Awhile back I heard about repurposing a mini-BBQ into an herb planter. I loved it, knew I wanted to try it myself, and immediately set about trying to track down a small grill on Craigslist. Buying anything on Craigslist is always an interesting experience, you get exposed to such a bizarre element of society. But that will have to be a post for another day…

This is a really easy project that you can complete in less than an hour. To get started, here’s what you’ll need:

Materials

• 1 small bag of good quality potting soil
• 3-5 herb plants, depending on the size of your BBQ and how full you like your containers
• 1 portable BBQ or hibachi
• 1 coffee filter

You won’t need the BBQ grate or the lid, so if your BBQ is missing those, it’s perfect for this project. If you do have those two items, why not list them on Craigslist’s free items section and see if anyone needs them.

Directions

Amazingly, I actually cleaned this BBQ. Or rather, I attempted to clean it. There was a lot of baked on grime and the lower grill was pretty rusty. Anyway, the first thing to do is clean the BBQ as much as possible. Then, place a coffee filter on top of the holes in the bottom of the grill. The coffee filter will allow water to drain out but prevent the potting soil from falling through. I decided to leave the lower grill in the BBQ because I thought it would help keep the plants from sinking down as the soil settles. We’ll see how that works out…

Next, fill up the BBQ with enough potting soil so that when the plants are placed in the BBQ, the plants’ bases are only an inch below the edge of BBQ. Arrange (and rearrange, if necessary) your plants until you have a pleasing combination. As you can see, I have sage, lavender, marjoram, oregano, and chives. Obviously you’ll want to plant the taller plants near the back and the trailing plants near the edge of the BBQ.

The plants I purchased were all growing in a biodegradable pot made out of coconut coir. The idea is that you don’t have to remove the pot (and disturb the roots) to plant the herbs. However, I did cut away the top part of the pot so that it would not be visible once the herbs were planted.

Next, fill in around the plants with potting soil. Gently tamp down the potting soil as you go and make sure you get potting soil in all the nooks and crannies. I usually miss at least one spot in the middle of a pot, so double check there.

Voila! You’re done.

Sorry for the late start today, I battled a bout of food poisoning last night and this morning. I’ll spare you the details, but it wasn’t fun. Luckily, there were lots of wonderful carnival posts to brighten my spirits. You all covered such an interesting array of topics on how your container garden has fared this summer. Everything from the joy of seeing how a garden has progressed after a week-long vacation to a photographic tour of beautiful containers, some featuring stunning black petunias. Without further ado…

David Copperfield, Where Are You?

Nancy pleas for magical intervention as her containers are hit not just heat, not just humidity, but with rain as well. Though with all things considered, I think her containers look beautiful.

Summer in Southern California is all about the Water

Kathy is full of great ideas to help keep your container garden looking its best during the hot summer months. She’s got tips on everything from attracting hummingbirds to keeping your plants adequately watered.

Gardening Gone Wild

Normally, tales of “what my garden looked like while I was away on vacation” have sad endings. But not Liam’s! The time away allowed him to really appreciate how much growing his garden did while he was enjoying the good life. Loved his creative use of containers too!

What’s New in the Garden This Year? Everything!

Lidia takes readers on a photo tour of her balcony, giving each planting a “grade.” She shares useful tips about what she learned from her successes and mistakes. Plus you get to see a photo of her cute pooch Essie.

Summer Changes

Abigail chats with the ghosts of gardens past, present and future. Good luck at the lake house! It sounds like a fun adventure and an opportunity to try your hand at an in-ground vegetable garden!

Early Summer in the Garden

All of Melanie’s hard work overwintering her plants and sowing new ones from seed has paid off nicely. I love her idea to combine gazanias and marigolds. They look great together!

The Tomato Plant That Ate Fort Collins

Anne shares a behind-the-scenes story about a tomato plant that was originally planted to showcase home allotment bags for her online store, and has now grown into a behemoth.

