow strong and firm.
The seeds I completely failed at growing are strawberries. I’ve seeded them in two separate pots. There might also be way too many seeds. But after all those 40 days, only 1 green leaf appeared, and soon after it seemed dead. So no luck with the strawberries. Next year I’ll do deeper research on how to grow them from the seeds and hopefully, it’ll be more successful. Cause it simply can’t be worse than it is now, you know.
So now in the balcony garden are growing spring onions, basils, coriander, parsley, dill and lots of tomatoes.
Well, and I’m also very happy about getting the Hyllis shelf from Ikea! It’s this one. If not it, I’d probably have to keep all the pots on the ground or on the sill. I ordered it online during the lockdown and voila! My balcony garden is looking pretty nice!
Do you have an indoor or balcony garden? Drop me a message on Instagram! I’d love to see your garden no matter how tiny or large it might be! It’s always a pleasure to chat with fellow gardeners.