Fall Balcony Blooms 2012

I apologize for not blogging much at all this year as life had other ideas. But I thought I'd give you a wrap up of the year. Here are some of the blooms that are still happening on my balcony today, in October. 

Begonias did VERY well, as you can imagine, on the
north side balcony.

The red poppies did alright. Not as large as you would usually see planted
in earth on the ground and with more sunlight, but alright.

Snap dragons did VERY well! What a surprise. This is a shot of one
bloom in fall but through out the summer, planted from seed, the pink
and white snap dragons outperformed my expectations!

Lovely white snap dragons.

My peonies did not bloom and just seemed tired. I think that next year one might be gone and the other reduced to being even smaller than this time. Peonies are not suppose to live in containers so I can't blame them. They've done the best they could given the conditions. They did develop some mildew but were not overwhelmed by it.

The lilac trees are still going strong. They bloomed happily it seemed. The leaves are just starting to yellow now. I will pack some plastic bags under and around them and the peonies before it freezes.

The chives, surprisingly did NOT bloom. Oh well, they still came up though.

And that's it for this year! Thanks for coming by and we'll see what next spring brings. Keep warm and safe this winter. Best to you all!

Balcony Lilacs in Full Bloom

Tiffie the Cat sits at the open window and sniffs at the lilac bushes. She loves them too!

The lilacs made it through another winter. This time it was on a north side balcony. They both are a little lesser for it however, but not too much so. Considering I, again, took no extra care with them (other than moving them down to the floor of the balcony and giving them some Better World plant food). I have been greatly rewarded with this minimum of care! 

This shot was taken at about 5:30 pm, on May 21 2012. The sun comes around
at about 4:30 pm. I'll take note of when the sun slips out of view as it goes behind
the 10 storey apartment block directly to the west. 

The other lilac bush is doing well but does not nearly have as many blooms. The bush pictured above has many blooms and it's fragrance is intoxicating. It is the clear winner here and it's of the sugar plum fairy type. Both though have survived and bloomed so I am very happy with them. 

I may repot them this fall into larger containers but we shall see. Need to do a little research on when is the best time to do so. If I do, I shall report it here.

So, if you have really wanted lilacs on your balcony but were afraid they wouldn't survive, I'd say definitely go for it!

New Balcony New Gardening Challenges

The new balcony - facing north and this view is west on the norther side
of the building.

This is facing east, again on the north side of the building. Hello sun?
Note all the containers empty at the far end. I am going to plant a lot fewer things
as this balcony is quite narrow and a lot shorter than the one I use to have.
Anyone need any empty containers? Lol!

The cat is confused. Why am I not allowed out there like I use to be? Because it's
seven floors up and there are little birdies in the trees that you'd leap to your
death for, that's why my cute little chickadee : )

Well, it's a new year with a new apartment and new balcony. This new balcony is north facing and that is going to be a challenge for my plants. The lilacs and are just blooming so I'll get a pic of that and post it asap. The peonies are also starting to come up. I'd say that this balcony gets about an hour and a half to two hours (tops) of sunlight right now. Am I thrilled about this? Hardly. But we'll see what happens this year. I have added Better World plant food twice to my plants/shrubs out there but they are going to need a lot more tlc to make it through this year, I am guessing. Stay tuned.

How to Get Your Balcony Railing Containers to Sit Square against the Railing

The black iron balcony basket support device doesn't really do that great a job of holding the container square to the railing. What to do?

I took all my balcony rail and wall containers down the other day when that storm rolled in and finally am getting around to putting everything back up. I thought I would share a little trick that both utilizes those little pots that you end up having to through out (because they're not recyclable and, for the life of me, I can't imagine why not cause they SHOULD be) and makes your balcony rail containers actually sit properly square to your wall. Here is the trick.

You get that iron support screwed onto the top railing as per the instructions then you end up with the container like what you see in the picture above. Then you do the following.

This pot actually IS recyclable but I am going to keep it
to use to make the container sit square. It is a 4" pot across
and 3 1/2" high. 

Take one or more of those 4" pots left over from planting your greenhouse plants into your container. You can double up the pots for extra strength or put one on either side to balance. I choose just to double them and put them square in the middle of the iron back support. This limits the ability to actually see them once your container is in place. 

