Second Summer On My Terrace

Thank you inviting me to post on here. This should be interesting to see how everyone's plants turn out.

This is my second summer gardening on my terrace. Last year was mostly successful considering that I had no clue what I was doing and I got a little carried away with planting all sorts of different fruits and vegetables. I had:

• carrots


• cucumbers


• tomatoes


• hot peppers


• bell peppers


• strawberries


• basil


• mint


• rosemary


• blueberries


• a grape "vine" (with no grapes)


• watermelon


• and various flowers

These were all crammed into not enough or big enough containers. I had 3 tomato bushes to a planter, carrots growing next to cucumbers, jammed in with watermelons. Mid-summer I re-planted a lot of the veges and spread everything out. Even so, it was clear that carrots and watermelons aren't really meant to be grown in planters. The carrots were growing wrapped around each other and were all soft and small. They were edible, but no one wanted them. The watermelons wouldn't grow bigger than a baseball before they split open. There was approximately 1 melon-baller worth of melon inside. I was a little honored when a squirrel ate one of them (They're edible! Second though: How is there a squirrel on my terrace?). My bell peppers had some sort of genetic mutation and only grew on one half, the other half was this brown rottenness. No one ate them.

But, before you think things didn't go well, I had great tomatoes (very tasty beefsteaks), watery and tasty cucumbers (albeit slightly deformed as well), tons of hot peppers (too many), lots of basil, enough mint to make mojitos all summer, and perfect blueberries (picture below). The grape bush didn't produce anything (I think it takes some time for fruit) and it may have died over the winter, I can't tell yet. But, its days are numbered if it doesn't start growing leaves soon. There is no room in my garden for dead weight.

So, this year I'm backed with a scaled down vegetable garden after some lessons learned. I'm going for tomatoes (beefsteak heirlooms), cucumbers, strawberries, basil, and mint. The wild card this year is "ornamental gourds," which my girlfriend made fun of me for planting. Also back from last year is the blueberries bush (proven winner). I have various flowers seeded and some sprouts, but I can't tell yet if they are weeds (or "volunteers" as my Grandma calls them) or flowers. Time will tell. I have a day lily in a pot that my Mom gave me and some tulips on my back balcony.