Appa literally goes nuts over our home grown lettuce.

When I wake up, I’m going to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.  

The plants were deceivingly heavy, but my stick arms hauled the entire garden up to the balcony one container at a time.  The plants are home and I finally have my garden back. Life can start to settle.

We moved down five flights and closer to the heart of the city.

Our seventh floor balcony is now a second floor balcony and is currently being refloored, so the plants have taken over the downstairs porch.  Thankfully my BFFE (best friend forever ever) and his lady love live downstairs and are being very understanding with the pepper forest that sprouted up over Canada day weekend.

How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?

Yesterday afternoon, Kory pickled a mixture of banana peppers, habaneros, and jalapeños. Deadly business.

The pepper situation.

It's time for change.

The final days of summer are here and the plants have moved inside…along with a sprinkling of aphids, two ladybugs, and one wasp.  I did decide to send some plants out to pasture, au revoir bush beans, broccoli, eggplant, and ground cherries.  Taking up my entire living room are the jalapeños, habaneros, belle peppers, tomato, tomatillo, and banana pepper plants.

I read a couple articles that said peppers do really well inside, so I’m going to give it a go. The habaneros have started to change colour and the jalapeños and banana peppers are on their second round for the season.  It’s going to be a spicy winter.

Filling up this watering can six times a day is getting old.  I wonder if I can attach a hose to the kitchen faucet…

Where do food babies come from?

I’ve noticed a few belle pepper flowers that bloomed, hung around for a while, then shriveled up and fell off the plant.  This morning I decided to investigate…why aren’t my food babies growing? Internet told me that I might have a pollination problem.

Bugs and wind are essential in the pollination process.  Although we do get a fair bit of wind, not many bugs (other than aphids apparently) make it up to our 7th floor balcony.  So, we decided to take matters into our own hands and help the pollination process.

 I think now is the right time to have ‘the talk’ with all of you. When bugs poke around your vegetable or fruit flowers, they move the pollen from the stamen (the boy part of the flower) to the pistil (the girl part of the flower).  Once this happens, a food baby starts to grow where the flower was.  After some time, the food baby reaches the right size to pick and eat.  This process is so important because food babies are the most delicious type of babies. And that my friends is where food babies come from…not the most romantic process, but it is what it is.

Ok, let’s get back to it.  Hand pollinating isn’t that hard.  

If you have a self-pollinating plant, all you have to do is wait until the flower blooms and you see the stamen and tiny pollen particles.  Take a Q-tip or a small paint brush and brush the pollen off the stamen down into the pistil (middle part of the flower). Wait a couple days and you should see the start of a delicious food baby.

If your plant isn’t self-pollinating, you should see two types of flowers growing.  A male flower that has a visible a stamen and a female flower which should look more like the start of a vegetable with a flower attached.  Use your brush to move the pollen from the stamen of the male flower to the pistil of the female flower.  You could also go caveman style and shake the male flower over the female flower.

The majority of the plants we’ve grown this year are self-pollinators.  So the process was easy enough.  We started with the eggplant, tomatoes, and tomatillo plants.  We’ll move on to the pepper once the flowers bloom!

The aubergine has flowers!

The Aphid War - Debrief

We won the war, but took some damage.  The solution that destroyed the aphids also took a toll on the plants.  They are bruised and battered, but will survive.

After talking with some green thumbs, their suggestion is to remove the oil from the armory.  Oil will destroy your plants…fact (blast you eHow…you own me some peppers).   Apparently, using a soap and water solution should do the trick, although it might take a couple applications. 

My hate for aphids still burns, even in their absence.

Those aren't sesame seeds...

Aphids!  Flipping APHIDS!!!  They’ve set up camp on my habanero plants and I hate them.

According to eHow, a combination of lady bugs and a vegetable oil, dish soap, and water mixture should do the trick.  

Now, I shall go to war and I have a feeling that I will slaughter.  Farewell aphid family, I hope I never see you again.

Success!!!

One of the pea plants has had a baby!  Once it grows up, I am going to eat it…and it will be delicious.  That’s how it works, right?  Vegetables are plant babies?

In all seriousness, I am elated.  I did a lot of reading on container gardening before starting this project and not all of what I read was promising.  A lot of people wrote about how hard it is and how your set up has to be just so to yield any produce.  I’m not sure that I agree with them.  I’m more of an act now because it’s fun and read up about it later kind of gal and that didn’t work against me this time.  Getting to this point seemed relatively easy.  It’s still early, but this is a great sign of things to come.

A new addition.

A few days ago I gave my good friend Ron some bush beans in a container.  After planting the bush beans in her garden, she gave back the container, filled with dirt and couple zucchini seeds.  She’s a thoughtful one.  The seeds quickly sprouted and seem to be growing with a fury.

It's been kind of windy out.

Winnipeg has been windy for the past couple days.  That, along with the us being up on the 7th floor has created a less than ideal balcony environment.  So the plants have taken over our entire living room.  I’m sure it will be small price to pay for what’s to come.

Another casualty...Kory (not that I'm playing the blame game).

One of the jalapeno plants died…Kory.  

Today’s diagnosis is death by dehydration.

The lesson learned is when a plant is in a small container, it needs to be watered especially if it is taken out onto the balcony in 26ºC weather for the entire day…Kory (I hope you’re reading this).

We have flowers!

The bush beans and peas have flowers!  I’m starting to think that this may actually work.  I have noticed a couple fruit flies and a beetle or two around the plants and I am considering them good luck rather then a nuisance.  

 

The Routine.

I figured I should tell you a bit about the daily routine.  

Our apartment has a balcony, which is wonderful.  It faces South, so for the majority of the day the sun floods the entire area creating the best case scenario for an apartment garden.  The seedlings are still too fragile to stay out over night, so we bring the plants outside first thing in the morning and bring them in around 5pm or so.  We also had an old lighting hub from our lizard’s terrarium.  It has a UVA/UVB reptile bulb, so I figured why not put it to use.  I propped the lighting hub on either side with two bar stools and for a few hours each evening (once the sun has set)  I put the seedlings under the light.  They seem to be reaching up the light, so I assume it’s doing some good.  

The store bought plants are much bigger, so I’m less worried about them staying out over night.  I usually do a quick temperature check each evening and if it’s warm enough, I leave the eggplant and peppers out.

Zombie Tarragon!

The tarragon plants have reanimated.  Nature is definitely a crazy mother.

Progress.

The plants are starting to look like proper plants!

The peas have grabbed ahold of the lattice and are making their climb upwards.  

The bush beans really are starting to look like a bush.  

The broccoli look the same.  I’ve never grown broccoli before, so I’m not sure what it’s supposed to look like, but they look like the broccoli sprouts that you would by at the grocery store.  I’m assuming thats a good sign.

The dill looks weird.  Long and gangly, but it does look like dill.

The jalapenos have their second set of leaves.  I had to stake them because they copped a huge gangsta lean.  I’ve been rotating the plants as often as I can to make sure their stalks are good and strong.

Jalapenos - Large container vs. Styrofoam cup

Definitely a difference.  The jalapeno seedlings that went directly from the seed tray to the large containers are not doing as great as the ones that went into the smaller cup.  There is a huge difference in size and general healthiness.  My suggestion is not to skip the middle step.