Harvest

My balcony garden has been harvested.

Plant tally:
1 healthy stalk of cilantro
7 small, but yummy tomatoes
7 celery stalks

The celery here is differnt from american celery - it does grow big and fat - but rather stays lean and is a little on the tougher side, but it still added nice flavor to a pot roast I made the other night. The rest I'm putting up in the freezer.

I don't think I'll do the indoor garden thing again - maybe just for herbs.

Before . . ..

After . . ..

My Tomatoes	My Celery

Balcony Garden Woes

So here is an update about my Balcony Garden.

Plant tally:

8 Tomatoes planted - 1 sprouted, two replants and a second sprout was added to the mix - total 2 tomatoes.
8 Peppers planted - Null. Zip, zero, not a single pepper made an appearance - even after3 replantings. :-(

Spinach - I had some very happy, small but flamboyant spinach plants - and last night something ATE all of them. I thought balconies were supposed to be safe from pests. To make matters worse - I also saw a little furry bottom and tail scuttle behind the cupboard on the balcony - how does a mouse get up to the 14th story - and why suddenly now in the spring? Do they just sprout out of the woodwork? Was it eating my spinach??

Rhubarb - also not recommended for growing from seed but yet all of my 6 seeds sprouted and prospered - UNTIL the mysterious something ate them. Now I have 2 very sad and be-nibbled rhubarbs trying to grow under a big plastic water bottle I placed over them for their protection.

Half a package of Celery which wasn't supposed to grow . . . . Everything grew. have transplanted 19 little shoots into plastic cups and sawed off soda bottles - but don't know what to do with them. Gave a whole egg crate littered with dense sprouts away and hope they will thrive and live to celery adulthood. Also have 3 store bought celery plants that are in water and are sprouting roots. Celery is not so hard to grow as it seems. The mysterious something obviously doesn't like celery because all 19 seedlings are intact and thriving.

Lettuce - last week I added lettuce to the mix and was thrilled to see some delicate greens poking through the surface - alas - the mysterious something got to them too last night.

Cilantro - so far nothing has sprouted - but until the mysterious something is caught that may be a good thing.

You say toMAYto I say toMAHto

Well, Alister and I don't pronounce toMAYto the same - but that's the least of our word woes. Weekly we have word wars over pronunciation (and grammar usesage and spelling- but that's another issue). Early on in our dating relationship we ran across some of the words I said erb - he said Herb. I said vinyard. He said vIne-yard. The tip of the comical ice burg was when he said ur-eye-nal instead of ur-in-al. (although on all of these pronunciations the dictionary says that both are correct) Most recently the debate has been over lasso - I say lass-oh, he says Lass-oo. So we make trade off. I am forever to forsake the word erb if he always says vinyard.
However, on the Lasso / Urinal debate we have met a standoff as both sound utterly ridiculous to me and I will not budge an inch - i'm from the "wild west" for goodness sake, where we not only use lassos, but know how to pronounce them. As for urinals, well as they aren't really a subject to come up in conversation, Alister can say it however he wants until he can no longer bear the laughter from the men "queueing" for the toilets.