A close family friend passed away in a car accident on Sunday. I’m going to be stepping away from the blog for a week to process this tragedy and grieve with my husband and our friends. Thank you for understanding.

Gardening Posts

• MeemsNYC solves a problem a lot of us have right now: What to do with all those zucchini?!
• I loved touring around Laura’s patio garden. Keep an eye out for her ‘Pretty Much Picasso’ petunias. They look great on the black ladder/plant stand!
• If you enjoy seeing cute kids in the garden, hearing about stories of cardinals nesting, and laughing at kitties who attempt to monitor said cardinals, then click on over to Vetsey’s blog!
• Jenny reminds you to take in all aspects of your garden’s beauty, even the shadows!

Don’t Forget to Submit Your Carnival Posts!

For the July Carnival, I’m seeking posts about how your container garden has changed and grown as summer progresses. You can write about about any aspect of a summer garden, so long as it involves a container garden. You can write about the fruits and vegetables you’ve been able to grow, how your flower containers have filled in, the pests that have shown up and how you’ve dealt with them, or whatever else suits your fancy. If you need help or have a question, don’t hestitate to email me.

To submit a post, use this form: Container Gardening Blog Carnival Page. You can find it by going to Contact > Blog Carnival at the top of the page too. You need to publish your post on your blog and submit it through the blog carnival submission page by July 24th. I’ll be publishing the carnival on the 16th.

Hey So Cal! Join Adriana And I For Our First “Eat Me” Meetup!

If you’re in Southern California, I hope you’ll join in a meetup group Adriana of Anarchy in the Garden and I have created. Eat Me is a group for Southern Californians who want to meet other gardeners who like growing their own food. It should be a lot of fun to meet in person and chat about gardening. I hope you’ll join us! “Like” Eat Me on Facebook, or follow @SoCalEatMe on Twitter.

It looks like out first meetup is going to be at H & H Nursery in Lakewood, CA on Sunday, June 25th. I don’t think it’s set in stone though, so definitely “like” the group on Facebook or follow it on Twitter to find out if there are any changes.

Original photo by B Tal

Must Read Container Gardening Posts

• Black and Tan Container: love, Love, LOVE this container design by Christina Salwitz. So amazingly beautiful.
• Speaking of Christina, she’s the featured guest on this month’s Nest In Style podcast!
• A Hanging Basket Story: Andrea Bellamy shares some new Proven Winners plants and combines them in a pretty hanging basket.
• Apartment Therapy has a good roundup of a bunch of their recent container gardening posts.
• Vegetable Grilling Guide: Jayme Jenkins provides a complete look at BBQing all those yummy vegetables you’ve been growing.

Bloom in the Park

Pat FitzGerald–of the eponymous nursery that produces the My Plant range of container friendly plants–has been at Ireland’s Bloom in the Park event, where garden designers Dawn Aston and Crawford Leitch used his plants to created a beautiful garden perfect for urbanites. Here’s what Pat had to say about the experience thus far:

After two days of Bloom in the Park all the hard work over the last month has paid off and we are delighted to announce Urban Oasis received a Silver Gilt Medal. Even more importantly the response from the visiting public has been amazing. Urban Oasis takes an unconventional and challenging approach for a Show Garden.  Dawn’s concept was to create a space which is a private oasis from the typical urban environment. Using an undercover of colourful blends of hardy evergreen and tropical foliage plants Dawn created a garden bountiful in all year round colour.

Here are some photos featuring Pat’s plants…

Container Gardening in the News

• A community garden in NYC is looking for a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T
• A few container gardening tips from Northern Colorado’s public radio station.
• Some super cute kids in Marin County, CA are going to be playing in a new play yard that features edible plants and CA natives at the local Boys and Girls Club.
• Holy smokes Batman! Dallas has a ton of great sounding gardening events this weekend.

I’ve learned a lot about life through gardening, probably because it is such a contemplative hobby. I’d love to hear what, if anything, you’ve learned from your time spent among plants.

1. Failure is an opportunity to try again, this time with more knowledge.

A lot of people think that someone with a green thumb was born that way. I don’t think that’s really true. Green thumbs–at least all of them that I’ve seen–are earned by killing lots of plants and trying to figure out how not to do that again. I think we often forget how common it is to fail at something before mastering the skill, because we do the majority of our experimentation when are much younger. Kids are pretty resilient, but somewhere along the way we “learn” that failing is something to be ashamed of. The net result is that we stop trying something after failing once because we don’t want to risk failing again.

2. Enjoy where you are in life right now

For the longest time after I moved out of my parents house I intentionally did not have a garden. I’ve always had plants, but they weren’t something I thought much about or spent much time caring for. I was waiting to have a yard. Waiting to own my own home. How silly is that?! Yes, it would be wonderful to have my own dirt to garden in, but it is also wonderful to garden in containers on my balcony. You can’t be so focused on your goals that you  forget to enjoy, and make the best of where you are right now.

3. Perfection is not a worthwhile goal

It is not possible to have a “perfect” garden. Invariably a pest will sneak in and nibble on a plant before you notice and can react. Or a strong gust of wind will break some flower stems. Or any number of other “calamities” will happen that are largely outside of your control. And you know what. It’s okay. Last year I could not, for the life of me, get rid of the whitefly that were feasting on my iris leaves, but the flowers still took my breath away. Something doesn’t have to be perfect for it to be beautiful, worthwhile, or rewarding.

