All Blog Posts Tagged 'Plants' (17)

Sadly last weekend The Little Balcony was packed up and taken to a new location. Our current London flat was sold, which we had been planning for a whole and in a very mad last minute rush, due to a last minute change, we moved to a new rented London flat, which unfortunately does not have a garden or a balcony, as I had hoped.



During the move, I had to get rid of all the vegetable plants, which included the last of the Tomatoes, Chilies and Courgettes; luckily it was coming to…

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We had lovely weather over the past weekend, very warm and humid but great for all the vegetables which seem to blossom and enjoy the splash of heat that's finally arrived. I had a little nosey around the vegetables to see how everything was doing and I notices one long Courgette as least 6cm in size and then another four just starting to form behind this.



I'm really really excited as last year it was very disappointing, due to only getting one Courgette from four plants, so I'm…

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This year I decided to try a different variety of Courgette, instead of just planting a few of the normal long variety, 'All Green Bush', I also planted some round ones called 'Tondo di Piacenza', which came free in a garden magazine I bought.



Last year I had a bad experience with my 'All Green Bush' Courgettes, out of four plants they only produced one Courgette, which was very dissappointing. But I hoped I could do better this year with two varieties and I also placed these…

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Over the last couple of months the Tomatoes have been outside, growing away and enjoying the lovely sunshine we've had now and then, when it's decided to show itself. The first two Moneymaker Tomatoes were removed earlier this week and were a gorgeous red colour, they're skins were a little bitty, but this might be because I haven't feed them enough over the last few weeks, which I have now been doing for the rest.…

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This years Chilli plants have been planted up in their final place for a few weeks now and are now sitting comfortably on the Livingroom windowsill. We have one Thai Dragon Chili plant, one Hot Chili Pepper 'Apache' plant (store bought) and one Inferno Chili plant. The non-store bought Chili plants were grown from seeds from last years plants, and as stated in an earlier blog, I'm not sure what these will come out like, due to the pollen of the plants being mixed together, but I can't wait…

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Yesterday I decided to look into what may be in a few pots that I planted up last year. As I didn't label them, which is always a big mistake, I had thought I'd planted both Spring Onions and Leeks into these pots, but none of the growing plants ever looked like Leeks.…

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It didn't take long for the Courgettes to start growing, once sown. Within a week two of these were popping out of the propagator soil, I have one Courgette 'Tondo di Piacenza' which is a round variety and one Courgette 'All Green Bush', which is a normal long variety.…

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Last year I created some Runners from the 'Alice' Strawberry plants I got from Thompson & Morgan, see blog Strawberry Runners for Beginners. The new Runners were left in my mini-greenhouse to over winter and around April they were planted up into hanging baskets.…

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Not sure what's been going on this year, it might be the weird weather we've been having here, but I've tried to sow a couple of batches of Pepper (sweet) since February and I've had no luck, so much so, that I decided to give up a couple of weeks ago and buy a couple from my local garden center.…

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My Aloe Vera plant hasn't been looking too good lately, but I noticed the other day that there was three new shoots coming off the plant, which I carefully re-potted over the weekend, hopefully these will survive. I mixed the old soil from the plant with some of the vegetable compost, which will hopefully give them a little feed to encourage some growth.…

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Last year my boyfriend Zac bought some Garlic plants that had already been started off, at the local garden centre. I planted them in one of the large pots, but they never seemed to do anything. Eventually they all died off except one, which just wouldn't give up.

This ended up in a pot on its own and left over winter and a couple of weeks ago it started to look a little bit straggly, so I took the bulb out to dry out and this is what I was left with.…

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Leaf mould is a lovely old fashioned term, and brings to mind old Estate gardens and poorly paid, overworked garden boys.  It often appeared as a magic ingredient alongside weathered soot and wood ash and ground up toe nails!…

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Part of creating 'The Little Balcony', was that I wanted to grow vegetables I'd never tried before, so the Aubergine was one of these and I thought it would be a great challenge. I started these off at the same time as most of the other vegetables, but I did have some difficulty with them growing at first, so I placed glass jars (my homemade Cloches) over them during the coolers months of the first part of the year and this did help them to survive, but their growth was still very slow.…

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When I got home last night, I started to prepare for dinner, thinking I'd cook a nice Stir-fry and I suddenly realised I had no Peppers (Sweet). Then I remembered the two Peppers that have been growing away on the balcony and I popped outside with a knife, chopped them off the Pepper plant and headed inside to clean and cook them.…



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Normally I'd grow my Peppers indoors on a sunny windowsill, along with the Chilies, but they don't seem to really produce a lot of Peppers, so this year I decided to plant them outdoors. As like most things these plants started life as seeds. They were planted in the propagator in early February like all the others and left to germinate.

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The time has come, tonight I pulled up the Carrots that have been growing since February. After pushing away some of the dirt surrounding the Carrots to check that they had turned orange, I then slowly pulled one of the Carrots to check it had grown correctly. I was so excited to find they had and then slowly and carefully pulled the rest out.

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We saved her, she's looking beautiful, but she's deadly...

 

Daphne - Dazzling but Deadly