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.

Container Gardening Posts:

• Interested in growing carnivorous plants in your apartment? Check out this post on Far Out Flora about Nepenthes, also called Monkey Cups.
• Check out how beautiful Kim’s container garden has become on her Barefoot Gardening blog (which is a great way to garden, in my opinion).
• Kerry has reviewed a nifty looking watering can called U CAN. I like the positive subliminal message of the name.
• If you’re looking for a slender, modern style BBQ for your balcony, check out what Robin posted on Urban Gardens.
• Congratulate Mike on his first homegrown salad eaten on his new LA balcony!

Congrats Karen!

As you all know, I held a quick contest this week to give away two boxes of Triscuits with cards impregnated with seeds, and a $20 gift card to buy gardening supplies. To win, LOTB readers had to submit recipe ideas that used fresh from the garden ingredients and Triscuit crackers. I loved Karen’s simple, yet original idea to combine Marigold flowers, tomatoes, cream cheese & Triscuits. And I’m going to try recipe combining Nasturtium flowers and leaves, figs, and Camembert for the next GROW Project post. Karen, I’ll send you and email so I can get your mailing address. Your prize will be in the mail next week. Enjoy! Smart Pots Update I wanted to pass along a quick observation about my Smart Pot comparison. By now I’ve had my two identical tomato plants in their respective pots (one plastic, one Smart Pot) for about 5 months. I’ve been harvesting tomatoes from both plants for awhile, but the Smart Pot plant is more prolific, healthier, and about 18 inches taller. Cheesy Gardening Joke

Photo by Melissa Robison

Two friars are having trouble paying off the belfry, so they open a florist shop. Everyone wants to buy flowers from the men of God so business is quickly booming. The florist across town sees a huge drop in sales and asks the two friars to close their shop, but they refuse. A month later the florist begs the friars to close because he’s having trouble feeding his family. Again, they refuse, so the florist hires Hugh McTaggert. Hugh is the roughest, toughest thug in town and is hired to “persuade” the friars to close. Hugh asks the friars to close their florist shop. When they refuse, he threatens to beat the crap out of them and wreck their shop every day they remain open, so they close. This proves once again that Hugh and only Hugh can prevent florist friars. [Source] Container Gardening in the News

• New York City reached an agreement with it’s community gardens. The Wall Street Journal has the story.
• Dill is a superb herb. Or at least that’s what Jana Louise Smit of Helium thinks.
• The Seattle Post covers two of my favorite topics: container gardens and cocktails.

I am thrilled to share this guest review of the Auto-Water Nozzle by Charles McKnight. Charles grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas (where he didn’t quite fit in) and now lives in Santa Monica, California (where he fits in much better). He is an actor, college student, and balcony gardener. Charles was looking for a way to water his garden without making a watery mess on the floor of his balcony, hence the search that ultimately led him to the Auto-Water Nozzle.

A budding container garden basks under the radiant Californian sun on my apartment balcony.  Although I do enjoy watering and caring for my botanical oasis, the occasional runoff water from the containers would make a mess on the cramped floor. While rummaging the internet for solutions, I became enlightened reading articles on Drip Irrigation. Drip irrigation, or micro-irrigation, is a watering system that delivers water droplets into the soil through small holes in a plastic pipe. As a result, a wholesome portion of water gradually saturates thirsty roots. My interests were sparked as I was visualizing this method for my garden. Eventually, I stumbled upon and purchased a six pack of the “Auto-Water Nozzles” for $4.99 on Amazon.com. The product is a simple, clear plastic nozzle that is compatible with most soft drink and wine bottles.

Instructions:

1. Drill a center hole on a bottle cap. A drill is best, but if you don’t have one most bottle caps can be punctured with a knife or hammer and nail. Please, be careful! The hole must be centered on the cap.
2. Insert the Auto-Water Nozzle through the hole from inside the cap. The opening must be large enough for the Auto-Water Nozzle.
3. Fill the bottle with water and screw the cap with Auto-Water Nozzle on the bottle. Make certain all connections are secured and sealed.
4. Flip the bottle and insert Auto-Water Nozzle into soil. As soil becomes dry, it releases oxygen into the bottle, which in turn releases the exact amount of water the plant needs. If water does not cascade out of the bottle when flipped over, inspect the connections of the bottle, nozzle, and cap to make sure they are fully sealed.

My balcony floor has been completely dry ever since I started using the Auto-Water Nozzles. So far, my bottle collection includes those that have housed sparkling mineral water and balsamic vinegar.  My sun-drenched plants demand a lot of water, so I have been refilling the bottles every two days. Occasionally, the Auto-Water Nozzle gets clogged with soil and it slows or even stops the water flow. I take notice of the obstruction if water in a bottle stays at the same level for a long period of time. To prevent buildup from occurring, remove the nozzle from the soil and shake the bottle vigorously to clear the debris. I hope the nozzles do not get clogged if I am on a weekend getaway! Despite the soil traffic jams of the Auto-Water Nozzles, my plants have a healthier glow. I highly recommend this product to anyone with a container garden. Not only do they conserve water and ease watering duty stress, Auto-Water Nozzles keep a balcony floor nice and dry.