Last January I had a contest to give away a set of soft-sided “Smart Pots,” the winner won several pots with the condition that they check in a few times and share how the plants in their Smart Pots are doing. In case you missed it, Smart Pots are a soft-sided “pot” that is supposed to provide better air circulation in the potting mix. Debra of the Smith Bites blog was the winner, and recently she sent me her initial thoughts. I have also been growing tomatoes, lavender, peppers, dahlias, and lilies in some Smart Pots, and have some initial impressions to share too.

Debra’s Experience With Smart Pots

Using a good organic planting mix with Perlite, both the tomato and peppers transplanted better in the new Smart Pots than in my regular pots – very little droop in either plant and both perked up in their new homes after about 30 minutes. It’s been about a month since planting and both plants are bigger and more robust than plants in my other containers. Since I live in the Midwest, our growing season hasn’t really begun (i.e., no blooms as of yet) so I will need to report later on the yield.

I have been pleasantly surprised to find that the Smart Pots maintain the moisture of the soil better than my other pots which means they don’t need to be water as often and they maintained their shape – wet or dry.

Overall impression is that I’m happy enough with the results so far, that I’ll be looking to add a few more pots in the future; we have a pond and I’d like to try planting a water lily in one and see how the Smart Pot holds up under water!

My Thoughts on Growing Plants in Smart Pots

I love Debra’s idea of using a Smart Pot to grow a lily in her pond. I have been meaning to try water gardening for some time, and I can see how a Smart Pot would be a good option in that setting.

I have all my Smart Pots potted up at my office. We did a poll here on LOTB to decide what I would grow in my Smart Pots, and you all selected tomatoes and lavender. I bought plastic pots the exact size of the Smart Pots and planted nearly identical plants in both the Smart Pot and the plastic pot. I used identical potting mixes and have fertilized the pots exactly the same.

I selected an indeterminate type of tomato that has blueberry-sized fruit called ‘Red Currant.’ The plant growing in the Smart Pot is a good 12 inches taller than the plant growing in the plastic pot, even though the plastic pot has a slightly better location (it gets 30 minutes-1 hour more sunlight). Both plants have flowers and green tomatoes, though the Smart Pot plant has more tomatoes that are almost ripe, more green fruit, and more flowers.

For the lavender comparison, I selected a beautiful variety of Spanish Lavender. One plant was slightly smaller than the other. I placed the smaller plant in the Smart Pot and the bigger plant in the plastic pot. The smaller Smart Pot lavender has grown at a faster rate than the plant in the plastic pot (I measure the diameter, height, number of flower buds, and number of opened flowers on a weekly basis). I’m not sure if this is because of the difference in the pots or the initial size.

Conclusion

Both Debra and I are having better results with Smart Pots than with plastic pots thus far. We’ll continue to keep on eye on the experiment and report back to you later in the season.

A lot of gardeners enjoy taking photos of their garden to chart their garden’s progress, to remind them of how beautiful their favorite flower is, or to share with friends online. Actually, it’s kind of hard to imagine a gardener that doesn’t like taking photos of their garden. Knowing a few photography basics can really improve the quality of photos you take. Over the next few weeks I’ll share a few basics that are easy to incorporate into your photos but will make a huge difference.

No “rule” in a creative pursuit is written in stone, so don’t feel like you “must” follow this one. But at the same time, the rule of thirds can help you take much more dynamic photos. A lot of people are so entranced by how pretty a flower is, or so thrilled that a butterfly has landed on their balcony, that they snap away, without a thought towards composition. Inevitably this means that the photographer has tons of photos with a flower or butterfly floating smack dab in the middle of a sea of green foliage.

To give the rule of thirds a try, imagine a tic-tac-toe style grid superimposed on your camera’s viewfinder. Instead of placing the subject of your photo in the middle of the shot, place it where one of the lines intersect. If there is a horizon in your photo, try aligning it with one of the two horizontal lines of the tic-tac-toe grid.

The rule of thirds works by creating visual tension between the unequal negative space around your subject, which directs the viewer’s eye exactly where you want it to be: on your subject.

You tell me, which one do you think looks more interesting. The be centered:

Or the bee placed on the bottom left intersection:

UPDATE: I have filled all the co-reviewer spots. Thanks for your enthusiasm guys!

I have been invited to review a free gardening app for the iPhone/iPod Touch and was thinking that since it is free, it would be fun to do a review with several other people. Basically, the reviewers would meet in a private online chat room and discuss the app. I will then use the opinions expressed in the chat to write the review.

Here are the qualifications I am looking for in a co-reviewer:

• Owner of an iPhone/iPod Touch
• Willingness to participate in a 30 minute online chat about the app on Monday, May 10 at 5:30pm Pacific (6:30 Mountain, 7:30 Central, 8:30 East Coast)
• Ability to provide a thoughtful critique during the guided discussion

Think you’ve got what it takes? Shoot me an email (fern at lifeonthebalcony.com). The first 10 people who email me have got the job. While you do not have to have a blog, Twitter account, Flickr account, website, etc to participate, if you do, I will provide a link to the site of your choice in the review post.

This being Earth Day, I wanted to challenge you to do one thing–make one change–to be more environmentally friendly. Maybe you’re going to commit to not use any pesticides this year, or grow some Asclepias (milkweed) to support your local butterfly population. Sunset Magazine has a whole bunch of Earth-friendly ideas. If you do make an Earth Day resolution, tell me about it in the comments. Maybe we can help keep each other on track.