Baby peppers and flowering peas

Hooray!  Little baby peppers are growing on my plants!  I am so excited that my veggies are actually growing.  I didn't know how things would go due to the lack of full suno n the balcony.  I guess there is enough sun in the morning.  Hopefully the warm weather will stay for a while and things will really get growing.  All of my plants are definitely smaller and slower growing than they should be.  Oh well.. they are growing and appear to be happy!

Grow my beauties, grow!

 The peas are also coming along slowly, but nicely.  I didn't know how they would turn out, but they are starting to get pretty tall and even have flowers!!  Colin hates peas, so these will be all mine!!

Pretty pink flowers... go peas! 

While out watering the plants tonight after work, I noticed that my pansies were completely infested with aphids!  Oh no!  They are so nasty looking and can be very damaging.  I have no idea where they came from; they seem to have appeared overnight.  I threw out the pansies but I noticed that there were a few aphids in my other planter, on my forget-me-nots.  So, I made a soap, veg oil and water solution and sprayed those nasty little things good.  I hope that takes care of them.  I will check to see how things are tomorrow and go from there.  It's supposed to rain overnight, so I had to move all the plants around in case it gets nasty... I tried to make sure that none of the veggies are near the infected flowers.  Stay away aphids!!

Balcony Garden

I love to garden, but I live in an apartment.  There are community garden plots that you can rent in London, but the closest one to me would be way too big for me to maintain and too far away for me to be able to go to the garden everyday.  My apartment faces southeast, so I get lots of sun in the morning, but none in the afternoon.  I usually keep my big, old ficus out on the balcony in the summer, but I decided this year that I want to try to grow vegetables, flowers and herbs on the balcony.

I started planting some herbs and lettuce on the balcony about a month ago and approximately three weeks ago, my bestie took me out to get more supplies (I do not have a car and a car was definitely required for the trip).  I now have a garden of sorts on my balcony.  This year is definitely the experiment year, as I have no idea how the plants will do with only direct sun in the morning.

Having a garden on your balcony can be expensive, but also save money at the grocery store once your produce is ready to be picked and eaten.  Soil and containers need to be purchased, along with the plants, and this can get costly.  I had a number of planters (I have house plants all year round) and some old seeds that I could use, but I have still spent about $150 in supplies so far.  I had some containers given to me and used some old containers I have around, so I was able to save some money.  My bestie also gave me three tomato plants, so that saved a bit of money too.  I think the key to keeping the costs reasonable is to be as resourceful as possible and use containers that may not traditionally be used.  If you have other friends who garden, you can swap plants and seeds as well, which can save money, especially if you are gardening in small spaces.  (It will take me a few years to use up some of the packets of seeds that I bought).  If you have leftover seeds, put them in an airtight container in a dark, dry spot and try using them again next year.  My bestie has corn growing from seeds that are 3 years old  

What am I growing?:
-three tomato plants (not sure how they will do as they need at least 6+ hours of sun, got these from my bestie, she started them from seed)

-variety of peppers (red, green and hot yellow), 8 plants in total (bought as plants)
-onions (bought plants)
-peas (I bought local pea sprouts, and they got away on me and started getting too big, so I planted some of them)

-cucumber (started from seed, three plants)

-mini watermelon (bought plant)

-red and green lettuce mix (started from seed)-arugula (had seeds)

-regular basil, pesto basil, chocolate mint, rosemary, lavender, chives (bought plants)

-variety of flowers











My "garden" is definitely behind my bestie's garden in her backyard, and the lettuce is not growing as fast as I hoped, but everything is coming along and growing, so fingers crossed I will get some produce.  I continue to move plants around and I am trying to come up with creative ways to maximize the space I have and the sunlight that the plants will get.