No one should be this excited about a tomato

But I am!


I was squealing on the balcony trying to dial everyone I know to tell them the big news: I HAVE TOMATOES!!

Sure, they're smaller than a penny and they're green and they still have the flower on them, but they are the start of my first two tomatoes!



Never in my life have I succeeded with any plants. Heck, I'm shocked I've kept my kids together for so long! This balcony garden is a huge experiment for me in many ways and seeing the first fruits is so stinkin' exciting!!


Let me give you an update on everything growing on my apartment garden! Prepare yourself. This is like asking a lonely grandma how her grandkids are doing. You're in for a lot of photos and lengthy, boring stories. Deal.


Tomatoes
My Roma tomato plant is still in the container. I have it on the balcony rail for maximum sun exposure and it has a few pretty, yellow blooms on it already. The Roma will end up in an upside down planter like almost everything else. I plan on transplanting it next week. I've decided to modify my planter design -- details on that to come later this week.




This is my Black from Tula tomato plant and it's first bloom starting to open. It's described as "Deep reddish-brown beefsteak tomato has a rich, sweet flavor that is delicious. Fruit is smooth in texture and weighs from 8 to 12 ozs. This outstanding variety is very productive and seems to set well even when weather turns hot. Russian heirloom" I'm really excited to see these tomatoes and plan to use them in my canned marinara. I'm surprised to see a bloom already since this plant is supposed to take 70-80 days to bare fruit. It should be a late harvest but who knows!


My Early Girl is the tomato pictured at the top of this post and it already has two little tomatoes on it! This plant has become HUGE already. I have to water it once a day or the leaves start to look a bit limp. I have a feeling I'll be watering it twice a day all summer.


This is a mess; well, not really but it has the potentional to take over my balcony! I bought a generic tomato starter kit from the Target Dollar Spot and it really worked! No idea what type of tomatoes these are but there sure are a bunch! There's no way they'll all fit on my balcony so I'll be giving them away once they're ready to be transplanted. There are probably about twenty plants in this little container! One friend has already spoken up for a few of them. I'm sure I won't have a hard time finding homes for all the rest. I'll keep a few for myself of course.


Insect Repellents
I have a small rail planter filled with three mosquito repellent plants: two varieties of lavender and a citronella geranium. Mosquitoes love me. When I walk outside, word spreads quickly that there's a walking blood bank in the area. In the past, lavender oil has worked well at keeping me bite free so I figured having a few plants on the balcony might help keep the area skeeter-free. Well. Uh. Um. So.... I have four bites on one ankle right now, all from one night of leaving the balcony door open. Now I rub some of the oil from the geranium leaves onto my skin and it seems to be working. I want to dry the lavender and, if there's enough, make an eye pillow for myself (completely unrelated to my fight with the mosquitoes of Richmond).


The Other Stuff

My green bean plant was injured (by a small almost-four-year-old little girl who shall remain nameless but seems to think she has to be all up in my KoolAid all the time) when I first put it in the upside down planter and finally gave up ghost. I have another green bean seedling that is thriving so I'll transplant it next week.


The green bean seedling is sitting next to my red bell pepper plant. I love how gorgeous the pepper plant's leaves look! See? See? Just beautiful! I'm going to transplant it into an upside down container too.

A friend posted that she had around forty extra onion plants and some seeds to give away. A mutual friend grabbed them up but passed some of the onions along to me. I'm really not too sure what to do with these babies. Onions need a good bit of space and only produce one onion per plant so that makes it a big space hog with low production. Balcony gardening requires me to get the largest harvest possible from a very small space. I've pretty much decided to plant them in some recycled milk jugs - one onion per jug - and just see what happens. If they grow, great; if not, I won't lose any sleep. This is an experiment so I'm willing to try.



This batch of sweet basil was another Target Dollar Spot starter kit. Such cute little herbs! I don't use fresh herbs as often as I should so who knows if I'll actually use this stuff but for a buck, I bought myself some smiles as I watch them grow.

Last but not least are my strawberries! We love, love, love strawberries in this house so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to grow some for myself. I made a multi-level planter using a milk jug and duct tape. One plant at the top died. It didn't have enough soil and dried out after a couple weeks. We plucked our first ripe berry on Earth Day. It was juicy and yummy! I can't wait for all these berries to ripen. I know I won't get nearly as many berries as I want for the summer from these few plants so I plan on hitting up a pick-your-own farm in the next couple of weeks. The kids, especially my daughter, love seeing the berries ripen. The excitement was like Christmas morning when we pulled off that first berry.

And really, that's my goal with all of this gardening. I want to see my children get excited about growing our own veggies. I wan to teach them how to store them for later in the year and to appreciate that we can grow our own food.

My balcony excites me daily

My urban gardening experiment is well under way. So far, I've made four hanging veggie planters, including a multi-strawberry hanger, and have quite a few seedling plants growing in various containers.

