More planning

If we had a house with a real garden, I would want forsythia. When I was small we had forsythia along the side of the garden, and the trailing branches (ours were never pruned, I think) made a wonderful den to play in. One year a bird nested above us. I've seen the idea of planting quick-growing willows to make a play-house and that appeals too. Maybe we could do both!

We are also thinking about chickens.

Reorganising the indoor plants

Nutmeg has decided now is a great time to start crawling. She's seven months old and I wasn't expecting it for another two, so have had to rearrange the plants in a hurry. Previously they were all on the floor near the big French windows. Now they are all on the table against the big French windows - I figure autumn is nearly here so we won't be throwing the windows wide open for a few months. Hopefully by the time spring comes she will have got over the desire to put everything she sees in her mouth.

This was a good opportunity to repot too, so the pot-bound number-one avocado plant has got a larger home complete with improved drainage and those little clay balls on top to try to keep the pesky fungus gnats away.
And the passion fruit seedlings have been moved into a very large new pot with a little trellis for them to climb when they get to that stage. I don't know how fast they will grow in winter so opted for the small trellis rather than having a big empty one for months and months.
Finally, the tiny pineapple plantlets have also moved into minute pots of their own. The pineapple top I planted has taken very well, let's hope the babies take too. They're so cute! The bigger one is still smaller than my smallest fingernail.

Taties

Today we harvested our second box of normal potatoes. It yielded ten, 4 medium sized ones and 6 small which can be boiled and mashed. We thought the yield from the other box was better, but that box got more sunshine and seemed to get off to a better start generally. Next year we'll plant earlier in the year and lower down in the boxes and then we'll get more.

We also turned out the large pot I have been growing sweet potato vines in. The edible sort, of course. I wasn't really sure that we would get anything, because it's not a really huge pot - maybe 8 kg - and I left the vines on the original potato so it was taking up quite some space in the top there. However, the potatoes clearly wanted to grow. We got several carrot-sized ones (see photo), and about a dozen very small long ones - about a cm in diametre. I don't know whether these will be edible or not, obviously they won't bake but we could boil and mash them like carrots. (Only they're not as big as carrots. Like baby carrots I guess). In any case they have to cure for a couple of weeks to let the starch convert to sugar, and hopefully by the time they've done that we will have found out if they are safe to eat.

Again, next year we will plant much earlier - like several months earlier - and maybe use a larger box.

Cucumbers

I just visited the blog I mentioned a while back again. It's called Mr Brown Thumb and is written by someone gardening in Chicago. And there I found this. A cucumber you can grow in containers without it sprawling all over your balcony. Sounds ideal for us! I've never heard of lemon cucumbers before and the fruits look pretty odd but I'm definitely going to keep a look out for seeds to try next year.

This afternoon we're going to the garden centre to get a larger pot for the indoor passionfruit vines. They need something big, preferably with a trellis so I don't have to put screws in the walls.

Our pepper plants are flowering, but they won't have time to produce fruit, if they even get pollinated. I might try bringing one inside and pollinating it myself though, just for interest.

Potato harvest!

We have harvested one of our containers of potatoes. From three eyes that we put in, we got eight medium-sized potatoes. I think we would have done better had we planted the eyes lower down - all the potatoes were in the top half of the container. We are leaving the other container for longer, partly because the plants still look happy and partly because there's not much point harvesting yet when we haven't eaten the first batch. We don't intend to store these.

Here is a link about growing and storing potatoes. Now I just need to think what we can put in the empty container so it isn't sitting there doing nothing all through winter.

Planning for the future

I am so longing for a real garden. At the moment I am making plans in the back of my mind as to what I want in it, when it happens. These are based on the idea that most likely we will live in a ground-floor flat, potentially with restrictions on what you are allowed to do with your patch (open plan gardens are quite popular here in apartment blocks). This would mean mostly container gardening still. So, with that restriction in mind, here are my thoughts so far.

We need a large patch of grass for Froglet and Nutmeg to run about on. That will probably be most of the garden in the above scenario.

