She has sent me some photos of their balcony, and she has kindly answered 7 questions I sent over.
1. How long have you had your garden/space?
In February 2013 we (my boyfriend and I) took a course in urban gardening which focused on growing vegetables organically - i.e. without chemicals. Then we started our own garden and have been doing it ever since. As we live in a flat, we only have a balcony, so we use containers and plant plots.
2. Are you interested in your garden? What is its function?
The idea is to grow our own organic vegetables, fruits and aromatic plants, to eat them and enjoy seeing them grow. It has also a decorative function, it makes our patio nicer! That's why we have some shrubs as well.
3. Favourite plant in your garden.
We don't always have the same plants in our garden, because some of them are seasonal. We keep changing the vegetables we plant. In summer we have tomatoes and peppers, but this year we changed the peppers for zucchinis, so we can see how different vegetables grow. My favourite? It's hard to say! But I guess right now I like the zucchini (or courgette?) plant because it has a very nice orange flower and it has been a challenge for me so far! It took me a while to realise that it has female and male flowers and that they had to be open at the same time to be pollinated. And I waited too long to collect the first zucchini, so it got too big and hard. Next time I'm going to do it right :)
4. Something you have tried and failed at growing / doing.
One thing would be the zucchini plant, but I'm still working on it and I will eventually succeed (I hope!). I have also been failing at growing lettuce in summer. They start growing but they go to seed very quickly, so none are edible at all. Maybe our garden is too warm in the summer, or it gets too much or too little water. We should keep trying!
5. Anything you’d like to change?
I would like to have a real orchard (with real soil!) to plant more than one vegetable. Last winter we planted beans in a container, they grew very well but from one plant we just got a dish of beans. So much time for just one meal! Oh, and I would like to have more time to take care of the plants (and less white fly)!
6. What inspires you?
We grow our plants in an organic way. We don't use pesticides, we try to prevent bugs and plagues using potassium soap, neem soap or by simply removing the bugs manually (we can do that because we have very few plants). We also use a mix of coconut fibre and worm humus as soil. For us it's important to grow our plants in that way, so we contribute to protect the environment a little bit more.
7. Finish the sentence: You couldn’t tell from my garden, but I...
but I enjoy pollinating flowers manually! I help them make love!
8. Anything else you'd like to share?
Only that even though it may seem like we don't have much, we have packed quite a few things in! There's only 2 of us, so we do not need a lot of produce. We have thyme, aloea vera, chives, 1 cucumber plant, lavender, oregano, 2 tomato plants, 1 courgette plant, rosemary, basil, 1 lemon tree, a strawberry plant, jasmine, mint, parsley, sage and coriander! We also have shrubs to keep some greenery the whole year round. We've also got a Japanese shrub that has caused some controversy as it resembles a certain plant one uses to make weed!
Finally, we have some chia plants. It's a curious story. I bought some chia seeds to eat and some fell in my handbag. I poured them in a planter to shake them out and seedlings have appeared! So I will wait until they go to seed so I can collect some more!
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