Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I'd like to start a new thread about our gardens, windowsills and potted plants! What are you growing?

I'm lucky enough to have an appartment with good sunlight (we're at the top of a hill, too) so I've been trying to grow stuff. On my balcony:


Some mint - some of it had a hard time this summer.


My basil was super luscious most of the summer and autumn, and now it looks a little misreable! I think it will soon be time to take it back indoors. I harvested like 500g of fresh basil over the summer, that I've been freezing to make a big batch of pesto. Pesto costs a real fortune here, and fresh basil is impossible to find in supermarkets, so I'm really glad it worked out so well!!


Not mine, but right under my window: my landlord grows persimmons (he also has a KILLER rooftop garden that I should photograph for you guys)

Indoors:


My potted tomato, who grew a grand total of one tomato this year.


I have this awkward storage space/boiler room behind my kitchen, with windows on both sides. I thought it would be nice to look at something green while doing the dishes. Sadly that's the side of the apartment with the poorest light exposure (too close to the next building) so my plant options are limited. These only grow oxygen!

I am a total beginner gardener, I know nothing about sowing and seasons, and trimming and fertilizers and whatnot, I'm trying to figure things out as I go.

basil/pesto costs a gajillion dollars here too, yours still looks pretty good!

I don't have any photos handy, but over winter I grew a few broccoli in a bag of potting mix [ha!] and planted 2x feijoa trees, 1x apple tree and 1x plum tree.
We recently 'acquired' a huge planter box for free so at the moment that's about 1/3 full with some capsicum [bell peppers?], silverbeet [chard?], and chillies.
I've also got a small basil plant on my kitchen windowsill, and some pretty healthy sage, mint and rosemary in the garden.

The planter box is to tie us over while my husband is still working on building the 'real' vege garden in the back yard, hopefully over the next month or so to get some bulk planting done before summer hits : )

hopefully some green starts, soon! we just moved into a house, and i can finally start gardening again!

MODS! this should be moved to the workshop so other folks can find it!

xo
kittee

Oh sorry! I didn't notice that gardening wasn't in the Yard anymore.

If I can still find starts, I'm thinking of planting kale, arugula, and collards. Also, garlic is a definite.

Like, Kittee, I just moved and finally have room to garden. Unfortunately, the soil needs some work first... And I kind of don't know what I'm doing.

Oh and I just ordered some fruit trees from Friends of Trees, but they don't come in until February. (1 Jonagold apple, 1 Anjou pear, and 2 plum varieties.)

i really should take a picture of all my garden goodies...
currently im growing mangoes, asian pears, persimmons, green onions, jalapenos, yellow bell peppers, parsley, beets, green onions, lemongrass, oregano, rice and corn. nothing like picking fresh produce from your own garden! : ]

I tried container gardening this year too! I had mesclun mix, garlic chives, chard, a little spinach, basil, chives, dill, cilantro, sage, and marjoram. I found a lone pea shoot too! The mesclun did ok for a while, the garlic chives basked, and the basil was just superb. Everything else was puny. And then I had a whitefly attack. Within a week they had completely decimated my basil--it went miserable and moldy and it all died.

I'm a novice like you, aelle, but I have fun trying. I hope next year is better, and I really hope to figure out how to avoid whiteflies. They are crassholes.

My main garden is done for the year, but I have kale, parsley, thyme, and basil in my indoor windowboxes.

I just put my garden to bed for the winter, so right now I'm growing winter rye in it as a cover crop. This is my first year with a garden, so it's been really fun and interesting learning about how to do it! I can't wait to plant stuff again in the spring!

With the end of summer came the end of my beloved basils, and the poor jalapeno plant that only grew one very tiny pepper.

What can I grow inside/on a ledge during a California winter?

I am a container gardener, and everything except for my window herbs have been cleared out for the winter. For some reason I thought it would be a great idea to start some herb seeds. For over pesto in January, I guess? I really want to purchase a dwarf key lime tree, that'd just be swell!

oh man! you are so lucky. friends of trees didn't offer me much more than crabapples. i want another fig variety...

Man, that's freakin' awesome! Woah.

Does anyone know how well potted mini fruit trees would work? I remember my grandparents having a potted lemon tree for a while, but I have no idea what happened to it, or if it ever gave any lemons.

