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Balcony Gardening, Praha (2026)

21/07/2022

Life has been busy the last 3 years and the blog has been quiet. Appologies for that.

Also, sadly, this year will be the last on the balcony. The balcony blog will move next year to a small garden belonging to a house, our future home. Strictly speaking, it will still be urban gardening, but no longer on 3 square meters of tiled balcony. Some things will thrive better in a garden, some less so. I am thinking mainly tomatoes and peppers, which profited greatly from the miroclimate on the balcony. But thats life.....

In any case, this is what the balcony looks like this year. I have decided to focus mainly on tomatoes and peppers this year, i just dint have the energy for carrots, onions and other produce. I have 5 different types of tomatoes and 3 kinds of peppers. The starberries came and went this year and i have had the biggest harvest i have ever had.

25/08/2021

Italian weeks on the balcony. Harvested goodies include tomatoes, thyme and rosemary. Perfect for snacks and cooking.

12/08/2021

Tiny beef steak tomatoes. They should be larger :D, but they are cute. Hopefully the taste doesnt disappoint. I havent tasted this variety yet. How should i eat them? On toasted bread? Salad? Suggestions?

Oh, the peppers in the background need to be picked too. Filled peppers in tomato sauce coming up soon.

16/06/2021

June on the balcony

So whats new on the balcony? Not much. Things are growing steadily and catching up after the very slow and cold start of the growing season this year. Unfortunately, two tomatoes and 2 peppers didnt make it, the cold spell lasted a little too long for them and the weakened plants succumbed to some kind root rot. But thats ok, i planted some other things in their place instead. For example in one pot i have sweet corn. I doubt i will see any fruits from that, but you never know until you tried. :)

Currently the most plentiful harvest are starwberries, mint and other green herbs. The finger eggplant has so far produced one fruit, which is now 7cm long. A few more cm and i will be able to harvest it. The tomatoes are blooming as crazy promising a bountiful harvest later in the summer. The onions are coming along as well as the carrots.

What is growing on your balcony?

11/06/2021

First strawberries of this season. I am waiting for my daughter to come home tomorrow to pick them. Yummy!

26/04/2021

The microclimate on the balcony in early spring

So I took a risk and planted my tomatoes and peppers into containers last week. I do this every year in April and have never had problems with it, but this year is different as it is unusually cold. I received quite a few worried questions from my family and frieds, whether I am not worried about frosty nights. I was..... but I also know from experience, that the balcony has its microclimate, that will protect the plants. Now obviously, this will not work with every type of balcony. If it is an open balcony with no side walls and no ceiling, the plants will be very exposed and would suffer. I am fortunate enough to have a sheltered balcony from 3 sides and the house is also radiating heat and as such the plants are fine even when temperatures drop below zero. And its been bellow zero last night and it will be minus 2 celsius this night.
Another factor, that plays a big role is the orientation of the balcony. My balcony faces south-east and that is perfect. I get th e morning sun, which heats up the plants and the balcony first thing in the morning. So there I am, standing on the balcony, looking at frosted cars across the street, which are hiding in the shadow of the apartment block and the sun is caressing my cheeks and my plants are looking healthier than ever. See for yourself:

20/04/2021

Balcony is awakening...

So it works like this: Its winter time, the balcony is resting in its winter sleep and you of course have loads of time to think about the upcoming season. You have ideas, you have plans, you want to post updates, etc etc. In the winter it all seems very doable and you cant quite remember, why it didnt work out the years before. You play around with different ideas, maybe take a picture of the seed packets that you are planning to grow, maybe draw a sketch of the balcony, maybe even a post about planting the seeds. Definately brag with the first plants germinating...... and then its suddenly second half of april and you havent done any of that.

What can I say. Two small kids and a household to take care of does not leave much time to spare. And so year after year I find myself doing everything the last minute and feel very stressed and in the end I am happy I even managed to plant the seeds at all. And here is what the balcony looks as of today. Its mid April and the temperatures are barely above the freezing point during the night. So, I am taking a major risk by planting tomatoes and peppers outside, but alas, there is no room for them at the kitchen window anymore.

Short summary of what I planted this year:
1. 8x tomato plants
2. asorted peppers (everything from snack peppers, hot green peppers to sweet red peppers)
3. onions
4. carrots, diferent colors
5. NEW! Chinese chives garlic.
6. NEW! two different kinds of pak choi.
7. NEW! Egg plant
8. green herbs as usual: oregano, basil, rosemary, sage, thyme, mint, parsley and dill
9. two large pots with strawberries
10. radishes

I also planted root parsley and spinach, but neither has germinated and so it wasnt meant to be. I wanted to plant sweet peas, but I cannot find the seeds. So no peas this year either.

