Month: March 2015

Aloes

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We mentioned our aloes in the last post, they appear to be on a bid for freedom from their red Ikea pots that seemed so very huge when we bought them to house our growing Medusas. We discovered the mammy plant abandoned on our balcony when we first arrived, toppled over in a cracked little pot and rolling slowly on its side in a most unnerving fashion in the breeze, along with a mouldering mop and a cigarette butt. She already had a little baby shoot that we later divided and planted up by itself, now rivaling mammy aloe in size.

Mammy aloe has pretty much been bullying our other plants lately, she’s reached right out of her pot and tried to bulldoze out over the lemons and the coffees and toppled herself over again, having sprouted lots of new little aloes in her wake. So it was definitely past time for a change.

Every now and then we’ll separate the offspring from the big aloes and our friends get new plants. It’s easy and a bit satisfying and involves plopping the plant out of its pot and easing the offshoots apart.

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aloe babies

We ended up with 17 little aloes, and normally we’d let them grow bigger before separating them, but there were so many this time and we’ve got them in glass jars of water on the windowsill for the moment. At this point we’ll probably have to cast the net further for potential aloe guardians.

Next up, a wigwam to support the giantess (should’ve gone for a bigger pot again?).

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Luckily we had also picked up some bamboo sticks to support the dwarf French beans we’re going to be planting in a month or so.

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By the way, this is what happens when you over water your aloe. In other words, if you do not provide adequate instruction to significant other before leaving town for a few days.

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The leaves swell and droop, then sometimes they’ll fold downwards and eventually break off at the crease. You can see that the tip of one leaf on the left there has fallen victim. I suspect that secret watering may have been going on for some time in this case. Mammy aloe is also showing signs of over watering, especially in her lower leaves. We’re not too worried though, these are tough, resilient badboys, about the easiest plants to keep alive (even we’ve managed it, after all).

They’ve been with us the longest, cost us nothing and are the liveliest pot plants imaginable. But if you should wish to harvest a leaf, better ask nicely or your blossoming chilli plant nearby might just find itself with a broken stem.

A tour of the winter’s carnage

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We made a bit of a start at some damage control last week, but here’s a walk through what we’ve got to work with.

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The view from the inside
So the apartment is in a bit of a mess from the planting and re-potting that’s been happening. What we’ve got here are loads of coffee plants, our rescue poinsettia found by the bin in our basement, the red amaryllis that’s just shooting up, a couple of lemon plants, two jalapeño peppers with curled twisted leaves from last year’s aphid horror, our two tomato plants (black cherry) that survived the aphids and were brought in to the windowsill in a grow bag over winter, recently re-potted, a little tomato shoot in a big pink pot (black krim) and our Medusa looking aloes that we inherited when we moved in. There are a couple of black planters here too with Borettana onions and Swiss chard (bright lights).

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The perch

Moving outside you can see the winter winds did their worst and gave our little balcony a battering.image

The grow bag contains our purple carrots that were planted a bit too late last year, we probably should have thinned them out when they sprang to life. When we finally got the courage to clamber out a couple weeks ago, we picked off the thick blanket of dead leaves and found dozens of teeny tiny carrots fit for a doll’s house. But alive! (ish) We took out the biggest to eat (about 4″ or 5″) and spaced the others a bit better back in the bag. More on those another day.

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Not sure if the football boots are alive.

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Yes so we have our work cut out for us. The table and chairs were donated by a neighbour and we’ve vague intentions of doing them up and making them beautiful (not all that into the frosted chrome effect… Dermot Bannon would not approve…)

We had ladybird and bee solar lights that formerly adorned our tent at Electric Picnic but neither they nor the bamboo fencing withstood the gales. There’s an old grow bag with green goo inside that needs a good scrub that housed our potatoes last year. We made the mistake of planting them up then heading off to Glastonbury on what was a bit of a scorcher of a week. When we got back they had shot up about half a metre without giving us the chance to gradually top up with soil. Last week I finally dared to empty the bag and you can see the old stalks and some of the teeny potatoes that now have little stalks sitting in the red windowbox. I planted up a new green grow bag with the ones that looked most promising.

You’ll also see our gnarled lavender, probably dead or dying fennel herb, probably dead purple tiger chillies (were never very healthy but have valiantly stayed alive for 3 years), assortment of dead herbs (basil…something else…) some garlic planted before the winter that’s still got some green going on.

So that’s where we’re at, lots to clear up, order to restore.

Beginnings

~ BalconyD8 ~ Leave a comment

We are novices when it comes to gardening, and we don’t even actually have a garden. We decided to start this blog to document (and force us into action) our trials and errors in balcony gardening and other stuff along the way. Previous attempts at whipping our concrete ledge into shape have resulted in such highlights as stunted nonflowering lavender, dead herbs, potatoes that shot up but didn’t make more potatoes, an aphid infestation straight from a 1950s B-movie (after rescuing our tomato plants from a particularly stormy September and placing them in our lovely suntrap windows, we were surprised by the little black pellets gently dropping from the ceiling into our cornflakes)….we even managed to kill the nettles that we WANTED to grow!!

It being March, the sun cautiously peering out for more than a minute at a time, we finally summoned the courage to open the glass door and step once more onto the balcony.