Covered Greenhouse Update: End of Summer

Earlier this season I designed and built this covered greenhouse to help my plants out during the foggy summer. Some of you have been asking how my garden has fared. See for yourself!

Not too shabby, especially because summer in our area is apparently all fog all the time (booooo). If you'll recall, here's what I planted:

And what it looked like mid-August.

Covered Greenhouse Garden

While we're waiting for our fence to suntan before we stain it, I took on another outdoor project this weekend.

Yep, it's Garden 2013! And there's a reason for the Oregon Trail look, I promise. Since we've moved here, we've had some windy nights and some CRAZY 30 mph windy nights. On top of that, the neighbors all comment on the foggy summers. So to help my future tomatoes out, I decided to build them a little green house to protect them from the wind and to elevate the temperature during the colder days. This should also help me with the "year round" gardening Bay Area people seem so keen on.

Succulent Collection

My succulent collection is growing! I'm obsessed with these things so I did a little photo shoot with them this weekend. I did my best trying to match the names (thanks gosucculent.com!), but at some point a girl's gotta sleep!

Echeveria Blue Wave. These are my favorites

Aeonium pseudotabulaeforme or Saucer Aeonium

Kalanchoe Luciae. I can never seem to keep these flapjacks alive.
This one appears to be dying from too much rain and lack of sun  :(

Sedum Adolphi or Golden Sedum

Echeveria Lilacina?

Aeonium Garnet?

Graptoveria Opalina?

Haworthia Fasciata?

I picked this little furry one on a morning walk at the old place.
It was just a tiny thing then, now it's flowering!

Baby Graptopetalum paraguayense?

Mom brought me these hen and chicks from her New Mexico garden

Senecio Serpens or Blue Chalk Stick 

Echeveria Geranium

Oscularia Deltoides.

Aeonium Simsii?

Aeonium Subplanum 

Flowering crassula campfire

Balcony Update

It's been about 2.5 months since my balcony rose from the ashes with some brand new, hardy plants. I thought I'd give an update on how it's been doing so far.

Here's a little then-now:

Shockingly, I haven't killed anything, hooray! The tomato plants are growing fast and tall and were starting to crowd the other planters, so I took a couple of them and decided to give the upside-down technique a try. Instead of buying one of those ugly cylindrical things you see on TV, I opted to make one myself out of a simple hanging planter.

I cut a 2" hole in the fiber liner and gently pushed the roots up through the hole. Using a scrap of tough cloth (a reusable grocery bag in this case) I cut a smaller hole with a slit about the diameter of the stem and wrapped that around the stem on the inside of the planter, letting it rest on the floor to prevent soil from pouring out.

With the help of Boyfriend (he held the heavy thing to keep from crushing the tomato) I filled the rest of the planter with soil and added some oregano, rosemary and nasturtium at the top. Hopefully the tomato plant will survive. I'm already not expecting a great yield since my plants never see direct sunlight, so at the very least it will give us a smidge more privacy from the neighbors across the way.

Speaking of nasturtium, this plant is taking over my entire balcony! The only way this thing could be more resilient was if it were made of plastic. My poor phormium and dracaena are practically being evicted from their home. 

I've propogated the nasturtium out to other planters, which is as simple as pinching a clump and shoving it into some dirt. And to think, I was SO excited when those first two orange flowers appeared, now I'm throwing away clumps of the thing every day!

Orange Flowered Weekend

This weekend I decided to try out a sweet-looking paper poppy DIY I found on this amazingly crafty lady's blog. She has it all written up with photos, so I won't do a step-by-step here, but I will show you the final product!

I am in LOVE! Of course mine don't look nearly as good as hers, but I couldn't be happier with the results. Juxtaposed with the teal vase (IKEA) and eucalyptus, they really pop. Every morning when I sit up in bed, these are the first things I see, and they instantly brighten my day!

