Our Balcony Garden

The eternal summer that we're living in poses an interesting question:  can we garden all year round here?!?!  Yes, and no.  Yes, because it doesn't get below freezing so we won't be running out early in the morning to pick every green tomato like we did last year.  No, some plants (and trees) require cold weather, and more importantly, many things stop growing when it is too hot.  This was new for me.  I knew sun and water were factors - but according to my research tomatoes don't turn red below 40 or above 85.





So our garden looked amazing but nothing ripened...until about last week.  Now we have lots of beautiful (but small) red tomatoes!  Our experiment with hanging tomatoes was mixed.  We used one larger black bucket and two recycled bottles.  The main lesson learned here is to put plants under the hanging plants to catch the falling water.  After watering the hanging ones the water drains through very well - and then the patio is soaked and we waste the precious commodity.



Prior to the tomatoes ripening we only had lots and lots of beautiful zucchini flower (the yellow one on the right) and a few eggplant flowers (the pinkish-purple one on the left).   Although you can eat the yellow flowers you usually fry them to eat them...and we didn't try that. The pink flower on the other hand...we are just waiting for that one to turn into a baby eggplant like some of the others have!



In addition to the heat problem we recently found out that our water is super basic....I mean, it has a really high PH level.  Plants don't really like that.  I was worried the acid in the coffee grinds - which constitute a decent portion of our compost - was making the soil too acidic. Turns out we have the opposite problem.

So, to answer our question about gardening in the eternal summer: Yes, and no.  As crazy as it sounds for those of you in the northern United States - there is such a thing as too much summer.  September should be cooler, so the plan is to tear up the garden and start from seed again in August.  We're hoping it works!  Fresh tomatoes to anyone who comes to visit!