Sitting square in the middle of the iron back support

Now your balcony railing planter sits square! Ta-da!

Now your container should be sitting square. This way water doesn't pour out the front of the container like it use to when the container wasn't sitting straight. Also it looks A LOT better. It's just a problem with skinny railings I find. I have one of these iron supports on the 4" thick side wall and it sits square.

Much better!

The final product. Sitting square and looking good!

I have the other baskets (4 in total) one on the left and three on the right and when they are up you barely notice the containers if at all. It makes the visual line much more impressive, you don't have as much water and earth spillage and it just makes everything prettier. Simple, cheap solution. Enjoy!

Enjoying the Fruits of My Labor

Who? Me? 

The cat does, that is. Sharing a space with our Balcony Buddha, she has found a lovely spot to admire all that grows around her. This is one of the sweet benefits of all the effort put in to make the balcony safe for her and using planters, plants, objects to add interest to an otherwise completely sterile and rather boring and depressing space.

Tiffie ponders the wide open skies as swallows dart by

Even if you can only afford a container or two, start there and it will make a world of difference if you are nature inclined. It did and does for me.

Cats and Balconies? Yes but...

Here's my cat, stalking the first visitor to my balcony garden that was out there while she was - a fly. Notice her stealth moves. Not bad for just three legs! The cat that is, not the fly.

And being that flies have wings, it's here then gone but she enjoyed the chase and that's one of the reasons that I have decided to build this balcony garden - it gives her something to look at while she is in the house looking out the window and something to interact with when she is out on the balcony with me. I NEVER let her out on the balcony unattended. I don't want her to eat anything she shouldn't AND cats being cats, I don't want her to somehow jump up (even though she only has three pins and is missing one of her back legs, if a pigeon or something else equally tantalizing landed on the net I would not put it past her to jump on it and then down 19 floors). Oh yes, it could happen, with this cat, that's for sure. She's a real hunter, back from her alley cat days (she was a humane society kitty). 

So for her safety and to keep the pigeons out of my lettuce (last year I awoke and looked out my window to see my beautiful basket of full grown lettuce being used as a nest by a pigeon!) I threw out the basket and the lettuce and that was that - a net was implemented! I had a pigeon net professionally installed. Best money I ever spent.

So even though she cannot sit on the ledges of the balcony, she quite likes just looking through the space between the railing wall and the concrete floor where she stays cool in the humid heat of summer as she enjoys watching the doggies and people walk on by nineteen floors below.

West Side Railing Balcony Container - Dhalias, Coleus and White Bacopa

This planter overlooks due west

Here's the first container planted for the west side railing balcony container. I used Dahlias (a larger dark pink flower dahlia as the central piece, two lighter pink, smaller flower headed dahlias planted on either side of the larger one) 

close up of light and darker pink Dahlias

and white bacopa on the far left and right of the planter. Bacopa did very well last year on the railing where it gets VERY windy at times. 

looking south west from the balcony
lake Ontario is off in the distance

There are still planters to be added and filled. Note the coconut husk planters further along the railing. A trip to my local gardening center is in store and I can hardly wait! I checked out Forest Hill Loblaws again but there isn't very much left of interest. It seems this year the selection wasn't as good as last year, but I am on a mission to create a beautiful balcony garden!

Need Height? Triple Pot Your Containers

I designed this container to take up as much room in the ugly corner of my balcony as possible. Luckily I found these beautiful begonia planter at my local Forest Hill Loblaws. I usually don't go for begonias but  they were just stunning. When I got it home I sat in on the ground, in the corner of my balcony. It looked so, meh. Then I had an idea.

I had quite a few containers left over from last year's balcony florals so I grabbed on of the smaller ones and placed it in the larger one. I dug out some soil from the larger container first so I could set the smaller container in and it wouldn't move around. I had some soil in the smaller container to that I could adjust the height of how I high I wanted the potted begonia to sit at. This ended up working like a tiered wedding cake effect. 

I planted some matching pansies in the bottom front of the large container to help tie in the unit as a whole. The colors of the whole ensemble are analogous colors (burgundy, ivory whites, tints of both cool and warmer pinks but all muted, stone and terra cotta colors of the containers with the colors of the green foliage make this an a deeply satisfying yet muted, calmer arrangement). As I continue unveiling my containers you will see that the way I designed things was to give the eye some rest and calm in amongst the bright bursts of color set across the balcony. 