In Flowers: Container Gardening

Laura takes readers on a wonderful photo tour of her beautiful container plantings. Black plant lovers, this is not a post to miss!

This past weekend I had a wonderful time just outside of Denver celebrating the wedding of one of my cousins. It was nice to get away for a little bit and see a different part of the country. Of course, while there, I couldn’t resist checking out some local container gardens. As far as I can tell, Colorado is a stunningly beautiful state. And most of the plantings I saw were beautiful. But I did see two that I thought could be learning opportunities. I hate to say something not nice, but if these two containers can save you from making the same mistakes, it’ll be worth it. I hope.

Not Enough Color Variation

You all know how much I love black plants. But there is such a thing as too much in one container. And I think this planting falls victim to that mistake. The purple fountain grass combined with the black sweet potato vine turns this container into a black hole. It looks drab instead of eye-catching.

If I was in charge of this pot, I would have substituted a lime green sweet potato vine for the deep purple one. After that, if it needed more help carrying through the black theme, I would have added a plant with black flowers. But two plants with black foliage is too much.

So Close, But Not Quite

I loved how lush and colorful this planting was. And it is a nice mix of textures and sizes. But the purple cordyline spikes are too small to stand on their own alongside the cascade of other plants. Perhaps this pot looked great when first planted, but the rest of the plants have grown faster than the cordyline?

If I was a container gardening fairy godmother, I would tap my wand and plant something black that was bigger. I like the spikey-ness. But it just needs to have more stature.

Container Gardening Blog Posts

• This is a neat shot of Marie of 66 Square Feet’s terrace. Also, check out her roof farm.
• Almost everyone can use frugal gardening tips these days. Mike over at Urban Organic Gardener has got you covered.
• Adriana has a roundup of photos from her Anarchy in the Garden booth at the Patchwork Festival. There are some photos of yours truly teaching a demo on growing tomatoes in a container.
• Did you know you can freeze zucchini? That’s what Colleen at So Cal Gardening did.
• Oh, and Matt’s Redneck Garden is growing up fast!

Cheesy Gardening Joke

Why did the tomato turn red?

Because it saw the salad dressing.

Pineapple Sage Recipes

The other day on Twitter, I mentioned that I was going to cut back my pineapple sage a bit, and I needed a recipe to use up the cuttings. I ended up making a pineapple sage smoothie. For a very yummy breakfast drink, combine the following ingredients in blender a pulse until smooth:

• 1/3 cup skim milk
• 3/4 cup vanilla yogurt
• 1/2 banana
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1 1/2 tablespoons packed pineapple sage, chopped

I also found recipes for Pineapple Sage Poundcake. And this recipe for Mango Pineapple Sage Salsa looks delicious, especially if served over their other recipe for corn fritters.

Container Gardening in the News

• This NY Times article about catios (i.e. patios for cats) seriously cracked me up.
• The Seattle Times reminds you to thin the fruit on your fruit tree to produce better results overall.
• I really enjoyed this article from The Tribune in Texas about water container gardens.

Last week’s grab bag was well received, so I decided to make it an ongoing series. This week’s post includes everything from bad garden humor to succulent container garden photos to one of the hottest topics in gardening this week: window farming.

Great Blog Reading

• Urban Window Farms – Studio G covered a hot topic this week, urbanites who are growing edible plants in hanging hydroponics pots in front of their windows.
• GROW Project – Garden Bloggers provided a roundup of all the GROW Project posts about ‘Spitfire’ Nasturtiums.
• Certifying Your Garden as a Wildlife Habitat - Carri challenges people to create a wildlife-friendly garden in honor of Earth Day (April 22).
• Got Milkweed? – Carole discusses the importance of Milkweed in the Monarch Butterfly lifecycle and shares tips for how to attract the butterflies to your garden with Milkweed plants.
• Succulent Container Garden Photos – The ladies at Far Out Flora shared photos from their recent trip to Succulent Gardens in Castroville, CA.
• Grow Cook Eat – Katie announced a new series of weekly posts on growing edible plants. Look for my contribution on growing edibles in containers next Friday.
• Gardening Supplies at Big Lots – Mary found some great pots and plant stands at discount prices. A good reminder to check dollar shops for gardening stuff this time of year.

