Container Garden Update

Well, my humble beginnings to try to grow something was truly humble. My goal was really not to kill anything. I started with hand-me-down containers and 3 packets of seeds.  Some hand-me-down chives and a teeny tiny stonecrop plant.

Before

Now, my little balcony container garden has become my little gardening oasis.

Today!

Worm Poop and Mites!

Today, I had to check up on the worms!  Once again, these efficient consumers of my vegetal and paper waste are ready to harvest!

My original set of worms seem to have produced even more castings than the last harvest.  I also noticed, which isn't unusual, clusters of little brown mites on the edges of my bin.  They are completely harmless to the worms but compete for the food. 

I don't want the mites to get out of control and starve my worms, so I had to do a little pest control.  Usually, I just scoop up the mites and drown them in a bowl of water.

Mites drowning.  Sorry little guys.

I have no problems with them being in my bin, but I want the majority of the food to feed my worms and not mites!  Happy Earth Weekend Everyone!

Toilet Paper Roll Seedlings + Container Garden

This week has been a busy one.  I spent half of the week staying with a friend in Northern VA while working on a contract project up there.  I'm so grateful for the work and love seeing my friends there, but I missed my plants and worms. :-(  I was worried that the seedlings that had just started to sprout would die.  I put the boyfriend on plant watering duty and came back to see that they were healthy and growing!

 

Did I mention before that I planted my perilla seeds?  I actually didn't think they would germinate since my mother had no idea when she had actually collected the seeds, but they had started to grow the beginning of this week and now a couple of new ones have popped up!

Korean Perilla

My Balcony Garden

The weather has been pretty wack-a-doo.  We've been having schizo weather here in the south; one day it's 80 degrees, the next day it'll drop to 50!  Well, yesterday, it was in the low 50's for most of the day until about the evening, when it finally reached the 60s. I thought it was supposed to be spring?  I couldn't take not being outside gardening and decided to plant my fledgling lettuces in larger containers anyway. I had been hardening them for about a week now and thought it would be o.k.  Well, they didn't look too good after I planted them, but this morning, I feel a little more positive!

Some of the lettuces perked up after a little rain this morning!!  I also added more lettuce seeds and put in my radish seeds in the same container yesterday.  Cross your fingers! I think next year, I'll directly sow my lettuces instead of starting them as seedlings. Not all of the seedlings grew so well.  Anyway, what I am happy about is my little succulent-like plant that I found out was a variety of stonecrop.