The Great Radish Famine of 2014

Well, like I said the other day, I was going to be pulling up the radishes but wasn't going to hold my breath. Good thing I didn't! This was just pathetic.
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Left: Radishes Planted with Carrots (and Cucumbers along the edge) -- Right: Radishes Alone (Climbing Beans along the edge)

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I had two full containers of radishes, one where I was using the radishes to break the soil for the carrots - and they destroyed my poor little carrots. I certainly won't be trying that "little trick" again. In fact, this whole harvesting of the radishes fiasco is so embarrassing that I hardly want to post the results, but I will because I want to show my mistakes as well as my successes.
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Spoiled! Drat!

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The Results of Not Thinning Them Nearly Enough!

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There were hardly any radishes under there at all. Like I said in my last post, I suspect that I got too greedy and planted them too close together. I thinned them about an inch apart because I seen some other people who were doing it that close, but on the package, it says to thin them two inches apart. Lesson learned: listen to the package, dumb-ass. These were even left in the containers for more than a week longer than what the package recommended, and they still didn't pan out.
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The Cupboards Will Be Bare!

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Yup, that's all that two pots produced. However, it is true that all clouds have a silver lining. Check out that one picture of about the only decent radish I pulled. That picture kicks butt! It belongs on a magazine cover!
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Meh. What do you do when you live a shoe? I'll plant some more later this year, since they take such a short time to grow. Next time I will do better.  

Balcony Garden Update, Composting and Salad Greens Harvesting

Here's a couple of shots of the balcony I took today. It's grown in quite nicely and I'm very pleased with how it's looking. It's very nice and lush and I enjoy sitting out in my chair and watching my little project come to fruition. The beans (below centre) have started grasping onto the railing and I'm getting excited to see how well they fill in and provide some shade and privacy for my little perch in the sky. 
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Middle: Climbing Beans -- Right: Potatoes

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Although it doesn't show very well in the picture, the potatoes (above right) have been hilled up. Man, do these bloody things grow fast. And to think, only a few weeks ago they were so late in coming up that I though they might not come up at all! At first I piled the soil up from around the plants, but that wasn't enough dirt so I had to buy another bag of potting soil mix and pour it into the container until it was around 5 or 6 inches from the top of the plant, but now, again, they are at least 12 inches high again! They literally are growing about an inch a day. I know they should be hilled much higher, but I fear I will only be able to add another 3 or 4 inches of soil to the hills before it will overflow out of the container. That will just have to be that then. I hope they still work out okay.
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Radishes

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My radishes (above) look good - but I fear for them. I don't think I thinned them nearly well enough. They are actually overdue to be picked, having been out there for around a month while the package says they should be ready in three weeks, but I have left them in a bit longer because the actual radishes beneath are doing the pits. I've pulled up the odd one and there is nothing at all on the root, so I dug around a bit with my little shovel and found a few - but they are not the norm and are not very large. On the package it said to thin them about 2 inches between the plants, but I seen other people who were doing them about 1 inch apart. I fear I have fallen prey to the container-gardener's disease and planted too many, too close. I'll harvest them in a couple more days to see but I'm not holding my breath.  
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The compost has been going for around a month now, with me turning it over about once a week. It's starting to look pretty good down below, and has that rich (smelly) fertilizer smell to it. The bucket was about half full, so I used it and spread it around the garden since I haven't fertilized at all this year yet. Next year, I should get a compost bucket going a little earlier in the season so I can give the plants a jump-start right away.
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Left: Great Lakes Lettuce & Mesclun Mix Lettuce -- Right: Red Russian Kale

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I've harvested three salads from the balcony over the past week or two. Also, as you can see, I've acquired a kitchen scale which I picked up at Walmart for $11. I want to keep track of the harvests that I'm getting from my containers so I can monitor their output over the years - both in terms of quantity of produce, and in the monetary value of said produce, so that hopefully I can custom tailor my garden to be the most efficient this "little balcony that could" can be. So far, I've harvested a total of 8oz of salad greens in three pickings.
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The leaves have all been very tasty and healthy looking - out of all the ones I've picked, only one leaf, shown on the bottom right below, had some white spots on it and needed to be tossed out.
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I used leaves from the Mesclun Mix and the Great Lakes Lettuce, both of which I've been growing in smaller, low-level containers that I keep shaded behind my large containers. They have been doing well and haven't had any wilting problems on hot days this way, although, it will get much hotter in another month or two, so I'll have to keep an eye on it. Also, despite its apparent popularity, I've found I don't much care for the Mesclun Mix - the one plant has a kind of liquorish flavour which I don't like in salad, and there are an awful lot of stalks to have to pick through in the other plants, which seem to basically just be ruffage - you certainly wouldn't eat much of it without some other leaves added! All in all, I like the Great Lakes Lettuce much better (although there is some of that in the Mesclun Mix too), and found I much prefer it with some other vegetables added, like carrots, cucumbers, brocolli & cauliflower. If the salad greens peter out in the upcoming hot season, the Mesclun Mix will be the first to go. Next time, I'd rather double the amount of Great Lakes Lettuce than pick through a mix of plants I only partially like eating.
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Also, in the third salad, I tossed in a number of leaves from my Red Russian Kale, which has been growing gangbusters. The kale tasted good in the salad - it was quite tender and added a nice flavour. I wasn't sure about growing kale in the spring, since it is much better as a fall plant and there are only a few other plants I can grow well into the fall, but I did want to try it for using in salads throughout the summer, and I'm glad I did.
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My Garage-Sale Wish-List