This project started as a tiny seed of "what if... I wonder if I could..." sometime last fall. I held onto the idea all winter and did my research. I scoured the internet for balcony/hanging gardening ideas. I asked friends to share their knowledge and for advice. I got crafty and decided to make my own homemade version of the Topsy Turvy planters.

And, I got excited!

I've really enjoyed watching my seeds sprout and grow. I had a great time making my upside down planters with my friends. I went to an organic farm to purchase some plants with a friend.

Yes, I even enjoyed getting dirt under my nails, getting dirty and playing in the soil.

And how appropriate that today, Earth Day, I was able to pick our first ripe strawberry and found flower blossoms on my tomato plant!

Seeds!

Today, the kids and I visited the Farm to Family traveling farmer's market bus. This was my second trip to the farm bus; my first trip was to purchase the sausage and kale for the amazing soup I made last week. I want to make more of that soup and can't imagine making it with a different brand of sausage.

On the way there, I tried to explain to the kids that the school bus had been changed into a farm bus with lots of yummy fruits and veggies in it. They weren't sure what to expect!

We climbed on board and they immediately started exploring. My daughter had a long conversation with Daisy the bunny and my son investigated the oyster mushrooms. Both kids picked out some apples to snack on during the trip home.

As we were leaving, we were given little packets of produce seeds. I'm determined to do some balcony gardening this summer so I could hardly wait to get home and examine the contents! I have seeds for: Mariana tomatoes, Grano onions, lettuce, spinach and mustard hybrid, Orange Smoothie pumpkin, Megabrew muskmelon F1 hybrid (huh??), arugula, fenugreek, onion, Turbo cucumber hybrid, broccoli, and cabbage. That's a lot of seeds!

I'm all a twitter with excitement!

The seeds are courtesy of:

• The Dinner Garden
• World Food Garden and
• Ample Harvest

Thank you because I can't wait to get my seedlings going and start my balcony garden!

Eating the yummy apples the kids chose from the Farm to Family bus

Investigating an angry chicken

Through some random craft-related blog surfing and clicking, I came across the Angry Chicken blog. I have read this blog in the past and enjoyed it but never kept up with it for some reason.

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading through the archives and have found some treasures.

One of my goals this year is to be more 'home made'. This includes embracing some natural home-remedies. I haven't spent much time researching yet, but this witchy post about herbs for kids has inspired me to start digging around the internet.

Looks like I'll be building an herb planter for the balcony as well as the topsy-turvy tomato planters!

Roma!

Looks like Roma tomatoes are best for making sun-dried tomatoes so now I know what type of tomatoes I'll be growing! Found a great "recipe" for drying the tomatoes in the oven. I know, they aren't really 'sun dried' if you're drying them in the oven, but I have limited balcony space and the idea of bugs getting on them creeps me out. I'm excited about making my own 'oven-dried' tomatoes! I love to chop sun-dried tomatoes and eat them with bites of mozzarella cheese.

Vertical Gardening

I am determined to make use of my apartment balcony and turn it into a garden this summer! Today I spent some time researching vertical gardening, when to plant various veggies and how to make my own Topsy Turvy planter.

Although the directions aren't incredibly clear, this one set of instructions definitely shows how to make an upside down planter. Another version of the same, using 5 gallon plastic buckets. And while this set of instructions is missing the photos, the comments left beflow the post are very helpful.

I'm particularly excited about trying this... especially when I read that someone used the upside down planter for growing strawberries!

I definitely want to grow tomatoes this summer. I'm trying to decide how many plants I should grow. I want to can my own marinara and salsa this summer. I'd like to put up at least a dozen jars of marinara and maybe half a dozen jars of salsa. Not a ton, but enough to get us through the winter. I'm sure if I put up more jars, we'll eat more though.

Garden planning in January

For several years, I've been considering planting a vegetable garden. People who know me might need a moment to compose themselves after their laughing fit has passed. As much as I hate heat, hate weeding and, yes, hate eating veggies, I grew up visiting my grandparent's farm every summer and understand the value of home grown vegetables and the ability to integrate them into your every day life. A few tomato plants means lots of salsa and homemade marinara! Add in a bell pepper plant, a few onion and you can have a lot of fun.

Right now, we're living in a rather small apartment. We have a 6x4 balcony and I want to use it to my advantage and try to do some container gardening this summer. Several of our neighbors used the Topsy Turvy tomato planters last summer and they do indeed work. But at almost $30 per plant including shipping, I can't justify purchasing them when gardening is a cost saving endeavor. I'll have to do some investigating to see if I can make my own upside down container.

My plan is to do as much research as I can between now and the spring. I want to make my own rail boxes instead of purchasing window boxes. Making my own upside down containers would be great and would make it possible for more plants to receive full sunlight on the balcony.