A Balcony Garden Salad

Take some lettuce and a cucumber

and chop them up nicely.

Procure some tomatoes (slightly riper than the ones pictured here)

unleash your inner artiste (sic) and arrange accordingly.

Add some sliced carrots (note these must be colour co ordinated.)

Et voila - one lovely little balcony garden salad to go with any meal you so desire. Sorry for the short post, but thesis is being a little needy of late. Stay tuned for a guest post from some unlikely folks in the next few days, and possibly an eggplant update!

Harvest Monday

A new year and two new additions to the harvest, cucumber and nectarine! The cucumber was so delicious, I put it on my salad took a picture and sent the picture to my Mum!

Miss J also got to try the cucmber and she gave it two thumbs up. I still have no idea how the cucumber came to exist, due to the long running problems with pollination but who am I to complain. Now to wait for the L-shaped one to ripen and I can go in for round 2.

The nectarine tree had three nectarines on it this season (its first season) and I got to try one the other night. It was so delicate and sweet. Unforuntately I think the other two are suffering from sunscald and won't be as yummy, or possibly even edible, but we will see.

I also harvested from drawrf bush beans. The beans went in with some other greens and accompanied a veggie roast. Very tasty and not at all stringy. The spanish black radish and spring onion also went along with the roast.

As usual there were tomatoes, but not the same as before. Some were pictured above with the cucumber but there were many others harvested that were not as colourful. You see the rest of these were pretty much all picked green, in an effort to minimise wilt and sunscald damage. The wilt defoliates the bush leaving the tomatoes exposed to the dangers of the hot Australian sun. Indeed I am about to pull out half the tomato bushes for this season due to the wilt, with the others following very soon. Many of these will not have even produced a single tomato. Here's a picture to show the you damage I am contending with.

But with this difficulty there is always hope - here is a sneak preview of what probably will be in next week's harvest post - Eggplant!!!

Sparrow Procrastination and the Green Menace

For many gardeners, green cabbage moth caterpillars are the ultimate pain of springtime existence. They hide well, camouflaged by a shrill green that blends perfectly into the lush surroundings of spring and early summer foliage (except perhaps in the balcony garden where wilt induced brown seems to be the new green.)

I have had my fair share of run ins with these little fellows. The moths make nightmares for Miss J. Hurricane J threatened to eat one once, (he actually may well have eaten it, but gullibility alerts lead me to think otherwise) and at one stage the Chard and I played a game of 'let's see who can launch the caterpillar over the street the furthest' (luckily no trams, pedestrians, motor cars or other miscelanous passing objects other than the pesky green caterpillars were hurt in this activity.) But in the comfort of my study-at-home seat (which tehcnically should be in my study but the dining room table has become my ersatz at home work space, I even brought my comfy desk chair out here), where I have spent the last millenium of my life getting a handle on this thesis, I have found a new friend in the fight against this fluroescent green foe - the sparrow!

Today I have seen two birds (or alternatively possibly the same one coming back for seconds) bounce around the balcony, taking occasional swipes at the greenery that is left. On no less than 5 occasions did this game result in the procurring of a wiggly green snack, eaten, every time, up on the ledge. That is 5 less caterpillars to make holes in my garden (and 5 more than I knew I had!) We don't get much wildlife on the balcony garden, a bit of a blessing when possums and other birds make meals of your fruitful vegetables, but these little blessings can visit anytime they like. Not only do they keep the garden relatively free of the green menace, but they let me procrastinate from my horror of a thesis for a few minutes or so! Win, win, I say. Now if only I could get a photo of one ...

A Big Look Back at the Balcony Garden in 2009 (a.k.a. there will be tomatoes)

It is New Years Eve and I am supposed to be putting in a few good hours of study on my thesis, making a cheese platter, setting up the bedroom for my cousin and heading off to a very low key night with a few girlfriends. However, I am procrastinating by blog writing and considering it is probably time to take stock of the year that was. To make it interesting I promised gratuitous tomato pictures for those in need.

January, I mostly spent with my folks in Adelaide, so the balcony garden got a little neglected. It also showed me how my parents coped in Adelaide's very hot and dry conditions, they had to install fake grass.