The inspiration for this planter came from seeing plant holders (you know, the iron ones that you place your pot into to get if off the ground). I mean these things were over $20.00 bucks a pop and didn't look impressive at all. This, however, cost me nothing, this year anyway. Last year I had to pay for planter (set in the dirt) as it came with a plant but hey, if I didn't use it here it would just have gotten thrown out or recycled if possible (it's really a shame that so many containers aren't recyclable). The large container I bought last year to set in a hibiscus. 

Okay that's it for today and there's a lot more to come in the days ahead. I hope this blog gives you some motivation and/or ideas to enrich  your days with your love of gardening, even if you do live in a small space or place. Happy Gardening!

Making a Trellis from Old Bamboo Stakes

My sugar snap peas were starting to wind onto each other - that told me that they needed something to latch onto, so I decided to make a trellis out of old bamboo stakes that I was just going to throw out.  I lashed all the pieces together using string then cut the string so it didn't look too un slightly. I guess you'd say I "upscaled" the bamboo. Took me about 30 minutes.

I think it looks sweet and quaint. I just hope it holds during those big winds sure to come.

Balcony Container Garden Progress - May 14

So here it is, latest shots of my balcony container garden. It's been a little over a week since the last shots and almost all of the veggies are growing nicely even though we haven't had a lot of heat and sun.

This is the radish container. They say that they will be ready in 30 days. I think I planted them mid April, from seed. Considering that it had been a cold April, they are doing quite nicely. For all the containers I use organic container soil and have been watering with ordinary tap water and also left over kale and spinach steaming water. 

This is the spinach. I find the plants quite beautiful.

And here are the regular peas (background basket) and snap peas (foreground basket). The snap peas, after a slower beginning seem to be taking the lead in growth over the regular peas.

And this is what is continues to look like from my balcony, here in Toronto, facing west and overlooking, to the south, Lake Ontario. This dark blanket of rain is suppose to be here for another extended period, I think four days in a row. *sigh* Well, living here I sure miss the sun but I sure appreciate it when it comes out to play! 

That's it for today. Tomorrow I am going to post some floral shots and balcony container ideas. Wishing you all a good weekend indeed!

May 13 - Planted some green beans and more florals!

It threatened to storm today and it was a summer day today - with the humidex it was 29ºC! Not much sunlight but very warm. I decided to plant some of the new flowers I picked up at one of the many corner grocery stores that have a selection of outdoor annuals. That's one of the things that I love about Toronto. God knows it's not the humidity!

It was too late to take any good pics but hopefully it won't storm tomorrow and I will be able to give some progress shots of the growing vegies and new florals!

Note: Pansies do not, I repeat, do NOT like the wind. They are fine in the pots that are on the ground but not the balcony containers that are hoisted onto the balcony guard rails.

May 10 - Clouded Over, Little Wind, and thinking about improving the look of the balcony

If you have a balcony like mine, you aren't probably too thrilled by the looks of it. You'll see in my earlier posts just how, well, ugly it is.  I repainted the interior of the white walls of my balcony last year. I'm an artist and have excellent quality white latex gesso which I used and they now look great but the rest of the balcony is, meh, bleck.

I am looking into doing something with the ugly, rusting, navy blue guard rail wall and also what to lay down on the concrete floor. I was thinking of getting some Rustclad paint and just paint the interior of the guard rail wall a stone color, but, the landlord might have a heart attack. It would only improve the balcony (as my pigeon net that I installed last year did) but I don't think I can do it. Too bad. It might be the cheapest and easiest way to improve it.

However, I have been looking at bamboo - some sort of bamboo fencing to attach to the guard rail. That will take some time though, to find and also, I can't afford anything too expensive. Also for the floor, I may just get some heavy gauge canvas and paint a floor cloth for the area where is the sitting area. That way, at least, it can be a pleasant focal point. A sun, moon and star motif might be fun : )

Okay, tomorrow if the sun shines I will take shots of the garden again. It is amazing how quickly the plants are coming up. I also bought two lovely begonia planters (and I'm not big on begonia's but I saw these at my Forest Hill Loblaw's and they were so gorgeous that I scooped them up) two for $25.00 and they take up some significant area in the north west area of the balcony, which is good. That is going to be the area for most of my flowers and the south east area the balcony garden.

