Last year marked our first effort at gardening on our 23rd floor patio. We had some success and enjoyed our hyper-local source of fresh herbs and small amounts of produce!
Last’s year’s meager beginnings:
By July, we were in business:
Yesterday at the farmer’s market, we picked up some small plants and re-potted them in anticipation of more patio farming this year! Two varieties of tomatoes, red bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, spearmint, cilantro, and arugula filled up most of our planters. We nestled the seedlings in a combination of last year’s dirt, a layer of compost from our bin, and lots of organic potting mix. Here is the start to Patio Garden 2009!
We have two pots with two Roma tomato plants in each (one shown on left). We also got a jalapeno pepper and red bell peppers (right).
This Early Girl tomato is already pretty tall, and it already has flowers, so we’re looking forward to fruit soon! With so few plants we avoid that overproduction problem that can happen with a row of tomatoes in a yard. The last things we got are a new spearmint plant (in its own pot to avoid mint sprawl), cilantro (which bolts quickly and will need to be re-seeded throughout the season), and tiny arugula!
Items not pictured: A friend is sharing some lettuce mix seeds with me, so the arugula should complement that nicely. We also have a nice, hardy rosemary plant that survived the winter indoors. Last but not least, I planted some sage and basil seeds in an egg carton in the kitchen. It’s still a bit chilly to plant seeds outside. In fact, the husband brought home an impulse-buy basil plant from the grocery store, but it died already. Zombie pesto, maybe?
