Balcony "Garden" Update

[laceblade]

Feeling frustrated with plants, but given the weather (extreme heat), I'm trying not to take it as a critique on my own lack of skill or effort.
I think almost every day in the last 2-3 weeks has been in the 90s-100s. It is gross out.

Plants I'm probably going to toss because I'm pretty sure they're dead:
Irish moss
tiny grass plant in a planter that made it look like hair on some dude
Ivy (not 100% sure this is dead yet)

Plants that are sort of surviving:
Basil (but this is the least successful basil plant I've ever had)
Red runner bean plant (the flowers were brief, sadness)
Spider plant (seems to be thriving, that bastard)
Morning glory (I'd intended to pot this, but it's already climbed around a chive, snaked itself around the basil, and has found its way to the balcony. NINJA PLANT.)

?!
So sick of the strawberry pot, which holds lavender, chives, thyme, rosemary, and oregano. Every time I water it in the top, water comes out the side, and it always takes dirt with it. It's messy, & I find it obnoxious to deal with.
The dresser drawer (as described previously, I drilled holes in the bottom & lined it with plastic). It holds a bunch of lettuce, collard greens, and a broccoli plant, plus 3 things I had tried to grow from seed (which are now dead from the heat): marigolds, arugula, and some other kind of lettuce. The collard leaves were chewed almost immediately by bugs, as soon as I put it out on the balcony. The dirt inside this drawer is teeming with bugs. Not just like, a couple, but everywhere. Gross! This morning I noticed tiny, gross-looking mushrooms growing in it (not planted, obviously!). Pretty sure I'm going to throw the whole thing out as soon as my apartment complex's dumpster is emptied (so there's room), and someone can help me carry it down (so I don't have to hug it next to my chest, ugh).


So, yeah. Frustrated with gardening in general. On the upside, there will be fewer plants to move to my new apartment, and maybe if I tidy up the few I've got left, I can bring them inside on hot days, and hopefully revive them a little. (Minus the red runner bean plant, which is tangled around a trellis & too big to move.)

Also recycling: a stash of toilet paper rolls, empty water bottles I'd hoarded to use as watering things/cloches for seedlings.
Keeping: Seeds, seeds, seeds. Pots.

Comments

[sasha_feather]

A lot of my plants have died, too-- this is just not a good year for gardening. I have had to haul so much water, and still things have died.

[laceblade]

It's pretty selfish of me, but it does make me feel better that I'm not the only one having problems! I was feeling a lot of "UGHHH I will never be good at this," etc. When in reality, the weather has been awful.

[wrdnrd]

I HATE strawberry pots. They are absolutely the wrong thing for my tiny balcony garden. I'd consider trying one again if i had a bigger space, because the one year i actually managed to be successful growing shit in one of those things it looked really cool -- i had different herbs in every pocket.

For me, the secret was to put in a water reservoir. I cut the bottom off a small plastic drink bottle (probably one of Andy's tonic waters), punched a few holes around the sides, tightened the lid super tight, then put that sucker lid-down in the middle of the pot and planted the dirt and herbs around it. With the open bottom sticking slightly out of the dirt at the top of the pot, i could water directly into the reservoir. Helped get water all the way down into all the pockets of the strawberry pot and kept water from running out of all the pot's openings.

But i still got rid of my strawberry pot, because fully planted with herbs it took up about 3x its width in the garden. I need pots that are really tall and narrow or that can be hung off my railing. With the strawberry pot gone, we had room for the grill. :P

[laceblade]

That is good to know with the reservoir thing! I think I had read about it online, but ignored it.
ALSO, the plants that I bought just barely fit inside of it - I bought them already grown, so there were pretty significant root clusters, even after I tried to shake off excess dirt and manipulate them a little bit.
But next year I hope to buy them a little younger, and stick them in more/better.
ALTHOUGH, I guess the lavender which is on top, is the one that's nearest death, so maybe when it dies I'll be able to take it out and stick a bottle in.

I like the idea of these & how they look, and I'm not hurting for space at all, so if I can get the watering thing to work, I'd probably do it again.

[wrdnrd]

Gayla Trail had a really interesting post on strawberry pots recently. Lemme see if i can find it .... Oh, okay, by "recently" i mean "3 years ago" apparently. /o\ She must have mentioned it recently, 'cause i know i read it within the past few months. Anyway, in case it could be useful, here:

http://www.yougrowgirl.com/2009/05/30/growing-an-edible-strawberry-pot/

[raanve]

Almost all of my stuff is dead. Like, CRISPED. The tomatoes look okay because tomatoes love it to be hot as fuck.

Instead of buckling down & watering things, I got despondent and then just kind of ... let things die while telling myself how awful I am. /o\ But! The tomatoes look okay!