I liked them so much, I had to incorporate them into my new blog banner, as you can see. I only changed a couple things from her tutorial: first, I used five petals instead of four. My petals turned out quite a bit smaller than hers and I realize now that it's because I used the party streamer version of crepe paper rather than a flat sheet *facepalm*. Second, I sandwiched orange crepe paper in between two gold rather than straight up orange (the two on the left are gold-orange-gold while the one on the right is just gold). These were pretty simple to make, though they do require a certain level of skill and dexterity. They were also super cheap: $13 for all the supplies, which will make quite a few more flowers. I think I will get some proper crepe paper and try these again...maybe in time for a mother's day bouquet?

Keeping with the theme of the post, I discovered these on my balcony on Saturday.

My Nasturtium finally decided to flower! I've been passing by hundreds (literally) of these flowers on my daily walks...it felt kinda like this:

NOT my garden

I was wondering why mine hadn't shown any colors yet. I blamed it on my recent re-potting and propagating, which had probably caused some stress to the plants, but I underestimated these robust little guys! Boyfriend probably thought I was a little nuts, because as soon as I discovered them, I got really excited, dragged him out to show him, then got my camera and started taking pictures from every angle. I guess I'm just stoked about the fact that a plant is actually thriving under my care rather than...well, not. Since this weekend, another flower has bloomed and I see a few more buds getting ready to as well. Take that, black thumb!

Balcony Rises from the Ashes

When I first moved into my apartment, I was a little too excited about having a patch of the outdoors to call my own. I had visions of home-grown tomatoes, little herb gardens, enjoying cool afternoons lounging outside with a glass of wine. I was so eager to get started that things moved pretty quickly once I discovered that Target's garden section had all the Coleus plants I could ever want (Coleus is a shade plant, which was great since my balcony literally NEVER sees direct sunlight). Here's what my balcony looked like not long after I moved in:

It's almost as though it were a fairytale. I got two chairs from CB2 (on sale for $30 each!) as well as those awesome cube planters. IKEA provided the laptop table, rug and round metal planters, including the little ones hanging on the railing. <3

It looked lovely for a couple months. Unfortunately it was unknown to me that something called "downy mildew" basically infected Coleus and basil plants throughout the entire state of California, for which there was no cure (that didn't involve drowning them in fungicide). My coleus and basil plants died pretty slowly and dramatically, first by hosting a fair amount of mildew, losing brown rotted leaves one-by-one, then by hollowing out the main stem in a final display of what I can only describe as "plant suicide". I was left with some tomato, herbs and Dracaena. After a coldish "winter", all but the Dracaena was alive, and this is what my balcony had been reduced to:

Yeah, not a lot of wine drinking and relaxing going on out here! Even Teako doesn't want to stand on that cold 'n' dusty concrete.

With the weather warming up, I decided to start anew, but this time I would stick to plants that grew really well in the local area. On our walks with Teako, I had paid close attention to the flora and had a pretty good idea of what I wanted. As of this last weekend, here is what the balcony looked like:

Ahhhhhhh so much better! It's not quite as colorful and lush as the coleus version, but I have a good feeling about these guys. Here's a breakdown:

Phormium plant on sale due to reverting
(losing pink color), but we liked it

Herbs and tomatoes: parsley, chives, cilantro, rosemary, thyme.
Orange Libertia grass added for color

"Lemon Lime" Dracaena, my only winter survivor

Bottle Rush Reeds

Pink Panther Phormium, Dracaena, Orange Libertia
and Nasturtium (the round-leafed ones)

Pink Panther up close

Aeonium Arboreum of the succulent variety.
I just love this plant

More Nasturtium and a bed of Reindeer moss

Front to back: sage, chives, parsley, thyme

Weber Grill

That Weber Grill is pretty much the best $60 I've ever spent. It's easy to clean, heats up quickly and cook the most delicious food ever. I've made the best chicken, steak, salmon and burgers of my life on this little guy. Some people confess that they keep this one inside of their huge fancy grills because it's just that good.

So there's the current status of the balcony. If I manage to kill these hardy plants, I might have to face the fact that I do, in fact, have a black thumb. But let's hope that's not the case.