I'm going to try and hit garage-sales this year with the intention of buying items that will expand the garden into the future. As I've said elsewhere, next year I want to go vertical, so one of the things I will be looking for is some sort of suitable shelving system that I can place against the glass partition on my balcony. But that's not all I'm going to be looking for.

Here is my Garage-Sale Wish-List

1 - An open ended, adjustable shelving system - possibly even something like an old computer desk might work, with keeping some shade-plants below. What I'd really like to do with it is set up multiple containers with different kinds of lettuce and salad greens, all layered and providing for a summer's worth of salad eating. If I could get a nice, open backed system like the one shown on the left, I'll bet I could even rig up a system to have a vine growing up chicken-wire behind the shelves and attached to my glass partition, and still be easily able to reach through the shelves to tend to the vine and harvest its fruit. That would really maximize that part of the balcony.

2 - An umbrella from a patio set to attach to the balcony railing - My deck gets hot! Not only is this lousy for the plants, it sucks for me too because I like sitting out on the balcony. An umbrella lashed to the railing will help both my plants and myself. If I want to successfully grow lettuce throughout the summer, without being forced to eat perpetually wilted leaves, I suspect that the umbrella will be a must.

3 - A nicer chair - All I've got to sit on out there is one of those cheap folding chairs for $15.99. It's not bad to sit in, but it doesn't look nice. I really like sitting out on the balcony and watching my plants grow, plus, in a round about way, I'm trying to create a unique living space for our small apartment. A nice wicker or wooden chair would add to the ambiance of the balcony much better than a cheap lawn chair.

4 - A hummingbird feeder - It's a small item, I know, but hummingbirds are cool and they help to pollinate your plants for you.

5 - An outdoor thermometer - I wonder how hot it actually gets out there. I swear, sometimes it is ten degrees hotter than it is on the ground. I'd also like to see the difference that having an umbrella out there makes. I'll bet it is quite significant! 

6 - A kitchen scale - If I can find one of these, I can start figuring out how much value I am creating by growing my own food. I'd like to weigh my harvests and compare it to grocery store prices, to figure out the dollar value of the food I have grown out there. I am also tracking my expenses, so hopefully, I will be able to show the cost vs. reward with numbers, and also, I will be able to track how successful or not my garden becomes over the years. Also, with a scale and tracking system, I should be able to better figure out how to "maximum produce" after a few seasons. What I mean is, if I grow carrots in one container, but they don't really produce very much plus have a low dollar value in the store, then I might replace it with something that grows better or costs more to buy. Right now I am in to each one of my large containers for around $20 each, including the cost of the bin plus the soil, and then the seeds or seedlings. I'd like to know if I'm producing only $10 or $15 of monetary value from one crop, while producing $30 or $40 from another container with a different crop. If I track this aspect of the garden vs. its limited space, I can, over time, customize my garden for maximum production and value.  
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7 - Window boxes with good hanging attachments - I'd like to hang multiple boxes off the balcony railing, but I find the cost of decent hangers to be prohibitive. The one set of hangers that I bought for the box already there cost me over $40 + tax! Some of the store-made plastic boxes come with railing attachments, but they aren't adjustable, so you get home and hmmmm... that doesn't fit! The adjustable ones really are the best to get - they are sturdy, and looking at them, very bloody simply built, being they are just bits of steel with a couple bolts & wing-nuts. I can envision having another six boxes hanging off of the railing, and significantly expanding the space I have to grow in - as well as providing greater privacy - but that would be around $300 after tax just for hangers alone! That's more than what I've spent this year so far in total! I'd sure like to find a better, cheaper solution to having boxes on the railing. 

Hanging Lettuce Planter

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Click picture for link

Wow! Check out this hanging lettuce planter I read about at Inhabitat. I'll bet you could get a lot of salads out of that! The article says: "A wire cage is filled with sphagnum moss, and then seedlings are woven through the bars to be held in place. Just water regularly, snip off what you need, and it’ll keep re-growing until late Autumn."

I think it looks just awesome!

I've been studying the glass wall on my balcony, thinking I might find some sort of free-standing shelving system at a garage sale or something, and then trying to fill it up various types of plants to make salads with. But now that I've seen that thing, I wonder what it would be like to have it hanging in the corner instead, and using a shelving system to grow other types of plants. We'll see how it all works out, but that hanging lettuce planter is definitely on my wish list. I'll have to find out more about them in the future.