Bad Gardening Joke

Why do melons have fancy weddings? Because they cantaloupe.

On Going Experiments Update

I have updates in both the seed scarification experiment, and my comparison study of the Smart Pots. With regard to the nasturtiums, one of the seeds from both the clipped group and the filed group sprouted on April 6, which was 5 days after sowing. The second clipped group seed popped up on the 7th, as did the first hot water seed. So to recap the progress thus far:

• Clipped – 5 days/6 days
• Filed – 5 days/7
• Hot Water for 24 Hours – 6 days/7
• Hot Water for 3 Hours – ?/?
• Cold Water for 24 Hours – ?/?
• No Scarification – ?/?

On to the Smart Pots. I planted the two lavender plants on March 20. Since then, the Smart Pot plant has grown 6 inches in diameter (increasing its size by 25%), put out out 36 new flowers, and 8 new flower buds. In comparison, the plastic pot plant has grown 3.5 inches in diameter (increasing its size by 10%) and has put out 49 flowers and 8 buds. So it seems that so far, the Smart Pot plant is increasing in size more than it is putting out flowers. I’ll continue to update you throughout the growing season. In a month or so I should have some tomato plant data to add as well.

Random Gardening Trivia

Did you know that when you plant a chard or beet seed, you’re actually sowing many seeds at once? They both produce a compound seed cluster that has many seeds inside. That is why, even though you swear you only sowing one chard seed per pot, you will get multiple plants sprouting. This is also way it doesn’t pay to put two seeds in one “hole.” If you are using fresh seeds, you will almost always get more than one plant sprouting from each cluster, and planting two seed clusters in one hole only increases the amount of plants you need to thin later (i.e. you just wasted a seed).

Something to Look Forward to

Photo by MrClean1982

Hummingbirds will be flying northwards soon, if they haven’t gotten to your area already.

News

• Window Farming – I told you this was a hot topic this week!
• The New York Times tells us what we already know: lots of people are banking on growing their own edibles this year.
• A school opens a native California garden in my old neighborhood.
• The Chicago Tribune discusses helping birds create a love nest.

Spring has sprung! If you’re looking for some good container gardening reading on a lazy Sunday, look no farther than this collection of posts…

PLANNING

• 10 Questions to Ask Yourself When Planning Your Garden: If you want to have a happy, healthy container garden that doesn’t leave you penniless, consider these questions.
• Selecting the Perfect Pots for Your Container Garden: Things to think about when it comes to pot materials, color and matching plants to pots.
• 5 Sneaky Tips to Create a Smokin’ Hot Container Garden: Behind the scenes ways to improve how your balcony garden looks or functions.
• Using a Color Wheel to Create a Stunning Balcony Garden: An easy way to pick flower, leaf and pot colors that are guaranteed to look great together.

CONTAINER IDEAS

• A Container Recipe for Bright Shade: An easy 1-2-3 plan for a pot that will be placed in the shade.
• Plant Combination Ideas for Beautiful Container Gardens: Included are plans for a hummingbird garden, apple “orchard,” drought tolerant container and more!
• Calendula & Bacopa Windowbox: Check out this cheery windowbox idea.
• Rose Container Recipes: Two detailed ideas for using roses in a container design and several more ideas to help you incorporate roses into your balcony garden.
• More Plant Combinations: You can never have too many ideas when it comes to which plants look good together!

EDIBLE CONTAINER GARDENING

• Keep Your Mind Out of the Gutter: But it’s okay to garden in one! Check out the plants you can grow in a rain gutter.
• 3 Great Ways to Grow More Vegetables on Your Balcony: A few ideas to make your balcony as efficient as possible.
• Tasty Flowers and How to Eat Them: A good way to kill two birds with one stone is to grow edible flowers. You get to grow pretty flowers and something you can eat all in one plant.
• Easy to Grow Fruits, Vegetables and Herbs: A list of great edible plants with links to information on how to grow them organically.
• Grow Your Own Food So Your Kids Will Eat Healthily: Tips for getting kids involved in growing food in order to entice them into eating the veggies they grow.

