New Acquirement & Mess

 So I was away for almost 2 weeks and I came back to a huge mess of a patch, dying seedlings and bald rose plants. Some of strawflower, most of the 2 parsleys and all my sage seedlings died. Am pretty sad about this. Let's talk about something else, my plot to happiness.

Look how much they have grown! Oh, the grass and weeds were overtaking the plot though.

The lettuce have grown quite a bit too! Those are cotton plants in single pots. Should be transplanting to ground soon.

My blueberry is drowning. It's been raining very heavily lately. Quite a bad idea to plant it in this Ikea hole-less pot so I've transferred it to a regular pot. 

I've cut down the sweet potato which was overtaking the plot. I think I should be able to harvest the potatoes soon too.

The greens that I chopped off.

This poor cabbage seedling etiolated after being covered by the sweet potato.

Many of my bean plants died including all of the berlotti beans before I left due to the hot weather. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that 2 french beans survived and are flowering. It has to be the sweet potato greens that spread all the way and covered the ground.

The red okras decided to grow pods when I was not around so I came back to many overgrown pods. I will save seeds.

Didn't expect the Japanese cucumbers to flower so soon. It looked like I'm gonna have a lot of cucumbers.

 Carrots are doing pretty well too. 

Magda Zucchini are growing pretty wild, one of them grew very big but her flowers are dropping so I cut her smaller. I noticed the smaller plant does better with the flowers.

The chinese kale ave overgrown and some have bolted. I will try to save their seeds.

Broccoli is growing steadily and in different pace as if I did successive planting which I didn't. 

The cabbages are also growing as if it was a succession planting (no it's not) but one of the cabbages multiplied on the head after the bud was attacked by some slug.

This is the textbook bud - hopefully it will start to form the head.

 Transplanted some of heirloom tomato seedlings before I left but only one survived. I reassigned the berlotti bean plot to tomato and I used the weed mat. Maybe the weed mat absorbed too much heat.

I'm letting an Edamame plant to seed.

  

Harvest! Plucked most of the red okras and some edamame for snack. Only a couple of the red okras are edible, the rest will be seeds meanwhile edamame was extremely yummy after a quick boil and tossed with salt! The best!

The big daddy.

Sigh. My seedling trays.

 My sole radish plant. Sowed and transplanted some seedlings before I left but that time was just too hot. I should sow more.

The plot after cleanup.

Mexican Giant sunflower didn't turn out to be giant!? Look how tiny they are! They are no more than 3 feet.

Anyway! My loot from the trip

These packets are pretty as heck!

Perennial Bloom Mixture:
1. Basket of Gold (Sp) 2%
2. Black-Eyed Susan (S/F) 2%
3. Blanketflower (S/F) 7%
4. Candytuft (Sp) 6%
5. Carnation, Double (S) 6% %
6. Columbine, McKana (Sp) 2%
7. Coneflower, Pink (S/F) 5%
8. Coneflower, White (S/F) 1%
9. Coreopsis, Lance-leaved (S) 4%
10. Dianthus, Spring Beauty (Sp) 4%
11. Daisy, Shasta, Alaska (S) 4%
12. Forget-Me-Not, Woodland (Sp/S) 2%
13. Gayfeather (S/F) 6%
14. Lupine, Bigleaf (Sp/S) 28%
15. Mexican Hat (S/F) 1%
16. Moss Verbena (S) 4%
17. Oxeye Sunflower (S) 8%
18. Penstemon, Rocky Mt. (S/F) 3%
19. Wallflower, Siberian (Sp) 5%
(from Botanical Interests)

Seed Saving and Sowing

I'm attempting to save seeds for snow peas and borlotti beans. Let's hope it works.

Another grand project of mine is to grow sunflower on the tiny slope facing the kitchen window. It's so uninspiring, sad and full of weeds. I've sowed about 75 seeds of Mexican Giant and American Giant. Let's hope for the best.

American giants. I bought the seeds quite cheaply via Carousell.

Mexican giants. These were sowed almost a week earlier.

Happy to see most of the seeds have germinated.

Things are going pretty ok for the veggie except there are a lot of weed seedlings especially caladium seedling. Annoying. The plants are growing at different stages but doing ok. I'm quite disappointed with my edamame seed germination skills. I bought 20 seeds and only 9 seeds survived.

My house is infested with these caladiums! Another variety is the green-leafed and they are lot on my veggie plot so I'm trying to sell them off.

Since I'm home most of the time, I'm earning extra income by offering boarding service for dogs. This is the pack (2 goldens, 2 pugs, 1 shih tzu and 1 Maltese) for the weekend.

Seed Saving

I couldn't find the heirloom tomatoes anymore so I bought heirloom beefsteaks instead. The orange one is overripe but it's the yummiest. The biggest one was the fleshiest and the red one wasn't yummy. The seeds weren't as many surprisingly. 

We decided to rent out the other apartment and the new tenant doesn't want to care for the green wall (plus it's quite neglected) so I have changed them to artificial plants.

It doesn't look too bad for a DIY.

Long Time No See

It has been ages since the last post. I will be frank, the balcony garden has been neglected, borderline abandoned. I lost my interest in plumeria seeing that I am not able to provide the best environment for them. Same goes to growing edibles. I just don't have the best I'm somewhat leaning towards to succulents. You will see new additions later in the post.
Today I spent half an hour clearing things up.

Do you see a baby?

Dwarf gardenia has been in a not so good condition too.

Bali Hai Gold grew a second inflo whilst the first one died back. Kauka Wilder is blooming too.

Cordyline grew too tall so I cut it down and it grew three new shoots. Fourth one is starting to grow too.

My mini succulent bowls didn't really work out as I overwatered (as usual) so I transferred them.

Trimmed the desert rose and am propagating these for my dad.

My boyfriend's cactus bowl from his office. Only one survived. The small succulent plant was a stowaway from one of the succulents I bought recently.

The mint almost died so I chopped everything off. Good to see that worked out fine.

Harvested my ginger.

They are pretty thin, I wonder if it was my minimal effort in fertilizing. 

I harvested them because I'm planting a new variety - Bentong ginger. I am somewhat sceptical when I bought from the morning market today. They don't quite look the same from the one I bought from supermarket. Did I just get conned?? 

OK! Let's move on to the new additions!

Not really for my balcony garden, these two are for the plant wall for the other apartment. I have about almost 10 empty stations. Many have died.

New succulents! Let's use movement of a clock direction. 

I lost 2 succulents that I brought back from Australia, only one survived and they are growing very slowly at 6 o'clock. Succulents at from 9 - 1 o'clock aren't new. They were from the succulent bowls. The weird-looking succulent between 6-9 o'clock is quite rare and belongs to my sister, it's called Lithops and I'm quite grossed out by it because it looks like a dissected brain. This cost RM39 and I actually lost a layer of leaves from overwatering again. I have just transferred it to this bigger pot to have better draining. I'm taking care of it on my sister's behalf because she isn't confident in keeping it alive.

The succulents in the middle and at 3 o'clock are new! Haven't figure out what variety yet.

 Originally wanted to buy more of this for the plant wall but it's just too expensive so it's gonna stay here. Don't know what to do with it yet.

Sowed some seeds from supermarket lemons. Will they fruit without grafting though? I also sowed the remaining Meyer Lemon seeds I bought from Sydney and they didn't germinated either. Really crappy seeds. 

Bought this packet from the supermarket in my office building. Cost about over RM20. Rather expensive but I was curious. They have other varieties too but carrots was the best option for me. 

3 of maybe 8 seeds germinated but I killed them by not watering them? Heh.