Enjoy The Good LifeLiving A Healthy Life And Producing Fresh Foods

So the summer is officially over and with the arrival of autumn comes the steady decrease in vegetables from the balcony. Just the perpetual spinach, savoy cabbage, chillies and herbs remain.

Looking back over the spring and summer it is almost impossible to overstate how much we have benefited from the balcony space not just as a place to grow food but also as a place to enjoy our free time and relax amongst the vegetation.

The success of the balcony space has come in many forms and nothing we tried has not worked on some level although some have been more fruitful than others. The first crop to be lifted and enjoyed was the round carrots, sown as early as late March we started enjoying them from early June as they really came on well in the early sun.

The thyme, sage, parsley, bay and oregano really flew along as well and have really helped in the kitchen, the rosemary has taken a little setback due to a bout of powdery mildew but with some care and treatment has started to flourish again once more.

The chili plant has arguably been the biggest success and is still fruiting now with well over one hundred chillies on the plant today.

Perhaps the biggest surprise has been the strawberry plant, a real snail it did not get above the rim of the pot until June but then came on strong and we are still enjoying strawberries from the plant now.

The tomato plants showed mix results while numbers where good with over one hundred tomatoes from two plants they found it hard to cope with some of the very high temperatures in June and we did have some problems with skin burn. Another problem was the type of plant I chose and next year will be going for a more bushy, smaller plant like a sweet one hundred or gardeners delight. Despite this I am calling the tomato crop a success as I do have several tubs of wonderful passata in the freezer.

Now it is time to think towards winter and start planning for next year. my mind is awash with ideas and I really can not wait to get started.

So we are reaching the end of March and it is time to start seriously planning the balcony garden.

We have a reasonable amount of space to work with and although the balcony tappers slightly at one end I would say it is about 1 meter by 5 meters square.

I have decided to do everything from seed to fruit so will not be buying any established plants and after short stroll to he garden centre had myself one packet of each tomato, round carrot, strawberry, thyme, sage, parsley and rosemary seeds as well as some small decomposable planting pots and a bag of seeding compost.

I like these decomposable pots as they are made from natural materials so no plastics, once the seeds are ready to be planted in their larger pots; you do not have to disturb them you simply plant the little pot straight inside the large one.

Once the seeds are sowed they are wrapped in a food bag and left to germinate.

Now we just wait and fingers crossed in just over a week we will be planing and moving out onto the balcony!

It has been a long and very cold winter but slowly the first signs of spring are starting to appear. Down on the farm the lambing season is about to start and a few of the ewes are looking like they are going to pop.

Here in London we are about to embark on our first new project of the year – The balcony garden! We are lucky enough to have a north facing balcony on the eighth floor of an apartment block in north London  and we have issued ourselves with challenge; to see how much of our own food we can supply ourselves with using only the space available to  us on our 4 square meter balcony!

The real challenge is to see what we can actually grow, I mean we have all the usual suspects lined up herbs, tomatoes and strawberries but we also are going to throw  some curve balls in there to keep us on our toes.

We will be posting our progress reports on this blog and will be looking to people to ask questions, give us tips and issue us with challenges. I am pretty confident we can turn our balcony into the most diverse growing spot in London.

Just can not wait to see the sun so we can get started

Paul