Zombie beans

My beans have risen from the dead! Lucky I didn't clear them out yet!

The story so far (month 4)

Gosh it's been a while hasn't it. Hello! No excuses really, just life getting in the way!

Let's start with the good stuff. Look at my tomatoes. They are producing so many red fruits now it's just brilliant. I attempted to make some sun dried tomatoes but I had the oven on too high so they were more sunburned, but they were still tasty. Next up is to attempt some chutney. I had a bit of a panic that I had blight - some of the leaves are definitely going mouldy. I googled it and came up with the rather random cure of spraying the leaves with milk diluted with water. It does seem to have worked - it's still going strong at least.

Also my spring onions are getting big! I think the two I planted earlier might be ready but I'm not really sure how to tell. I think I will try one this weekend and see. That's exciting :)

There's been a bit of colour the last 2 weeks as my mint is flowering. I've never seen mint flower - it's beautiful.

My chives flowered again too - I went to cut off the dead heads and look, lots of seeds! I don't think I will plant more chives but I collected the seeds anyway, it felt like I was getting something for nothing!

The only thing that has not been going so well is the beans. I think I have definitely been overwatering them and they have gone yellow and mouldy, which is a shame. I'd given up on them, I haven't watered them for two weeks but yesterday I spotted something wonderful, a few new flowers! I don't know if it will come to anything but I have definitely learned to go easy on the watering.

I also found this - I thought it was a mouldy bean but it was dried out. Look what was inside - lovely purple beans!! I'll keep these for next year.

I hope all your veg patches are treating you well.

The story so far (month 3)

Hello bloggers. I've been away so much this month, it's all a bit quiet from me. Here's a little round-up of what's been going on.

There's been a little harvest! Unfortunately I think that any harvests I will have will be little. My peas have been producing the most output of anything here, but still not that much. One of my bean plants has not produced any beans yet. Loads of flowers but no beans. Boo.

Look at these little beauties! They are so sweet and tasty. I love them!

However, all is not well on the balcony. Look at my peas...they are covered in white fungus the leaves are dying from the bottom up. I'm heartbroken! I love my peas - the flowers were beautiful and the peas were so tasty. I think I am going to have to throw them away.

They have actually gone downhill a lot over the weekend since I took this photo. All but the top leaves are yellow now and the leaves and pods have white mould on them. Sob! I don't think I can save them now but if anyone has any tips as to what I've done wrong here I would really appreciate it. Personally I am going to blame it on the neighbours :)

Here's something nice though. I read Martin's blog at The Good Life where he had a pepper which didn't germinate until he put it in the greenhouse. I have 4 yellow peppers which also wouldn't germinate, so a week or so ago I moved them to the sunniest windowsill we have, and look what's happened...

One out of 4! Thanks for the tip guys. It's a real shame about my peas, but you live and learn. The tomatoes are STILL green, but don't worry - you'll be the first to know when they're edible!

I hope you all had great weekends :)

Randoms

I hope you don't mind if I base this post around pictures of some gorgeous things that are happening on my balcony right now.

My wildflower mix (planted to attract the bees and failing miserably) has begun to bloom. I don't know what this plant is but it's beautiful.

A friend who came for dinner recently bought me a gorgeous mini orchid. I find this quite terrifying as I have never usually been able to keep flowers alive, but hopefully my vegetable success will rub off on the orchid.

 This is an open heartsease seed pod.

And lastly, my beans climbing up their pole!

More infrastructure

My job for today was to add in some more support for my beans. They have grown happily up the netting but they obviously want to grow higher, so I've added a few more poles to keep them happy.

While I was out there I spotted a lot of small beans, but hiding away at the back was one full size bean :) 

It's at the back in a sort of L shape!

I also have lots of peas growing but only about 2 pods which are ready - I don't know whether these can stay out until there's enough for more than a spoonful....but to be honest I am too excited to wait, I will just probably pick them to see what they are like!

Hurry up peas!

I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend!

Chilli testing

Before I get onto the chillies, just look at this picture. What IS this???!!! 

I would love if I could just have a few bees visit my balcony. I am not asking for bluetits and bunny rabbits. And what do I get? Dead pigeons, earwigs and some kind of hornet-beetle hybrid designed purely to scare the living daylights out of me.

On to happier things. Look what's growing!

Tiny baby runner beans! It's so exciting!

We also plucked up the courage to try the chillies tonight. You can eat them at any point - I mainly want to wait until the fruits are red as then they have a slightly sweeter taste. Before this, when they are very dark green they are at their hottest. I had a glass of cold white wine on hand for emergencies!

Would you be scared yet?

You've probably gathered that I'm a complete wimp with spicy things so recruited my other half to try them first, although I have to take his descriptions with a pinch of salt - what he calls "warm" would probably leave me with no taste buds for 3 days. We started with the anaheim and it was actually edible - the skin was hardly hot at all, the seeds were hot but not unbearably so. Then the jalapeno - now that really was hot. Even the b/f thought so and we classed it as too hot for tonight's Thai green curry. The anaheim made the cut though!

Hopefully I can improve my tolerance for chillies this summer!

