Il mio orto sul balcone

It was long time ago I was thinking to dedicate myself to growing herbs and vegetables. I used to have some fresh herbs in my old apartment but they did not seem to like it there at the window and they did not survive long, I also tried to sow some herbs before but it did not work.

Now that I finally have my first balcony I have decided to try it again so in April I bought a lot of new plants, flowers and even seeds. Here are my three pots with fresh herbs, rosemary and thyme that I bougth and the peppermint from China, which I got from a colleague of mine that brougth it with him from China. All three plants like it a lot on my balcony, with its 3 hours of sun in the middle of the day and specially the latest weeks when the temperature was about 28C here in stockholm.

I received my peppermint plant during winter and I kept it inside because we had a lot of snow this year and the temperature was really low, with the dark days up here my little mint was very fragile and it did not look good but when the nice season arrived and I moved it outside to the balcony in a new pot and new soil it began to grow and grow and grow... it looks really good now and it grows so quickly.

I also tried to sow basil again and this time it was a success, I got something like 25 little plants. I am keeping them inside at night and moving them outside when the temperature is over 18C. They are growing very well and they are perfect little presents to give away to family and friends.

And this is my plant of cherry tomatoes, which I bought one months ago. It is still making new tomatoes every day but since the temperature is quite low at the moment I will have to wait a while to have nice and ripe tomatoes for my salad.

Here are my pink and white belargonium, I bought four of them in different kinds of pink and they like it a lot on my balcony, they put out new flowers all the time since two months ago and they drink like crazy;)

I also did not resist and I bought a little lemon plant, it was not that little acually and had 4 gigantic lemons attached... I am just wantering how they did to grow such big lemons on a small plant.

Anyway, all the lemons are gone now but with the right fertilizer my plant has already grown 20 cm on each branch and I can see a lot of new buds and 5 new small green lemons... I am so looking forward to see them turning yellow.

The first plant I bought at the end of winter was this beautiful viola, it is still blooming every day, I just need to remove the dry flowers and it will make immediately new ones. The amount of water this little plant needs is just incredible... I need to water it every day and if the soil gets dry all the flowers will go down, but they will come up as soon as they will receive some water. This is an incredible plant, so resistent to sun, wind and cold temperature (like -5C).

I could not resist one month ago when at the grocery store I saw these plants of alpine strawberry from Italy, I just had to buy them. Sinde then they have beeing growning a lot, putting a lot of flowers and now I can see a lot of strawberries.

I bought two plants, one of them was a bit ahead than the other and already had flowers when I bought so now there are a lot of strawberries, the other one is still blooming and just putting out some strawberries.

I have actually alredy tasted two alpine strawberries last week, they were perfectly ripe and delicious, so sweet and with a nice vanilla taste. The weather has been really nice in the last three weeks and perfect for my plants but now we are back to 18C... typical Swedish sumer;) so it will take a while before the other strawberries will be ready for eating.

This one down here is my mini pink rose, I just bought it the other day and I hope to be able to keep it in good shape, the other time I bought a rose plant few years ago it became really bad after few weeks.