Feel free to share what worked, or didn't work for you (beautifying your balcony) as I would love to know!

May 9 - the First Good Garden Growing Weather on the Balcony

Today I was out on the balcony wanting to see how the light was coming in and hitting the containers. It was the first day that the balcony warmed up enough to keep the plants warmer then they have been earlier as the wind was still being quite cold and continually blowing. Today was a first real break from that.

I have rearranged some of the containers and have realized that a 2 tier planter would be ideal to sit under the planter against the wall AND to put on the southern side of the balcony, against the southern wall. There is some good long light that isn't being used on the south side so I will look into finding something that I can use to put the planters on so they get the most sunlight possible without being too exposed to the wind.

More pics to come in the next few days as I work on tweaking the balcony garden! Being out there today just felt great!

How Does Your Balcony Garden Grow?

Here is the southern corner of my balcony garden. To the left from top left to bottom right:

-lettuce

-red radish

-peas (long container)

-spinach

-snap peas

You can see they are all up but the lettuce is barely visible. I would say it has been the slowest to grow and the spinach, regular peas and radish the fastest.

A close up of the radish. Last year hyancinths that I bought from Loblaws and just left outside after they were done are coming up?! I added more potting soil to the top of them. We'll see if they continue to grow. It was quite a surprise to see them bloom - I thought they were dead.

Close up of spinach.

So there they are. The clear winners so far are the spinach, red radish and regular peas. The snap peas are coming up but more slowly. The lettuce isn't too happy yet though. We'll see by next thursday how they are doing. 

May 5 Temps are Up and Winds are Whipping

I am going to take some shots of the seedlings today so you can see their progress so far. Finally the temps are up, it's 16 above right now at 3:28 pm. The sun has come over and now is shining on the balcony. The winds are cold though, north at 31 km/hr and gusting at 46 km/hr. I am noting the winds this year to see just how windy it is when you are up, especially as high as I am. My balcony faces west.

A good time to plant lettuce, spinach and peas!

Back on April 9th I planted three long basket containers (about a foot and a half to two feet long, 8 to 10 inches wide and about 8 inches deep) with a variety of leaf lettuce, snap and regular peas and spinach. Supposedly you can plant these vegetable varieties this time of year as they are cool loving plants and the cooler temps won't hurt them.

The above photo gives you some idea of the view and the balcony I work in. The long baskets and containers that are planted with peas, lettuce, spinach and radish are all lined up against the apartment outside wall on the left of the photo. I have wooden units (two old dresser drawers turned on their side so that I put the planters on top) and a large wooden, I thin it was an entertainment unit of some kind, that I put the basket containers on  to maximize their exposure to sunlight. Supposedly you need 6 hrs of sunlight a day so I am hoping to improve the odds of gardening success!

Today is the 14th and I do not see any growth as of yet. However my chives that are from last year and the year before are all coming up. Notice the little smidge of green in the lower left hand of the photo.
Here is another group of chives that I have in a hanging basket attached to the guard rail of the balcony. It seems to overwintered very well and it is also an organic plant. It is doing very well! On the guard rail it gets the most light out of any of the other places on the balcony. It seems to be able to handle the wicked winds that blow up here. So chives are VERY hardy and do quite well on a balcony!

That's it for now. I'll keep you posted!

Planting Radishes in a balcony container.

This is the first post on my Toronto balcony gardening blog. Today is April 14th and I just planted some radish seed in a long planter basket. The sun is shining on the balcony now which is west facing. I read in my travels that in order to have some success in balcony gardening you should have a south or west facing balcony. This is the third season I will be attempting to grow food on my balcony.

I will post my successes and failures in hopes that it will help you with your balcony container gardening if you live either in an apartment or condo. I am on the 19th floor and things get pretty windy so we'll see how this year goes!

It doesn't look like much, but here are the containers planted. Lettuce close to the wall and radishes in front of it.

This is a great little bit of information on growing radishes
http://www.westcoastseeds.com/how-to-grow/vegetable-seeds/Radishes/