The Benefits of the Auto-Water Nozzle Are:

• Reuse your soft drink bottle or wine bottle and save our environment.
• High efficiency, low cost automatic water solution for indoor and outdoor plants. Provide exact amount of water every time without the risk of overwatering or dehydration.
• Great for watering plants that are far away from a garden hose.
• Directly deliver water or fertilizer into root zone of plants.
• Much easier to fill water.
• No spills to clean up and no more over-watering. Dispenses water as plants need it, every time.
• Fits in most soda or wine bottles with a cap.

P. Allen Smith has recently teamed up with Bonnie Plants to make an app for iPhones and iPod Touches called Grow & Go Together. The app has encyclopedia-type information on herbs, vegetables, recipes, projects, and containers. Each of these subjects is accessed from the main menu and then broken down into further subtopics in subsequent screens.

I asked 10 Life on the Balcony readers to help me review the app, and boy did they take this task seriously! It was a lot of fun to chat with the other reviewers, I will definitely look for more opportunities to review things this way.

Adding the App

Right now the app is only available “the old fashioned way.” You have to open up the Safari web browser, navigate to the app website, and add a bookmark to your phone’s desktop. I know the app creators are waiting for Apple to approve their app for download through iTunes, which is good because the overwhelming response to this method of adding an app to your iPhone or iPod was negative. Katie pointed out that she would never find an app if it wasn’t in the app store and Maggy mentioned that she perceived Safari apps as less legit than iTunes apps.

Usability

Overall, the app was deemed easy to use, but had several annoying quirks. On the positive side, the reviewers liked that you can sort the information by season. Cliff said, “I like the concept of setting a season, and then seeing a plant list that is relevant…simple and useful.” The favorites features was also useful for saving specific information in the app for future use.

Jakeb said “I think it is very usable, but I think in the next version they need to lock the nav bar down.” The buttons in particular were a point of frustration. Ellen thought there should be a back button at the bottom of the page in addition to the top. It seems to me that there should always be a way to get back to the main screen without having to press “back” a bunch of time (i.e. a “main menu” button).

Several reviewers were annoyed that the app doesn’t take advantage of the fact that iPhones can switch between portrait and landscape viewing. Katie discovered that if you try to view the app with the phone held horizontally, you have problems switching back to vertical viewing: “[it] bothers me because you have to exit out and start the whole app again to get it to fit back in the window.”

Graphics & Design

Jennifer succinctly summed up the general consensus on the graphics, “I have to say I liked it overall but those wooden stake nav markers didn’t do it for me: too cartoony.” Cliff also had some insightful commentary, “There’s a disconnect between navigational elements of the cartoon signs, and then a cleaner style when you get to an item like a recipe or projects using a photo… I think they should rationalize their look and feel.” Personally, the app felt more like Bonnie’s style and not as sophisticated as P. Allen Smith’s usual way of presenting himself and his ideas.

The Information in the App

Overwhelmingly the favorite part of the app was the recipes, and how the plant info linked to relevant recipes. Cliff tried the broccoli ginger recipe and thought it tasted great. But the way the recipes were presented was difficult to use. Ellen pointed out that the information wasn’t presented in an app-like manner, but rather “like a number of documents imported.” Katie said the recipes would be a lot easier to use if you could quickly jump to the ingredients or instructions, instead of having to scroll (and scroll, and scroll) to navigate through the recipe.

The actual plant information left most of the reviewers wanting more. Juliet said, “There definitely needed to be more in depth info. There wasn’t much as far as varieties of plants and the various types that might be suited for different areas. Very limited as far as varieties go – at least for veggies.” It seems that the app only included plants that Bonnie sells and no info on growing plants from seed. Oh, and as Adriana noted, Bush Beans are not herbs (they’re in the wrong section).

The projects and container sections were probably the biggest disappointment. If an app is going to be the resource that someone turns to to show them how to complete a project, numbered steps and step-by-step photos or illustrations would be helpful. As Bob said, “projects need steps. NUMBERED STEPS. And more illustrations to follow.” It wasn’t all bad though, Jennifer noted that the projects section “gave me great ideas.”

The Reviewers

• Helen & Sarah – The sister team behind Toronto Gardens brought some Canadian flair to our review session.
• Maggy – An iPod Touch wielding organic farmer.
• Bob – A lover of orchids, succulents and clematis. His better half is a professional chocolatier (I highly recommend the dark chocolate peanut butter cups).
• Jennifer – A blogger over at Stuck in Lodi Again. She thinks she has to have several successes under her belt before she can call herself a gardener, but I beg to differ.
• Cliff – an iPhone devotee who is cheating on his phone with an iPad. Cliff has a really snazzy looking gardening website called Dig the Dirt.
• Ellen – A garden coach, writer, and teacher who lives on a New England horse farm. She blogs about habitat gardening.
• Juliet – An iPhone user from Nor Cal that can be tracked down on Twitter at LadyJuliet23.
• Jakeb – A pretty talented photographer who is starting to get involved in the green movement and learn about gardening.
• Katie – A talented food photographer and cook who blogs over at Good Life Eats.
• Adriana – *The* punk rock gardener of So Cal. Need I say more? Oh yeah, she blogs as Anarchy in the Garden.