The story so far (month 2)

It's a gorgeous sunny morning on the balcony today and the perfect time to take stock of how my little growing project is going.

My tomatoes are a great success. I took a good look at them yesterday and discovered I had missed a few side shoots which had turned into large stems. I performed a bit of surgery and they are looking better now. There's lots of flowers on all 3 plants and some fruits forming. They are growing visibly every day.

The chillies are also thriving, they love their sunny spot, it's the hottest place in the house. There are so many flowers and fruits forming I can't even keep up. They are still green at the moment (I am pretty sure they will turn red when ripe) - it shouldn't be long before we can pick these.

Similarly the beans and peas. They seem to love the netting and are growing happily.

My strawberries are a little healthier since the trim, I haven't lost any more leaves so that's a bonus. Still, I find myself quite indifferent to them now and I don't even know if I should make the effort to keep them for next year. 

I've got more salad on the go - something a little milder this time because the spicy mix was so strong we could hardly eat it by the end. This one is a mild green mix, and sown in nice neat rows this time so that they are easier to thin out!

Also my sunflower kit has produced 2 healthy plants, I'm looking forward to seeing how they turn out - I love sunflowers. It's all quiet on the chilli kit front, although I did plant those a little later.

P.S. A note on blogging

I had never blogged before 2 months ago when I started my little balcony garden and this blog, and I am thoroughly enjoying both. I find blogging therapeutic, creative (especially the photography) and the perfect way to record the developments of my gardening. But the best part about it by far has been the comments and messages from other gardeners - help, advice or just a friendly "hello" from people all over the world. Thank you to everyone who has read my blog, given me advice or wished me well, I really appreciate it and I love reading all of your blogs too.

More flowers and other happenings

There are some amazing things happening on my balcony. Here's a couple more flowers you haven't seen yet...

Runner Beans

Tomatoes

Lavender

Look at my pea plants - I find this incredible. It's reaching out to grab onto anything it can, and it's growing up the net nicely. Things like this always brings me back to the question "how do they know how to do this?" I am really enjoying seeing this stuff happen on a daily basis.

This is the most exciting news though, there are real, actual, proper chillies and tomatoes growing. Look!

Note to self: stop taking so many close up photos on new camera, remember to get the bigger picture too!

First flowers

There's the very beginnings of some flowers on a lot of my plants, I think over the next week or so I'm going to bore you with lots of pretty pictures. My tomatoes are about 50cm high, and they have started making some buds:

My beans kept growing and growing even past the netting and into the sky. The first one I chopped down is ahead of the rest - it really has put it's energy into the lower leaves. Look what I spotted today:

The top of the chilli plants are looking promising:

And here's the best for last, my first proper flower on the jalapeno plant :)

The story so far (month 1)

It seems like there hasn't been much happening for the last few weeks. My tomato and broccoli seedlings have been the same size for ages, with no new leaves or growth. I wasn't having any luck with the beans. But somethings happened in the last few days and suddenly everything is growing! Here's my wildflowers, mixed salad and rocket:

I'm really excited that it won't be too long before we'll be eating this! I'm chuffed with my broccoli and tomatoes too - they've definitely grown, the stems are thicker and there are some new leaves appearing. Yay! I wonder if they have just been concentrating on growing down rather than up and making roots for a while.

My bean saga continues - the beans really quickly got too tall to be unsupported but I was worried about putting them straight outside in case the change of temperature killed them. So I've just put one out at first - to see if it was ok. I felt so bad leaving it out there all alone in the wind and cold at night while I was tucked up in bed! Luckily, it seems to have survived, although the wind has snapped one of the leaves. 

Poor little test bean

I've also planted some peas, so all in all I'd say that the first month has been quite a success! I'm certainly raising a glass to the balcony garden, it's been fun, relaxing and educational, hopefully next month it will be nutritious as well. :)

Bean update

Take a look at these little beauties!! Well, they're not so little anymore - this is 3 days of growth, these beans are amazing! Good old poundland :) It's inspired me to plant a some peas as well which I am going to do later.

Also, I had all but given up on my dark cupboard tuppaware beans, but I've had a look today and they have definitely got some life in them!

So I've planted one of this variety (red rum), along with the 3 above (which are scarlet emperor) so I will hopefully have two varieties to try. I still can't believe those bean plants, they are like an explosion of life on my windowsill!

Sixteen Beans

Inspired by the success of my broccoli, I have decided to plant the runner beans. Although not "plant" in the traditional sense, but in the lay-gently-on-a-wet-bed-of-kitchen-towel-in-tuppaware-and-put-on-the-windowsill sense. This isn't bean related madness, apparently it stops the seeds from rotting before they germinate and I found the method at gardenhive.

Usually people plant beans to grow up canes or poles, but only having a balcony I am slightly restricted. I had an idea to put netting up on the glass around our balcony for it to grow up, but do beans need to grow to a certain height? Our glass is not much over a meter high. If anyone knows about beans (mine are the red rum variety) or has any bean growing gadgets suitable for a windy balcony I would love to hear about them.

There's got to be a witty comment in there somwhere...

Also, my tomato seeds have started coming up. Phew!

Have a lovely Easter weekend everyone.