New life!

This morning I saw the first tips of the garlic bulbs coming up. And the flower bulbs we've planted (in a different pot, of course!) are starting to poke through. I hope it's not so early that they die off - we have had unseasonably warm weather the last few days and I'm sure there is more frost and heavy snowfall yet to come.

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.