20/02/2021

I found this picture on my memory card. I remember taking it on a sunny day in late fall. This fellow made himself comfortable at the back of my balcony, effectively blocking the rear end, because his web spawned the entire width of the balcony from the railing to the wall. I almost walked into him too, because I didnt notice him at first. *shudders* His spider web sparkled in the sun and he looked pretty happy in that spot.

Now I dont mind spiders per se, they say that having spiders at home is a good sign, it means there is nothing toxic or harmfull in the house. But past a certain size they do beg respect. I left the spider where he was knowing, that the cool nights will force him into hybernation soon. Hopefully not inside my apartment, because they tend to do that, once it gets chilly enough. Leave the window a crack open for ventilation and you have new tenants. :D

25/07/2020

Last year we had a crazy hot summer, this year its been rather cold, rainy and well not really summer. And you can tell ; peppers look miserable, tomatoes grow slowly and overall the produce yield is mediocre at best. One of the pepper plants produced one large and pretty looking pepper, but before it matured, it fell victim to some unidentified rot. I was meaning to proudly present it on my balcony blog, but alas it wasnt meant to be.

However, the oleander plant is doing better than ever. I think this is mainly due to the fact that I didnt have to put it inside last winter. The temperatures never dropped low enough or long enough to necessitate it.

13/06/2020

So I got my balcony some romantic lights. Actually I bought it last year already, but forgot to put it up and I rediscovered the box with lights when reorganizing my wardrobe. Oh look at that, I forgot all about this. Originally I was meaning to do a criss cross pattern accross the ceiling, but for that the chain isnt long enough and so I rejected that plan in favour of the railing solution. It actually works better this way I think.

Now all we need is good weather, which is still loading. :D Its been raining a lot lately and its quite cold for this part of the year. I cant wait for the summer to kick in high gear, so that I can sit on the balcony in the evening and enjoy a glass of something refreshing.

12/06/2020

So I hear strawberries sell for 10$ at the farmers market. Thats crazy. And generally speaking veggies are expensive these days. I assume its due to the corona situation? Either way, it will be hard to eat healthy for a lot of people and its summer now. Fortunately, I have something to fall back on.

Strawberries from the balcony this morning.

23/06/2019

Things growing on the balcony

I have not posted much about the balcony lately and it is a shame, there is a lot going on. In fact, the plants are growing at a head spinning speed and I am not even sure what to write about first. Maybe for starters I could summarize what plants I have planned for 2019 (I tried to hold back this year, but unfortunately, it didnt quite work out).

- Tomatoes, my balcony`s staple: 1x Cherry, 1x Roma, 5x bush tomato.
- Peppers: 2x red sweet pepper, 2x green hot pepper, 3x greek bell peppers, 1x peruvian chilli
- 6x chinese broccoli (this years experiment)
- 2x celery plants
- orange carrots (while the rainbow colored carrots from 2018 were a neat experiment, I am too conservative and prefer the plain good ol`orange carrots in my dishes).
- 1 pot with strawberries
- Herbs: Rosemary, thyme, oregano, parsley, basil, japanese mizuna, cilantro, sage
- Fig tree
- And the mystery plant that germinated wildly in one of the pots: HOKAIDO PUMPKIN. At first the plant looked pretty delicate and had small about 10cm large leaves, so I decided to keep it. Yes, I am aware that pumpkins are large plants. What was I thinking????? The pumpkin is overtaking the balcony now and I am unsure what to do with it. Due to its expanding size I am unable to access the back part of the balcony, which is very contrary to my original goal of downsizing the vegetable section of the balcony to keep the balcony easy to access and as such easy to water. I didnt wish to have a dense jungle this year, I wanted to keep it simple and recreational .... and well, here we go again. So how do I water the balcony, since I cannot get to the rear end? Through the window ladies and gentlemen. I open the window from the living room and water the plants this way. A bit cumbersome, but unless I get rid of the pumpkin, I dont have much of a choice. But check out the female flower in the picture section!!! I pollinated the flower by hand this morning. Not sure if it worked. For those who are unaware, pumpkins produce both female and male flowers and despite dozens of male flowers on the plant, none of the male flowers was open to pollinate the only female bloom on the plant. I used one male flower that was in its prime about 2 days ago and the pollen inside the wilted bloom still looked usable. We will see in a few days, if I was successful or not. And this is what I love about balcony gardening. The thrill of the experiment. :D

Balcony Gardening