BIRDS, BEES AND BUTTERFLIES

• Welcoming Wildlife to Your Balcony: A great book about creating backyard and balcony habitats for wildlife.
• Bees Favorite Colors Are Blue and Yellow: Three things to look for in a flower if you’re trying to attract bees.
• Grow Your Own Bird Feeder: This is a great guest post from Janet Luke about growing birdhouse gourds on your balcony.
• DIY Modern Bird Feeder: My brother figured out how to recreate this designer bird feeder.

Subscribe to Life on the Balcony and never miss a single container gardening tip or trick.

Photo by Daryl Mitchell

Sometimes I like to look at Cosmo Magazine. Not because I’m interested in any of their tips for spicing things up in the bedroom or advice on how to apply my eye shadow. What I like to look at are their headlines. They are hilarious! “How to Be a Total Man-Magnet,” “10 Sneaky Tricks to Try Instead of Dieting,” and “How to Feel Sexy All the Time.” Sensationalism at it’s finest.

You have to admit, they definitely grab your attention. I thought I would try my hand at a Cosmo-style headline and article. I admit that container gardening isn’t nearly as sexy as lipsticks to make your pucker more kissable, but work with me here.

So what exactly does it mean to be “sneaky” in the context of container gardening? The following tips are all behind the scenes ways to improve how your balcony garden looks or functions. File these bad boys away for spring and your garden will thank you.

1. Don’t fill a large pot entirely with soil. Big pots full of potting mix are heavy (hard to move and bad for balconies with weight restrictions). And water tends to stagnate in the bottom, which most plants don’t like. Keep things light and draining properly by using a pot insert. Or, if you’re on a budget, you can use crumpled plastic bottles.
2. Use pot feet of some sort. Pots sitting right on your balcony, deck or patio cause rot, uneven fading, ugly stains, and poor drainage. Not smokin hot, if you ask me. But this is easily solved and you don’t have to use your grandma’s terracotta pot feet either. Check out pot pads. They’re completely hidden underneath the pot but raise things up off the ground. And they come in fun colors. It’s like underwear with a wild pattern that only you know about.
3. Color coordinate your plants. Just like stylish wardrobes are well-planned, so too are stylish balconies. The best looking ones are carefully cultivated with flowers and foliage that look nice together. Just like you probably shouldn’t wear a wild top with loud bottoms, you want to have a nice mix of show stopper plants and the supporting cast.
4. Use dwarf versions of your favorite plants to create the illusion of a grand scale. There are lots of dwarf versions of great plants that look identical to (or very close to identical) their bigger counterparts. A lot of times when someone sees a dwarf hydrangea in full bloom, for example, it reads in their mind as bigger and lusher than it actually is. People see what they expect to see, not necessarily what is actually there.
5. Use edibles and flowers together. Edibles are all the rage right now, and when you treat them as an ornamental plant instead of a fussy edible that has to be grown in evenly spaced rows, they can give your container garden a whimsical, cool vibe without looking like you’re trying too hard.

Got any sneaky tips of your own? Keep in PG in the comments!

I have been putting off sharing photos of my new balcony, even though I promised them, because my balcony is largely in pretty sorry shape. With so much going on, I just haven’t had time to repot everything I wanted to repot, and I think I also need some new planters for some of my smaller plants. Not to mention that it is winter, and even in California, that means that some plants are leafless.