Late January and well into February was boom time on the balcony, despite the evils of the long heatwave, and Black Saturday which ravaged Victoria. However, in my little place it meant visits by the neighbour's cat (who had a habit of sneaking up when you least expected it)

and tomatoes. Lots and lots of tomatoes. My favourite had to be the mortgage lifter, it was addictive! Unfortunately I think the wilt and sunscald will claim ALL prospects of any mortgage lifters this year.

March was time for blooms. My favourite was the snapdragons which were in the hanging pots. They bloomed ALL YEAR, and in September I moved them out of the hanging pots and into smaller individual pots and they were still blooming! Infact it is 38 degrees today and while they are wilting they are still blooming! Amazing

April brought with it more lovely blooms, particularly refreshing were the gazanias and sunflowers.

It also saw the end of most of the tomatoes which made way for the snowpeas, a bountiful crop in the winter.

May saw me turn 29 and reflect on my life thus far. It also brought with it the final tomato. I planted some white cloud tomatoes late in the season and despite being ravaged by wilt a few made it out alive, and straight into my BLT.

June heralded the beginning og the broccoli season. even though it looks like a contender for a bondage club mascot it survived the poorly trellised snow peas around it and provided me with the tastiest broccoli for months ahead. I am planning to plant far more broccoli this Autumn.

End of June and beginning of July and the winter indoor tomato experiment was off. Alas the wilt ended up attcking here too, helped along by some evil little fungus gnats, but we did get a fair few tomatoes off the initial siberian (the one in the back).

In August we had the inagural balcony garden roast. It meant loads of carrots and other yummies and a rather large and painful overindulgence in wine.

In September we met Sid, the unfortunate snail who, along with his comrades, began tearing the balcony garden to pieces. After a brief conversation it was bye bye Sid.

September also saw blossoms galore on the nectarine tree.

October was when the zucchini went in and thrived.

And from November we got ripe zucchinis, mostly baby ones due to the problems with germination and boy flower hiding, and more inportantly we got the ripening of the tomatoes.

Which in December just kept on coming and coming.

And this is the balcony garden as it stood a few days ago.

Although there are now a few more holes, due to the slow but necessary removal of the dying tomatoes. This hole was where a hanging pot once held cherry tumbler tomatoes.

Still the new year definitely looks full of promise! Hope everyone has a lovely new years and see you all in 2010!

One cucumber is not like the others

When I tell me friends I am growing lesbian cucumbers they just think I have a speech impediment and correct me by saying Lebanese Cucumbers. I then correct them saying no I actually am not too fond of lebanese cucumbers and do indeed have lesbian cucumbers growing on the balcony, as they are cucumbers that seem intent on only producing female flowers. Yet the cucumber saga has taken a very odd turn. I do believe that I have a cucumber growing!

See the above picture is proof (and it has grown even more in the last few days.) The one next to it died and dropped off but this one kept on growing. It is about the length of my hand now. The thing is these lovelies have not had a male cucumber flower since the one I saw in the first few weeks of their life and that seems like the dark ages. Now I am beginning to think maybe that male flower was merely a dream and these are actually parthenocarpic cucumbers that Daphne mentioned which only have female flowers. If not how else would this cuke form? All a little crazy but hopefully tasty.

Harvest Monday

And no surprises for guessing what was in the balcony harvest this week ... you guessed it ... zucchinnis and beans and silverbeet! Ok so you thought I was going to say tomatoes, and well, you wouldn't be wrong, I have harvested quite a few of those which I'll show later but first I wanted to vary it a little bit. This week saw the harvest of a full size zucchini, a rarity in the balcony garden seeing as the ratio of male to female flowers is abut 1:1000000! I also picked a few smaller ones which I roasted up with Christmas leftovers. The big zuke went in last night's risotto.

As you can see by the above picture the zucchini was not alone. I harvest silverbeet once or twice a week, just small quantities to add to the greens in my meals. The probably explains why I never have many photos of it, as it is small and routine! The beans were a bonus this week. I got a packet of gourmet bush beans as a bonus in an extremely affordable ebay haul and decided on a whim to plant them. Boy are they tasty and their small size means they fit well into the balcony garden. Only four so far, but that's good for the beans as they have been terrorised by snails and struggled in the early Spring heatwave.