I want to grow things that are pretty but also edible, to begin with.
First on my list of priorities are nasturtiums, probably in hanging baskets. I'd love to set up at least two of the baskets on pulleys so they can be lowered for the children to take care of them - an idea I found in How Does Your Garden Grow, which suggested planting them alongside miniature carrots. Worth a try.
Secondly, tomatoes, peppers, and garlic. We eat loads of these all year round, so no fear of these going to waste. They would be in a couple of large containers on the patio. I'd love to grow cucumbers too, but as they trail it might be impractical.
Thirdly, potatoes. Probably just one container of these, and we can rotate which container has them in it from year to year to avoid disease.
Fourthly, strawberries, in a proper strawberry pot.
And finally, herbs. We have basil on the balcony now and I love it! So, definitely basil, oregano, mint and sage, and maybe marjoram and dill. With any luck, we'll be allowed to plant these under the little willowy shrubs they tend to put in as garden dividers - where they will enjoy a bit of shade, won't spoil the look and won't get mown by the caretaker (assuming we're in one of those type of places).

What do you think? Did I miss anything important?

Oh I came across this cool site too: Harvest to Table. Have a look, it has recipes as well as gardening stuff.

Outside: boxes 3 and 4

Yesterday I wrote about the boxes on the south-east side of the balcony. They only get morning and early afternoon sun. Today, the contents of the boxes on the south-west facing side. These get sunshine almost all day, from about 11 I guess.

In box 3 we have a fuchsia plant, a box tree, three orange nasturtiums, a sunflower, two passion fruit seedlings and an unexpected tomato plant.

I rather think that the passion fruit seedlings won't grow tall enough before winter comes to survive. They shouldn't survive at all in Switzerland, yet I have seen people with them growing up the walls of their homes. But never mind. They were surprise seeds anyway, like the tomato. I had put them in soil to germinate and as they didn't, after a while I used the soil to pot some sunflowers. Then they germinated! As a result I keep finding both tomato seedlings and passionfruit ones all over the place!

The fuchsia plant has me a bit worried. It has been producing vast quantities of flowers all year, which are now decreasing in number, and there are very few leaves. I think it may be getting too much sunshine and perhaps not enough water and food. This site says fuchsias require feeding with something high in potash.

In box 4 we mostly have nasturtiums. Two yellow, three orange and a single lovely dark red one which is my favourite. I have been collecting the seeds from them this week, as I discovered quite a few had fallen off and were falling onto the neighbours below, who have small children. Oops. I don't think nasturtium seeds are poisonous (after all the leaves and flowers are edible) but they are definitely a choking hazard!

As it turns out, nasturtium seeds are very user-friendly, and don't mind being harvested green, before they fall off by themselves. It's size, not colour, that matters, according to this rather good blog. So I have been gathering, and putting them in some muffin tins to dry out. Sadly I've only found three red seeds so far. Lots of orange and yellow though. I think we have enough seed to provide nasturtium plants for all the balconies in our neighbourhood!

Outside: boxes 1 and 2

Outside, everything is basically flourishing. Including the weeds. This is what happens when your balcony isn't pointed and you go away for ten days!

But the window boxes and pots look reasonably weed-free.

So what's going on out there? Well, box 1 is quite boring. It contains two little box trees, some purple and white alyssum, a marigold, a very small and stunted nasturtium which appears to have finished for the year without producing seed - although it did produce two surprisingly large flowers - several dwarf sunflowers and a cherry tomato plant.
The sunflowers are doing fine. The wasps love sitting under their leaves, I don't know why - perhaps to be in the shade? (The picture is of one of the sunflowers not in the box, they're easier to get photos of).
The tomato plant has three sets of tomatoes growing. One was an accident, I didn't realise the plant was growing one of those extra branches that you're supposed to snip off, until it was too late really. I've been snipping off all the others but somehow missed that one.

In box 2, the strawberries are very happy with themselves. I had to dig two of them up last month because they were very crowded in the window box, but we replanted them in separate pots and they are fine. Not producing quite as well as the ones still in the box. From our seven or so plants I can pick a large handful of smallish strawbs (I think these must be a wild variety) every couple of days. The wasps and bees aren't too happy about it! They all fly up in a great cloud when I get close, and I've learnt to either pick on cool, wet days or else in the evening when they've all settled down a bit. I've also learnt that planting strawbs right next to oregano and marjoram probably isn't the best from the wasp and bee point of view. And that when the instructions say to leave 20 cm between plants, they really mean it. (Of course I didn't read the instructions until halfway through planting!)

The oregano and marjoram have been flowering for some time now. The marjoram flowers white and the oregano pink. I've had to cut the marjoram back quite a bit because as well as intruding on the strawberries it was completely overshadowing the oregano. Now I am waiting to see when I can gather seeds from them. There doesn't seem to be much on the internet about this, probably because it's simpler to take rooted cuttings, so I might go ahead and do that instead. (This is for if we move house next year. Hopefully to somewhere with a real garden!)

