18 replies to this topic

[Moonless]

I am attempting to use my 42 sq ft balcony as an growing space. The criteria I am working with is that the space must accommodate both leisure and a garden. We want to have bushy plants like tomatoes, peppers and ground cherries, vineing plants like, beans, peas, morning glory and squash along with companion plants like marigold, garlic and other flowers to attract pollinators, promote healthy plant life and ward off pest.  We will also have a small cubensis outdoor grow in a patio pickers raised bed under a table. Lets hope this works out this time XD

 

Here are the main garden beds.

 

We seriously would love to have some anoles around.

 

Theres how I set up the cubes grow. Just two half pint jars of texas yellow cap. The other middle jar shown is PES Hawaii and I did not use it because it looked questionable. I think that two jars should be enough. If need be in a month I can supplement it with more colonized rice. I planted marigold around the grow space to ward off pest as well as some morning glory seeds to vine out and produce some beautiful flowers. The rice is burried about 2 inches deep, the medium is potting soil.

 

After cleaning up and putting in some final touches here is the final product.

 

 

 

Thank you to Vinz who's outdoor grow really inspired me.

 

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[coorsmikey]

Do you have any place for some hanging pots? I would suggest potting the tomatoes in hanging pots to drape down and add to you ambience. Other wise they will probably overtake the porch and everything growing around them. Its looking good though, Im still a couple of months away from doing anything of a sort.

[Moonless]

I have one hanging pot space but am thinking of putting flowering drought tolerant plants in it because it gets so dry here. I only have that one hanging pot space because I don't trust that railing enough to hang anything on it so the flower will be hung from the ceiling.. I might consider replanting the tomatoes in a pot on the table because I know the variety I planted can get really big. Maybe I better just stick with the compact varieties from now on.

[Moonless]

Anyone know if two inches deep is too much for cubes? I dug down a little to find a thickly colonized mass just two inches below the surface. Will this be too thick of a casing for them? I could add more colonized rice if need be.

[Myc]

They'll come right through it - no problem.

You'll notice and "umbilicus" which extends from the colony - through the casing layer - as you harvest in a few weeks. Just don't over-saturate the "casing" and you're f-ing golden.

Bring your salad bowl for harvest. These will likely be some of the biggest 'shrooms you've ever seen.

Also, eat them fresh - for goodness sake. Drying robs the fungi of some delicate, essential, chemical companions. Trust me.

[Moonless]

Thank Myc good to know I'm all good! Believe me Ill be eating some fresh shrooms rather soon :)

 

Oh wee I cannot wait!

[Moonless]

Almost a month has passed since the initial planting. Here is an update. Everyone is growing big.

 

 

Edited by Moonless, 24 March 2021 - 03:30 PM.

[Auhron]

So much life in such a tiny balcony, nice work! There are some interesting ideas out there about vertical gardening with a very minimal footprint. It is currently snowing here, still a month away from putting my seedlings outside. Tiny bit jealous of your climate!

[bezevo]

<p>Many&nbsp; vine plants that we traditionally&nbsp; let sprawl across the ground grow nice on a small rigid or string trellis&nbsp; to save space .. like&nbsp; cucumbers small short vine squash or smaller short vine melons . beans . snap peas .&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Bez</p>

Edited by bezevo, 30 March 2021 - 01:05 PM.

[bezevo]

Not sure why above post got scrambled ?

 

You can grow many short  vine plants that we traditional let sprawl across the ground..on a trellis .  These plants like to  grow nice on a small rigid trellis  or a string trellis to save space ..plants  like  cucumbers ,small short vine squash or smaller short vine melons . beans . snap peas ect ..

 

Bez

[Moonless]

Thanks Auhron! I'm really proud of it. IMO this woman is like the gold standard for small space gardening imo. She uses simple container garden but cares for it really well and it produced a lot for her.

 

 

Bez I actually have a whole lotta beans, peas and morning glory that have grown big since the last post. They will grow up the bamboo trellis and hopefully provide some privacy for us to smoke our funny herbs XD

[liferider]

looks lovely. i love seeing people do great things like this with small spaces.

you still have space on the walls for hanging planters and on the handrail too. they actually make planters that fit over handrails so you do not need to worry about fixings etc. just some thoughts for when you inevitably want to add more :)

 

great work

[Moonless]

Well a few weeks after my final post my apartment anounced that we needed to get everything off the porch so renovations could happen. The entire thing took months and we had to move everything. We moved all our planters to girl friends parents home and took care of everything there. I didn't take much pictures for the rest of the year but some plants did great. That's why I stopped posting. The whole thing was a huge buzz kill. But life goes on and I am growing things this season

 

Last fall I had a big cactus buying obsession and bought a small grow tent that eventually upgraded to a large 2 x 4 ft AC Infinity grow tent in the winter. We started some seeds in January with the idea that we would make a big garden at girl friend's parents who live 15 minutes away from us. Now that its starting to heat up and seems like we just had our last frost, we are going to get planting vegetables this weekend. We still have our patio full of plants but are focusing on fewer bigger plants, which are mostly ornamental, that we are moving from inside our apartment to our patio.

 

Today we cleaned up our space focusing a lot on the plants. We up-potted a lot of vegtable seedlings from our grow tent and made beautiful arrangements from our houseplants. The patio is chok-full of plants now.

 

 

And the grow tent is all for the second round of seedlings.

 

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[Skywatcher]

It looks like your balcony jungle has not only survived the move, but seems to be thriving nicely !

[Moonless]

It looks like your balcony jungle has not only survived the move, but seems to be thriving nicely !

It has! I will upload a picture of my cactus table to show off some of the stuff that has made it through the year! That large cactus planter survived and many of those cactai are still kicking!

[Moonless]

Pics From Today

 

The Cactus pot has lost succulents but the cactus survived the winter outside.

 

Much of this table survived the winter with covering when it got frosty.

 

Three trays of veg were seed grown (cept the obvious few) and went to family and friends yards today. Hope to have a yard of our own one day and grow all the veg. I'm so happy to see them go.

Edited by Moonless, 13 March 2022 - 09:15 PM.

[Juthro]

The only succulent I've been able to successfully grow up here is allow, but I don't blame that on the environment, I'm pretty sure it's me. 

[Moonless]

The only succulent I've been able to successfully grow up here is allow, but I don't blame that on the environment, I'm pretty sure it's me. 

I'm pretty impressed with you since you live in moose land. It just doesn't seem like succulents would like that dark dark winter of yours. You might have success growing them under your lights though.

[Juthro]

It is true that not everything thrives up here.   Though with succulents I still think most of my problems are still me. 

Keep up the good work friend :)