Ok now for the money shot, ok maybe I won't go that far but for all you Northern Hemispherers who are stuck under snow for the holiday season here are the tomatoes I harvested this week. As usual there were a tonne of cherry tomatoes. Although this looks to be the second last haul, and the final haul for the red cherries as I had to pull the first two bushes from the garden. Both of the red tumbler cherries were in hanging baskets and were more brown than green so I pulled them to make way for, well just to make a bit of space up there. The yellow tumblers are hanging on, but it will only be another week or so before they join their comrades. I can't beleive I am already harvesting and pulling up tomato plants, it is only December!!! There was an additional yummy tomato this week, a green zebra! These would have to be one of my favourite kinds of tomato, so interestingly coloured and tangy.

So there you have it, the harvest post for this week. I wonder what goodies will turn up next, and also how long the rest of the tomatoes will last due to the rapid onset of the evil wilt (I think fusarium but it seems a bit odd, experiments are underway!) If you want to see other lovely harvests from around the world visit Daphne's Dandelions, she wraps up the harvest posts every week!

The Christmas Cheese Platter

I trust everyone survived the hectic whirl that is Christmas. I got to spend two days of it with my rellies in Gisborne. On Christmas Day we enjoyed an amazing and mostly traditional meal, though I did chime in with the cheese platter. It was a bit awesome if I do saw so myself! Tomatoes from the balcony garden, a camembert, a brie, a roquefort I requitioned from other purposes but vow to replace, a trio of firm cheeses which included red leicester, pear paste, two kinds of biscuits and some red currants for Christmas cheer.

All involved loved it! Oh and I am not too keen on photographing myself on this blog, but for Mum's sake I couldn't help but include this pic. This Christmas I proved to everyone that I am a little less scared of babies that I first thought, because I got the task of calming down santa's littlest helper on the day (I think he was trying to eat my shoulder at that point and despite the obstacles he faced in my odd body shape he seemed content.)

Succulent Presents

We are doing a Kris Kringle (a sort of secret santa) this Christmas with all my relatives. It helps me greatly because I am a bit cash strapped and buying pressies for everyone (or making them which is usually the case) can get quite expensive. I got one of the easier rellies to get a pressie for, and it was a tad lucky because I had already made part of her pressie a while back, an apron. Don't worry she won't find out, she has two small children so has little time for the internet. :)

However, despite the one present clause the other rellies are getting a little something extra from me this year and it didn't cost a cent. Two of the succulents had babies, lots of babies actually.

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I potted them up using leftover pots and some special succulent potting mix I bought with my nursery voucher (also hidden in this picture is a pressie for Miss L, 3 sunflowers germinated, just for her, although you can only really count two thanks to my awesomely bad photography!)

Here they are all wrapped and ready to head north for the night.

I hope everyone has a wonderful christmas!

Eggplant Growing on an open Balcony

Eggplant may be a tricky one to grow, but it was an impulse buy for the balcony garden, in place of a zucchini that could not be located. I first posted about it here, and I was a bit worried it would never grow well. It is in a tricky spot behind the glass getting loads of way-too-hot afternoon sun (I know it likes sun but afternoon sun in Australia is a killer.) But it seems to be happy, even with the sunflower seeds I planted around it and, then, the other day I spotted this.

One lovely, slightly spikey eggplant flower! As we don't get many bees around here I jiggled a brush inside it a little to stimulate pollination. Not sure if it is like tomatoes and one flower pollinates itself or if I need to move it between flowers but at least I am fairly sure it isn't a boy flower/girl flower scenario which is causing havoc amongst my cucurbits. Fingers crossed I may just have an eggplant or two this year which would make up for the stupid wilting tomatoes (yes I don't care if they hear me, tomatoes that are weak and wilty have no place on my balcony) and the lesbian cucumbers, not that I have anything against lesbians at all, but in the plant world unfortunately the girl cucumber flowers really need to plaly with the boy cucumber flowers on the variety I am growing. Fingers crossed a boy flower appears from somewhere before the powdery mildew pounces!

Harvest Monday

Tomatoes! More and more tomatoes!!! You can see the horrible cracking the black russians, but also the lovely variations in colour as they ripen! Yum.