Thursday, October 28, 2010

I Went to A Garden Party

One thing about living in an apartment with a courtyard is that I have no place for a garden. I want to get involved with the Randwick Community Garden, but I’ve been a little slow on that due to other commitments, and frankly, I don’t know if I want to take a plot when I don’t know how often I’ll be able to get over there. Anyway, the stop gap solution is to do some container gardening.

I’ve planted strawberries 
 





 



     tomatoes

 




basil







     thyme






peppers (on the right) and beans (on the left)












nasturtiums, which by the way, are an edible flower





    mint

and carrots.


So far the strawberries have been the big producer, yielding one whole berry. I have flowers on the tomatoes, so I’m really hoping they start producing something soon. I have already learned a few lessons, like I probably should have some more large pots, because I’m pretty sure I overcrowded the cherry tomatoes and the peppers.

I still wish I could have a real garden. In the meantime, this will have to do.

Update:  Since I originally wrote this post, there have been a few developments, mainly a few baby tomatoes.  So assuming they don't get eaten, we'll have tomatoes sometime in the next couple of weeks!  The bad news is, I have some sort of green caterpillar eating just about everything.  I need to get some organic remedies, because the caterpillar is really hard to find and pick off, which is my current method of prevention.  But at least I'm making some progress!

3 comments:

craftosaurus said...

Looks like a good solution for the time being. Good luck with the caterpillars (shudder).

I'm pretty sure yougrowgirl.com features an amazing container garden, so you might check there for ideas...

Anonymous said...

They look gorgeous - hope they produce well. Think I read somewhere that a sol'n of soapy water sprayed on will get rid of pests. I'm using an Ortho product called ecosense brand insecticidal soap for my outdoor aloe

Believe you missed a very important plant - hops ;)

~M

L said...

Thanks for the suggestion, craftosaurus. I'll add that site to my reading list.

The caterpillars look kind of cool. I hate smashing them, but they are destroying my garden! I bought this bacteria stuff that kills them. It's called bacillus thuringiensis and does not affect benificial insects.

Of course, it will take a little while to affect the caterpillars, because they have to eat it first. I hope that my plants manage to make it through.

Mom, maybe hops next year!