But my friend Bob promised that no one would hate me if I shared photos of my less than perfect balcony, so you guys better not abandon the blog en masse! Otherwise I’ll send Bob out after you…

This corner of my balcony I am largely pretty happy with. I’ll directly sow some annuals into the large pot when it gets closer to spring, but other than those bare spots, I think things are looking pretty good. You can also see that P. Allen Smith pot is maturing nicely…

This corner is also looking pretty good. Except for the bare spot in that pot wth the strawberries and the black sweet potato vine. There was a silver artemesia there, but it was infested with aphids. I didn’t really have time to deal with it, so I cut it back hard, thinking that would solve the aphid problem and also help correct the weird shape the plant had developed. Bad idea. It looks like the artemesia died. Whoops.

This part doesn’t look bad, per se. Just empty. I planted some really pretty spinach seeds from Botanical Interests in the pockets of the strawberry pot. The spinach has wine-red veins. When those sprout, I think this pot is going to look grogeous!

And then this is the “ugly” corner. These are all little baby plants that need a new home. I am trying to decide if I should create the planter I envision myself, or just find a close, already made version.

Then there are the plants that got mangled a few storms ago. I was in the process of packing and I forgot to protect my plants from the rain. One of those wounded in action was my favorite aeonium.

There is also a pot with my apple tree in it. But it is so ugly I just can’t bear to claim it “in public.” The Thai basil is cut back to a few sticks, and the chives have gotten really leggy and ugly. And there is a huge bare spot that I need to fill. Sorry Bob, I just couldn’t lay it all out there for everyone to see…

Last year I shared tips from a master gardener on how to move your plants to a new balcony with as little damage as possible. They were pretty good tips, but required you to move your plants inside an enclosed moving van and not in a car or the bed of a pickup truck. But what if you have to move your beloved plants in a car or pickup?!

(By the way, the comments of that old post are pretty funny in light of the fact that I had to move my plants in a pickup)

If moving your plants in an enclosed moving van isn’t an option, I have some first hand experience I’d like to share.

1. Smaller potted plants are easy to move if you pack them tightly into a laundry basket and then seat belt the basket into a spot in the backseat of your car. Use newspaper to make the pots secure if it isn’t possible to place the pots against on another in the laundry basket.
2. If you have trees you have to move, pack crumpled newspaper tightly into the pot around the base of the tree, covering all of the dirt. Then use a strip of packing tape on either side of the trunk to secure the newspaper in the pot. If necessary, turn the pot 90 degrees and place another two trips of tape on either side of the trunk.
3. If you have to move a tree or larger shrub in the back of a pickup truck, put a large trash bag over the plant and either tie it around the trunk, or tape the bag to the pot. This will help keep the leaves from being ripped off while you’re driving.
4. If possible, lay trees and large shrubs down in the back of the truck instead of placing them upright. Make sure to strap the pots down or pack the pots in tightly to prevent the pots from sliding around as you drive.
5. If possible, don’t drive a pickup on the freeway/highway. The higher the speed, the worse it is for the leaves that are trying to stay attached to the tree.

The five tips listed above are what I did to move my plants, and they all arrived in good shape. Now I just need to lug them upstairs. If anyone knows how to make that easier, let me know.

Photo credit: ‘Finding Room for Plants’ by leapsters

This past September 26th came and went without a birthday card or any other acknowledgement from my two brothers. I thought they both somehow forgot. It seemed pretty hard to believe. My birthday has been on the 26th of September for the past 28 years, and they were alive for 26 and 19 of those birthdays respectively. As it turns out, only the 19 year old forgot. The older of my two brothers ordered an assortment of bulbs as a gift, but didn’t realize that they wouldn’t be shipped until it was the right time to plant them in my area. Receiving the box in mid October was a wonderful surprise.

Among the bulbs my brother picked out for me were these Autumn Crocus, which I planted in a pot near my front door. On top of the bulbs, I planted some sweet allysum to cover the bare dirt. The effect is really pretty and couldn’t have been easier.

I got the idea from this video created by Sunset Magazine. Even if it is already pretty cold in your area, I think you would still be able to do something similar. A lot of bulbs need a long cold winter to produce beautiful flowers in Spring. If you plant them now in a pot that won’t crack, you can leave them outdoors this winter and receive a your “gift” next Spring.