More indoor plants

Remember those pineapple seeds I put in water to see if they would sprout? Well, two of them have! They are turning into teeny tiny plantlets. So that has taken two months. If I'm honest, I'm not sure what to do with them next. They're so small - almost microscopic - I don't want to plant them in case they dry up really fast and die. Do I leave them in the water, since pineapple plants apparently take in most of their nutrients through their leaves anyway? I have given them some new water this morning.

The pineapple top I planted has grown too. Its middle leaves have shot up, and are even getting a bit spiky around the edges. The ginger root it's sharing a pot with doesn't seem to be doing anything. I think that one might be a failure. Something to try again next year (if dh lets me...)

As for the avocados, they're all nice and tall now. I've pruned two of them back. The websites all say prune them back to about 6 or 8 inches once they get to a foot high, but I couldn't bring myself to cut them quite that much, they're more like ten inches. One is still too small to prune, and I'm waiting for the others leaves to grow a bit. In fact that one has leaves that are turning brown round the edges and falling off. Strange because the two it shares a pot with are fine! I suspect root damage - perhaps those pesky fungus gnats again - and will be pruning it this week to see if that helps.

You may wonder why pruning would help (if, like me, you're a novice), and the reason is that brown leaves usually result from water shortage. I can't water more because that will only make the gnats worse, so pruning the tree will decrease its water needs, meaning it will already be getting enough. That's the theory anyway!

Mango update

Well, the mango seed I posted about just over a month ago has grown! It produced a stem quite quickly, but the top was all black and we thought it wouldn't progress. We went away on holiday and when we came back it had grown four tiny leaves. Now two of them have fallen off. We've currently got a problem with fungus gnat so this may be the issue here too. If you look carefully in the picture you can see where the stem was black, it suddenly becomes narrower.

The older mango tree seems quite happy. It produced two large new leaves while we were gone, but hasn't increased in height. The new leaves are as long as the stem! Maybe even a bit longer.

It is quite warm in our house year round but the sun doesn't come in until afternoon, so I have been putting the mangoes outside on hot days to get more sunshine. So far they haven't caught anything I don't want inside (like greenfly or ants!)

To grow a mango...

We ate another mango recently and I decided to see if we could grow a second little tree. The first seems happy enough, it has four largish leaves and some tiny ones coming, but it doesn't appear to be growing any more. Probably it's not getting enough sunshine, it has been very rainy and cool.

So here is what we did, in pictures:

This is what a mango pit looks like when you've scrubbed off most of the flesh that you couldn't scrape off and eat. This pit was particularly hairy! I had soaked the previous one in a bowl of warm water (renewing the water every day or two) for about a week, but then got tired of that and opened the husk, so with this one I decided to open it up straight away to get things moving.

I prised open the husk very carefully at the end that had been connected to the stalk. It doesn't show up so well on the pic, but that's the mango seed inside the husk, and it already has the beginnings of a root! (Not the brown stringy bit you can see, that's just where it was connected to the stalk inside the husk) My first seed didn't sprout until after it had been out for several days, but I had heard that they sometimes do, so was being extra careful.

There it is, looking rather like some odd type of seafood. I love the pretty markings on the skin. My first seed didn't have a split in its root like this one either, I don't know if this is something to do with its already rooting in the husk or if there's something wrong with it. I'm pretty sure it's the same kind of mango!

The little seed outside the husk. You can see the root at the far end, and the place where the shoot may grow from at the near end (I think). I pulled off the pretty skin because that's what I did with the first one, although I don't know if it was really necessary since this one had already rooted. Probably not. Then I put it in wet kitchen roll for a few days, but as nothing much happened I decided it would probably be happier in a pot, so planted it. And that is where it still is. The pot is about 1 litre in size, maybe even a bit more. I hope it grows!

Wordless Wednesday

Mango, Tuesday 23rd June

Avocado and pineapples

This morning I opened up the paper towel protecting my pineapple seeds and found that they all looked just as before. So I did a bit of research and found several different ways of germinating them. Now, 4 of them are in a plastic bag wrapped in paper towel as before, 4 are buried in seedling earth and 3 are in a little pot with some water and the lid on. I made a hole in the lid so they can breathe, and I've put them outside in the sunshine to be warm (will bring them in overnight of course). We shall see which ones grow first, if any.

Michelle from Steadfast at Home asked how I got avocados to grow. The classic method is of course the toothpick one, but that hasn't worked for me in the past so I didn't try it this time.

