Finally got my fall balcony garden in! Here’s a pic of the finished project first. Left to right, that’s a pot of container kale seeds, a strawberry pot of basil, a pot with some extra basil that will hopefully give a little protection to arugula and mache seeds, and my sage plant, the one thing that survived from the garden I kept on nostr:npub1jrx2fk666k5nt8vgak9xwyxlgcwh8fl9rvpwvvcpdthuqkcnptrqdfhtaq ‘s apartment balcony back in 2021.

I made a mix of arugula varieties and threw in a little mache — I’ve never eaten or grown it and always been a little curious. When I have small seeds that like to be near the surface like this, I just mix them with a little dirt and strew that where I want it to go. (It was a bit breezy, thence the rock.) Some of the seed packets are a bit older, so I overplanted a bit, but I’ll happily eat whatever I have to thin.

Check out how rootbound this basil pot was. This is why your grocery store basils don’t last long… they’re actually multiple plants in a too small pot. So I split them into much smaller clumps and planted them with some more space.

I grew a bumper crop of basil in 2021 in this strawberry pot, but all the plants in the lower windows died. Water just couldn’t reach them. Hopefully, I’ve made a way around that with the clay pipe I made at the studio.

People seem to often make these by drilling holes in a PVC pipe and putting it down the middle of the strawberry pot, but since I don’t have a drill yet 😅 but I do have access to a pottery studio… I made my own out of bisqued clay! Hopefully this will also have a little of the water regulating benefit the terra cotta pots do.

Crossing my fingers all these little guys take and I won’t have to buy pesto or arugula for a while! In Charlotte my fall sown arugula lasted through the winter in a kind of dormant state (rimmed with frost!) and thrived in spring, but that was in the ground in a warmer zone. It’d be awesome if it happened up here, too, but not counting on it!

#gardening

#pottery

#grownostr