Flowering Mint

Pretty flowers from the Mint pot.

Burnt and curling leaves. My blueberry plant is stressed.
I am suspecting 2 possible causes:
1. Overwatering. I watered the plant then it rained a fair bit
2. Overfertilising. Top it up with some new herb and veggie pot mix and buried some crushed egg shell in the soil as nutrients.

Leaves turned brown in just short 2 days.

Aphids on Lettuce

These sick little bastards are sucking my lettuce to death. Instead of blasting them with water today, I cut down the whole leaf and smashed them nicely with my slipper and put the leaf back in the pot for future invaders to see.

It would seem that the garlic spray treatment is only good for about a week and then these suckers are back.

Pok Choy Seedlings

(2 days old)

I am so pleasantly surprised by the rapid growth of these seedlings after moving the germinated seeds to pot for just 2 days.

Carrot Seedlings

(2 days old seedlings)

Tall seedlings grown after just 2 days inside the milk-jug pot. The 2-day old seedlings are as tall as my 2 weeks old seedlings, all thanks to a good bag of vegetable and herb pot mix.

(3 weeks old seedlings)

I'd recommend this pot mix to anyone wanting to grow vegetables.

Germinating Pok Choy Seeds

So... what can you do with a transparent swiss roll cake container? why of course...germinating seeds. Photo of Pok Choy seeds germinated after mere 2 days inside this clear container.

Harvest time: 8 weeks. 

Seed pack: 1250 seeds, $2.78

I planted the seedlings in a rectangular pot today.

DIY Green House

Many people made greenhouse with PVC pipes. I find PVC pipes expensive. I found a pack of 20 pieces 90cm tall bamboo sticks and I made my first DIY greenhouse. The bamboo costs $5.00 and the large transparent, plastic drop sheet normally used for paint job costs $2.00. A total of $7.00 DIY greenhouse...sure beats the $50 smaller, PVC greenhouse sold on ebay.

New Mint Pot

Ok..the previous attempt to grow mint from seeds failed terribly. Failed germination after 4 weeks of no green sighted. So I decided to buy something readily edible from the shop.
A shot my new mint pot. AUD$20.50.

Aphids on Lettuce

Found aphids on my lettuce today. Gasp!!!! I blasted some off with small spray bottle. This is bad news.

I have read up about aphids online. They are nasty...no wonder my lettuces look so tired. I have a few options:

1. The liquid detergent, baking soda water spray method. I tried but quickly rinsed them off the leaves, feeling it could burn the lettuce.

2. Garlic water spray method. I am going to spray some tomorrow once I let the boiling garlic water sit for a night.

I harvested some non-damaged leaves today. Photo here is a shot of the after-harvest look.

Happy Carrot Seedlings

2 days old after going into the pot.

Germinating Spring Onion seeds

Took the spring onion seeds to germinate after 10 days inside plastic container greenhouse. I will wait for them to grow more before moving them to new home.

Harvesting Chilli

I harvested some chilli from the baby chilli pot. They have turned bright red under direct sunlight for just a few days, probably about 3 days. I used them to cook up a zuchinni and chilli dish and pleased with the level of spiciness.

Growing Potatoes

Trial 1: Failed.
Method: Planted several pieces of potatoes in a pot. After 2 weeks, still can't see any green. I am just going to leave those in the pot and add new ones that I am growing with a bit of wet cotton and mini greenhouse. Once I see some green, I will plant them out in a pot.

Planting Lychee Seedlings

The Lychee seedlings are getting mouldy inside their mini greenhouse for about 10 days, I had to quickly transport them to a pot before things get worse.

I am growing Lychee seedlings just for fun as I know Lychee tree only bear fruit after ten years.

Germinated Carrot seeds

• Carrot seeds finally germinated after 2 weeks inside a mini greenhouse. The seedlings have been transplanted to yet another DIY self-watering container + greenhouse using milk bottles. I did kill 3 seedlings during transplanting.

Cutting up 2 x 2L milk bottles I made a self watering container + greenhouse for the seedling.

It was very hot few days ago, I thought my spring onion is dying as the leaves are wilting, amazing I found a few new long leaves in there.

The baby lettuce is not so baby anymore. The leaves are a darker shade of green, however, I did some smaller leaves dying on the bottom.

Germinating Mint, Chilli seeds

I have some mint seeds and chilli seeds which have been sitting in this plastic containers for nearly 2 weeks, so far I am not seeing anything happening yet. The weather has been extremely humid and hot in the last week days. The seeds might have been cooked!

Lychee

The Lychee seeds are still germinating very well. I have, however, tossed out the cherry seeds which have been sitting in the same mini greenhouse with the Lychee seeds as they were getting mouldy...yuck.

Growing Spring Onion

Today I have added spring onion to my balcony garden. I have not grown them from seeds. I bought a big bunch from the super market for my cooking and used the roots to make this pot.

To keep them standing upright I put a cut water bottle around them.

The chilli pot has some nutrients (egg-shells) added to it.

Germinating Lychee

I am pleasantly surprised by how fast the lychee seeds are germinating. I can see some progress after placing them on wet cotton after mere 3 days. During day, I place the DIY greenhouse with the Lychee seeds in it next to a window and in the night I put the container under a lamp for several hours.

Nothing is happening to the cherry seeds yet after  3 days in the same container with the happy Lychee seeds.

Also started on a batch of bell shaped Chilli seeds in a DIY seedling container using a recycled Cola bottle. Let's see how fast they will germinate....

The newly planted Lettuce seedlings look tired after transplanting to the self-watering pot after a day or so. They might be in shock in the new home. It was cold last night so I put the cling film greenhouse over them to keep them warm and won't water them today. I think I might have over-watered them in Day 1.

Collecting more seeds, not sure what to do with them yet. The big one is a nectarine seed.

Gardening Haul

With only one month of summer left here in Australia I have decided to grow some veggies on my balcony...kinda of late but better than not starting anything at all.
AUD$66 later I got some stuff to get started.

Chilli, lettuce and blueberry seedlings and some self-watering pots. Oh and some all purpose pot mix.

The pots are sure expensive and I hope they work better than the normal pot.
AUD$12.80 for the white rectangular pot from Bunnings.
AUD$17 for the bigger round self watering.
AUD $4 for the smaller pot where my Chilli seedling with go.
2 x gardening tools @$1.94 each

A beautiful Chilli seedling. Several lychee seeds are germinating next to it in a clear plastic containter.

Current set up on the balcony. Remaining pot mix is in clear container awaiting my seed order to arrive.

The night is a bit chill so I made a cling wrap / cling film greenhouse using the plastic shelf sitting on my balcony for the newly planted seedling.

And the really expensive blueberry seedling now settling in the big round pot.

Composting an used black tea bag to serve as fertiliser for my plant is in progress.