The one I had as a teenager I started with toothpicks, but as nothing happened for aaaages, I gave up, put it in a pot with some water, shoved it to the back of a dark cupboard and forgot about it until several months later when I discovered a large root and red shoot in there. The water was quite manky by then, and it was very happy to come out into the light!

The two I have now were planted roughly one week apart. #1 I put in the bottom of a yoghurt pot, with some water up to about halfway, maybe a bit less. Before I started #2, I read somewhere that making a few small cuts in the sides of the pit with a sharp knife would help it absorb water, so I did that before putting it in a yoghurt pot too. I took the skin off both. #2 grew very soon, and #1 followed it about a month later. I don't know whether the cutting was what made the difference, as #2 was a somewhat larger pit in the first place, so maybe it was riper?

Once the pit split and the root started trying to emerge, I moved it into one of those sundae glasses that are like an upside-down cone, so the root had space to grow below it. Presumably it would have done fine in the yoghurt pot and would just have curled round to come out of the side, like my very first one did, but I felt sorry for it.

The photo I posted the other day was of #2 - #1 only has a root and hasn't finished splitting at the top yet.

I have another 4 sitting in water now, and have just made cuts in them all to try to speed things along. I also have one that split when I accidentally dropped it while getting it out of the avocado. I don't know if that will grow, the bit that germinates could be damaged but I can't really tell.

Have you found any other ways of growing avocados (or indeed anything else)?

Some of my saplings

This was going to be my Wordless Wednesday post, but I didn't take the photos soon enough. Never mind.

Mango seedling emerging from the earth on Monday morning.

Mango sapling on Thursday afternoon.

I actually half expected it to grow faster than this, but I guess it doesn't get as much sun and heat as it would in, say, India. Isn't it cute though? All those leaves were already there when it emerged from the earth, they've just opened up now.

My first avocado plant.

First of this batch, that is. I had one for several years as a child. The others are mostly at the sitting-in-water-doing-nothing stage. One has a root. One split open when I accidentally dropped it in getting it out of the fruit, so I've put it in water anyway but I don't know if it will grow.

Some sites for mango and avocado care:

Tropical permaculture (mangoes)
Avocados
More avocados

Useful reference sites

Reposted and expanded from Not Really Homeschooling.

One day I would love to have a permaculture garden. But at the moment I have to make do with lots of pots, and my window-boxes. Here are some of the sites I'm using as reference/inspiration.

I love this site! It's my reference for:
- my little mango seed, although it wasn't the sort they suggest, with the several seeds inside the husk,
- passionfruit, which I fully intend to try again as soon as I buy more fruits,
- pineapple, as I have a top ready to plant as well as the previously mentioned surprise seeds in a germinating bag
- sweet potato, which I am having a go with even though we don't really have space for a big vine, or indeed a vine at all. It's going to be an indoor sweet potato trial, I have to convince my lovely husband to get a large pot.

I'd love to grow cashews, but it's not very realistic in a house with kids- check out the pictures though to see what they look like!

Here are some links about growing avocados...

and peppers...

and citrus.

Ideas for other things to grow including ginger root!

Here's s new one about veggies and gardening in general.

And of course the BBC and Wikipedia, which are wonderful resources for, well, everything really!

Gardening-related blogs I follow:
Down To Earth: Living the simple life in Australia. Posts about all kinds of things - check it out.
Blagger: These great people are trying to live self-sufficiently in a suburban town in the UK.
Weekend gardener: written by gardening industry professionals.
Godspace: Christine Sine's blog is about God, gardening and community, and how the three go together. I especially love her posts about how God speaks to her through her garden.
The Green Parent: This one is not so much about gardening, just the occasional item.

A new blog

My other blog over at Not Really Homeschooling was getting so garden-centric that I have finally decided I should have a separate place for that sort of thing. This is it. Welcome!

If you have a blog about gardening, leave me a comment so I can follow you.
If you know anything about container gardening on a balcony or indoors, leave me a comment and a link.
If you know anything at all about good companion plants for pineapples, please please leave me a comment - I am currently growing a pineapple top and want to plant something with it to provide extra nitrogen in the soil and look pretty in the house. Google searches have not yielded anything helpful so far.

Other items festooning our fireplace surround include a newly-emerged mango sapling (hooray!), some strawberry suckers waiting to be dealt with, three baby kumquat saplings, a possible pear sapling (could be another kumquat), five avocado pits in various stages of germination, and a glass of water with some ground ivy and speedwell in it. I have no idea whether speedwell cuttings will root in water, or at all. Ground ivy should root almost anywhere, it's just waiting to be given some earth to sit in.

There will be photos when my husband gets home with the camera on Friday.