Garden update!

Getting back into gardening was a really great decision! I'm having the best time, also because I'm assimilating several YouTube channels on gardening to get going, and MarjoLinda is along with me for the journey. She's making raised beds and doing amazing things as well, and we are sending eachother seedling porn videos and pictures.

The flowermix from Hema is doing magnificently. They made a really good mix of flowers, each with their own timing. At first there were some really tiny white flowers, and currently we are enjoying Bachelor's Buttons (korenbloemen):



There are a few mutants in the mix as well, with a reddish purple colour. It's tempting me to hand-pollinate and see if I can selectively breed this colour. So far, I'm resisting the urge and I'm probably too late to do this already.

Anyway. On to seedlings. I sowed about 50 tomato plants (also from Hema) and sent most of them off with people from Plan-B. I kept far too many of them and transplanted them into baskets. The videos on YouTube said you need a pot almost as big as your head (!!) to plant tomatoes in, but mine are doing really well too. So far the plants don't need any support structure, which may be because they can't grow bigger because of the limited space in their pot. I don't think they're bushy tomatoes; these are on the Wish list for next year though.

We are getting less and less space to walk around every single day. I remember in March, before I bought the baskets and the other pots I already had problems re-potting things. That is going to be even more of a challenge with all the extra baskets, pots and plants:



Eisirt already mentioned several times I should grow onto an allotment (volkstuin). I am all for that, but so far I love practicing on our balcony.

The strawberries are all gone already and we're in the middle of blueberry season. The first tomatoes have started appearing, and I've started sowing for autumn harvest as well. Gotta get those seedlings ready so they can go into the ground as soon as the first plants are going out. Of course, tomatoes are my main crop and they need a really long growing season, only to die off in august and september, which is pretty late to be transplanting anything that's not winter hardy.

A list of edible things growing:

Mint;

Strawberries -- all harvested and eaten, the plant will now start producing offshoots that I will transplant and give away;

Parsley -- not really doing well, it started flowering and making seed as soon as it grew in, so I'll collect the seed and re-sow in better soil;

Thyme;

Tomatoes;

Spring onion -- doing really well, although they are quite floppy. We could eat the greens already if we wanted to;

Basil -- also sown far too much basil, so I'm moving these into the windowsill and pruning them to get bushier plants. I've also donated a few plants to friends and Plan-B;

Chives -- storebought plant, but I tore it up a bit to redistribute. Two plants went to Plan-B's herb garden;

Spinach -- very recently sown in a seed tray in the windowsill. The first one popped above the soil in ONE day. Where am I going to plant EIGHT spinach plants? The answer: in between the tomatoes, and in the raised bed at Plan-B. Or maybe in the plastic terracotta planter on the left, after I save the parsley seeds and improve the soil.

Kale (boerenkool) -- freshly sown, but number 2 to germinate only one day after the first spinach; I have one more purple planter saved for them.

Courgette -- threw it in my lavender pot, so who knows what it'll do;

Beets -- sewn in my new thriftstore find pot because beets don't transplant. I sowed three and these are compound seeds so I'll probably get at least six beets out of that. Maybe more.

I still have many more wishes, like lettuce. But my lettuce seeds are not germinating for some strange reason. Grr.

For next year I'm already drawing up plans. A bushy cherry tomato variety, some lettuce, spinach and chard (snijbiet) for cut-and-come-again. I'd love to grow some beans, like green beans (sperzie-), broad beans (tuin-) and white beans (witte bonen), or maybe some peas or sugar snaps. Of course some beets, kale, carrots and courgette. Basil can grow inside, and wouldn't it be lovely to grow jalapeños? I mean, I can't eat them but Eisirt will really love them.

We also have a little bit of a challenge with ants. They are creeping in from under the windows somehow, so I'm afraid they're either living in the walls or coming in from outside under the windows. Cleaning with bleach helps remove their pheromone trails which helped a bit. I'm also making a collection of ant poison boxes...They are such handy creatures but I really don't want them in the house.

And there are pruning plans for the lavender (which was severely decimated this winter), the blueberry (which isn't giving much fruit this year) and the strawberries. I used to have a single strawberry per pot...where did the other three come from...

The best plan so far is that last weekend I ordered a worm composting bin. I've always been a bit hesitant because of the smell of rotting fruit and vegetables, but a little more YouTube research has calmed my nerves a bit. By getting a decent mix of wet (fruit, veg, coffee grains) and dry (paper and cardboard) there is practically no smell. This bin is a modular system where you can place a new tray on top and take an old tray with compost out, and the worms migrate up to the new food. I am afraid we will get far too much compost from the worm bin, but Eisirt said we can always illegally dump it in a park, which makes me giggle to no end. A kind of beneficial biological warfare...to make everything more lush? LOL.