I can't wait to move out of this apartment in a couple of months so we can grow things again. We used to have basil (LOTS of basil), a few kinds of chillies and cherry tomatoes. I'd like to grow those again, plus eggplant- my mum started growing eggplant last year and it went nuts, she had dozens of them.

I'd also like to find out a bit more about whether kale can grow here. So many recipes ask for it, but you can't get it in supermarkets here. I don't know whether that's a bad sign, or just that no one around here knows what kale is.

I'll try to take some picture soon, but I have swiss chard, kale, mustard greens, spinach, lettuce mix, carrots, winter tomatoes, and ladybug peppers! I'm trying to take over part of my yard, so hopefully I'll have more garden space soon.

Stuff I've got in the garden currently are leeks (just getting big enough now!), parsley, spinach, rosemary, lemon verbena, camomile, tarragon, thyme, lemongrass, Meyer lemon, jasmine, rhubarb, mint, and other stuff I'm forgetting. For summer I want to plant soon courgettes, various lettuces, basil, tomatoes, coriander, and whatever other veges the garden place down the road tells me are easy to grow. I need to sort out more garden beds though (and find it hard to get enough compost without a car). I've also been meaning to plant cuttings of lavender and hydrangea that my mum gave me for ages, and she's visiting soon, so maybe this will be a gardening weekend.

In my bedroom I'm trying to grow potted star jasmine and two gardenias. One of the gardenias is looking pretty grim, but the star jasmine is creeping towards my bed!

I had some tomato plants for the first time ever this summer; 3 regular (not sure of the name!) and one cherry tomato plant in a topsy turvy. The topsy turvy tomatoes did much better than the others.

I also planted some peppers and herbs but kept putting off transplanting them (like, for a long time) so that pretty much failed. I did eventually transplant the herbs and am seeing whether or not they will come back to life... my chives are doing better, parsley is alright, basil is questionable, and cilantro completely died. I'm hoping to at least get something out of them and whatever dies completely I will start over and not mess up.

I just had to cut down all of my plants today, in the cold. :( I had an overgrowth of chives (it looked like an aloe plant), mint, and lemonbalm. The chives ended up being useless, but the mint and lemonbalm bushes are cut up and in the freezer.

I've got a pepperoncini plant, an altulfo mango plant (still very much a baby), and one garlic plant.

I planted an altulfo mango seed after devouring the juicy flesh of the mango back in spring, and it sprouted! It really likes the spot right next to the south facing window... It's so pretty and green. I wonder if it gets big enough, will it produce some yummy mangoes? I hope so... :)

I have cherry tomatoes, Italian parsley, chives, basil and mint on the go at the moment. I have seeds for Black Beauty zucchini and a mix of sweet peppers. I want to get some sort of green on the go too.

I think it's more that people don't know what it is. My CSA has it.

kale is super easy to grow. i think you can't get it in the shops much because not many people actually eat it. i am growing black russian kale. it's lovely. and not as tough as some of the crinklier leafed varieties. this link calls it "tuscan black palm kale" but whatever hundred common names it has, it looks like this http://www.veggiegardeningtips.com/versatile-kale/

and mmm gardening in general. i <3 gardening. i am a herb garden fanatic. i could list all the herbs i'm growing, but it's pretty extensive....

Oh, and it's pretty! I'll definitely try that when I have a yard, then. And bay leaves. I hate using the dried ones, I want my own.

Here's the bounty from my parents' garden, which I helped out with before moving out:


Squash, apples, tomatoes, cucumber, zuchinni, yellow pepper, corn, pears, and one pumpkin! I am so proud, this is the first year they/we've had such a good turn-out.

And right now I've got a basil plant going - just because it's so cheap and perfect for fresh bruschetta!

What am I not growing? I should make a list but instead will just link to the folia page. http://myfolia.com/gardener/torque

Erinnerung, what zone are you in? I'm growing kale in 9B (USDA zone) with no problems. This is not the same russian kale but starbor (crinkly) kale. it hates the summer but does just fine for the rest of the year.

Right now we're harvesting:
collards
lettuce
spinach
chard
herbs (100 million varieties)
scallions
fennel
kale

and the snow peas have flowers.