Garden Update
When J. and I were first picking what we would grow we didn’t use a whole lot of logic. We did some research on plants that would grow in our area and in containers. We even looked into specific varieties of tomatoes and peppers that we could grow on our balcony but beyond that we picked based on the name or the appearance. I fell in love with bee balm as soon as I heard it described as “fraggle like in appearance.” If you too are a child of the 80’s you’ll understand the appeal. Our first attempt at growing bee balm yielded no results so we are retrying using seedling soil and hopefully that will help because I really love the appearance of this herb. I hope mine will grow to look like the picture above.
After spending over $200 on garden supplies we decided to get on our second attempt at seedling. We were successful with broccoli, beans, lettuce and sunflowers. These were our second batch of seeds and we used seedling soil with great results. Our first batch consisted of strawberries, carrots, spinach, tomatoes, peppers, cumin, and bee balm. We used regular soil for these and got nothing for our efforts! We made some mistakes which we have rectified now that we have “Bountiful Container” courtesy of our local library. This time around we planted the carrots and spinach directly into their final containers and we put the spinach in a cooler part of my office (because yes all of this is growing at work since we don’t get any direct sunlight on our balcony apartment). We hope to have better results this tie around… Here is how are growing area looks now:
Honestly, it’s the sunflowers that keep me going because they give the most immediate results which I need. Our other “rock star” is our Cherokee Trail of Tears Beans which have all sprouted to varying degrees. This is how one of them looks:
If we were better gardeners I could tell you when this was planted and when it first started sprouting but we aren’t….
Thats such a pretty flower at the top!!