My Little Apartment Balcony Garden in progress

Now that looks a bit more like home :)

Mother's Day we went picked up as many plants as we could cram into my corolla and my husband's small pickup truck. Don't ask me how I squeezed a potted lime tree into the passenger seat, but I did, just barely, and my right arm has scratches to prove just how tight of a squeeze it was. I still need to go get my mango tree, blueberry bush, blackberry vines and some other odds n ends pots o plants.

May has suddenly burst into summer, hot and bright and sunny. I was worried with the heat that my sister in law had been too busy to take care of the plants I had left behind, but she did a great job watering them. The SWC tomatoes look fantastic, and the 'Big Mama' & 'Carmello' tomatos in the big round planter were full of blossoms and even some little green tomatos! Amazing what 2 weeks of hot sunny weather can do to jumpstart those veggies into growing.

Unfortunatly the big round planter was just too big for our balcony and would cast too much shade, so I left it in my parent's backyard ( and begged them to care for it for me) and setup my SWC here. I'm playing around with placement trying to give the SWC the hottest/brightest part of the ledge without casting so much shade on everything else. I noticed the container basil I planted in between them in the SWC was being totally shaded by the tomato folliage ( see them tucked by the watering tube?) , so after I took this photo I carefully transplanted them into their own windowbox.



One huge concern I have is even tho its a south facing exposure it really only gets the brightest direct sun from around 10 am to about 4 pm, with the edges going into shade sooner. The area that actually gets hit by direct sun is rather small, as you can see in these photos. Great for people who want to just sit out on their balcony, not so great for crazy people like me trying to grow plants. I hope to get around this issue but buying a few railing brackets so I can hang the windbowboxes on those horizontal rails, and then I can keep the swiss chard, lettuce, dill, chives and mint in the partial shade those boxes cast. I wish I had one of the 3 bedroom units directly above the garages at the end of the building, those have a large rooftop access patio about 25 x 25 feet with no overhead shade. I don't know how much those are a month but I may ask out of curiosity, and if we do end up staying here longer then a few months and financially secure we may be able to upgrade to one of those units, I can dream right!

Everything seems to survive my absence OK, but the dang earwigs went to town and just decimated the pak choi and really did a number on the chard and lettuce. Some of the lettuce was starting to bolt from the heat along with some of the bright lights chard, so I just ripped those out and dumped the soil from those planters. I can replant some of those here. The earwigs are hiding in the little gaps between the potting soil and the sides of the containers, along with hiding under the folliage itself. I need to devise some sort of trap to catch them to they are just going to keep destroying my plants. Cabbage loopers are all the remaining lettuce too, boo.

So thats where I am right now. I did win a couple of container friendly tomato plants at sat. master gardening class, a 'Sprite' and a 'Bush Champion', which I may plant into the other SWC I havent use yet, or I may just put each in a 5 gallon bucket ( taller and thinner taking less space) and put a bush zuccini in the SWC- I so miss fresh summer squash!

Thanks blogging buddies!

I really appreciare your links and advice :) I'm still debating how on earth to make this the best garden ever without breaking my very pitiful budget. Priced out wood at home depot, redwood is 3-4 times the price of untreated fir. We could probably build a 4 x 8 foot, 12 ft deep fir raised bed for around $25, not including the screws, anchors, pvc for hoops, floating row cover or the hardward fabric to line it with. I'm still researching the cheapest way of buying those.

I'm excited to report that my new lights came in! They are some cheap plug in play shop lights from amazon.com . I was a bit worried since the reviews warned that they are shipped in flimsy boxes and the units almost always get damaged- but for the price ( and my impatience) I tok a chance. The boxes looked like shit to be true, but both lights fired up ok. I got some cheap T12 40 watt bulbs at Home Depot, a 6700k and a 4100 K- I don't remember what the 'best' bulbs were for growing plants, but since its a short term thing anyway, I just grabbed one of each. I had been hoping to have more help from Mr.Sun himself, but apparently hes been on vacation the last few weeks with all the rain and clouds, so I needed to do something other then switch trays from the 1 shelf with lighting every day. Now for sure anyone who walked by the window would think I'm growing 'stuff' LMAO. Heres my nice new setup:

I'll probably turn the trays on the top shelf to squeeze 1 more tray I want to get started with some more lettuce and some of the seeds I got at the swap.

Grow my tomato/pepper/eggplant babies!

onions, swiss chard, and pak choi.

I'm also in a quandry about what potting mix to use in my planned SWCs. I was going to do a DIY potting soil mix ( 1/3 coir, 1/3 compost, 1/4 vermiculite or perlite) using coconut coir instad of peat moss, but I was outside checking on a bin on pure coir that got rained on, and even tho it looks light and fluffy, you can take a handful and wring out a good amount of water out. Like, almost equal to its volume in water. Thats good news in that it holds water, really, really well- but now I'm worried that in a SWC design it may hold TOO much water and lead to waggerlogging issues with the plants. Adding perlite or vermiculite may help, I dont know till I've made a few 'mixes' on a smaller scale to see how they compare. Spring frost date is this week, ahhh! I'm so not ready, and with the ground still soaked from todays rains not much I can do out there but plan and obsess.

So now I'm debating how to make a new mix for the SWCs, or if I should just skip the water resivoir part of the SWC altogether, and basically just drill holes at the bottom of these rubbermaid bins for drainage, plant in them, and just top water as needed. I could even make some of those watering stake bottles with 2 L cola bottles if the mix starts to dry out too much.

I have to consider tomatoes, esp indeterminates are heavy drinkers, plus our summers are over 100 easy, very low humidity, and oftentimes windy. All very drying factors. Its a big scale in my head...too much water in the soil....too many factors that can dry the plants out to a crisp in a container. Luckily both areas I am planning for SWCS get morning sun from sunup to around 2-3pm then are shaded partially by the house, so I'm hoping that will help prevent blossom drop and poor fruit set in the hottest part of the year.

Gah, why do I do this? I have this idea I'm all confident with and then I read so much of other peoples opionions and experiences I get nervous, panic and lose all confidence in what I thought I had figurd out! LOL Its what I love about the "blogosphere" its this huge everchanging library of information at my fingertips whenever I escape to the computer and want to learn something.

Or drive myself nutts from an information overload!