Lots of good news in my neck of the woods. For starters, I’m graduating from the Master Gardener training program this weekend, so on Saturday I will officially be a certified Master Gardener. I should be able to share more details about some other good news soon. This week was also good in that there were tons of great garden blog posts to share. You can really tell that Spring is getting into full swing!

Great Blog Reading

• Jayme over at aHa Modern Living has some creative ideas for gardening in small spaces.
• Kerry has an idea for creating a living flower arrangement for $10, sounds like a much better idea than dropping $40 this Sunday on a bouquet of flowers for mom.
• A talented container gardeners, Kimberly has some new pots to show off in shades of silver, red and orange.
• Garden designer Jenny Peterson interviewed the staff at her local nursery to find out their favorite plants.
• Adriana reviewed Womanswork gloves. Check out the video of her husband using the gloves, guess they’re tough enough for men too.
• Newly minted Angeleno, Mike is already hard at work planting up his balcony and making good use of self-watering containers. Smart move in a hot climate like ours.

Don’t Forget!

This month’s blog carnival topic is container gardens as wildlife habitats. This is such an important thing for us to consider, I hope to be flooded with great posts from you guys!

Also, Timber Press is giving away a garden center gift card and signed copies of Debra Lee Baldwin’s books on succulent gardens and succulent container gardens. Y’all know how highly I think of Debra’s books. To enter, simply upload a photo of a succulent container that you created and share the link in the comments of this Timber Press blog post.

Umzugsgesellschaft

Photo by Knoten-Susi

I admit that this photo first caught my attention in the LOTB Flickr group because of the really long German title. What is a Umzugsgesellschaft, I thought? Well, with the help of Google Translator, I think it means “moving company.” I wonder what a moving company has to do with these little seedlings? Any guesses?

Container Gardening News

• In unfortunate news, Scotts-Miracle Gro reported that it’s second quarter profits rose 53%
• Pretty thorough overview of growing fruits, vegetables and herbs in containers from Berks-Mont News.
• Check out this container idea published in the Lincoln Journal Star featuring a climbing nasturtium. Might have to thry this one out too.

This week there were some really good garden blog posts to share, and some kind of funny gardening news. I particularly liked Sue’s post about comparing seedlings growing in potting soil from last year versus ones that had fresh potting mix. There’s also a corny gardening joke, and a bit about the nasturtium seed scarification project.

Great Garden Blog Reading

• Sue has a really interesting post about what happens when you break some gardening rules.
• Check out Jenny’s idea for making your own herbed butter with the herbs you’re growing in your garden.
• Adriana also tried out DoLeaf. Check out what she ordered and her thoughts on the online plant shop.
• Mike is expanding his balcony gardening repertoire to include flowers. I like his choices!

The Mouse & Trowel Awards

If you haven’t already nominated your favorite gardening blogs for a Mouse & Trowel award, today is the last day!

Nasturtium Seed Scarification Project

If you participated in our little nasturtium seed scarification study, let us know your results! All of my seeds sprouted except for the ones that I didn’t do anything to. Though in all fairness, after awhile I got bored waiting for them to germinate and may have forgotten to keep the soil moist.

Bad Gardening Joke

Why do potatoes make good detectives? Because they keep their eyes peeled.

And in Other News…

• It’s apparently more dangerous to garden in the U.K. than it is to ski. Who knew?
• The Philadelphia Inquirer says you can grow $1000 worth of vegetables for $100.

If you’ve been reading the Life on the Balcony Facebook Page, then you know how much fun I have been having starting seeds in my potting shed (otherwise known as my garage). Part of the reason I’ve been having so much fun out there is that I have been using a new seed starting set (actually four new seed starting sets) from Burpee. What caught my eye was that they are biodegradable, but I didn’t expect them to be as thoughtfully put together as they are.

What’s Included in the Kit

I bought my kit at Target for $6.99. Included was a 36-cell tray made out of biodegradable corn-based plastic and a water catching receptacle that fits perfectly underneath. Inside each cell is a little soil pellet, that will expand to fill the cell with just the right amount of seed starting mix when water is added. A sample size packet of Espoma organic fertilizer is included so that you can keep your plants going strong once they’re ready to transplant. I use Espoma brand products a lot and like them.

Also included in the kit is a chart that shows all the cells in the tray. You can use this chart to write down what you sowed where. What’s nice is that each side of the tray is marked with a letter (A, B, C, D) and those letters are also on the chart. So that when you turn your tray to give each seedling equal access to the light, you won’t get confused.

How to Use the Seed Starting Kit

It couldn’t be more easy to use this kit. Set it on your table and examine the soil pellets. They should all be lying flat in the bottom of each cell (this helps them expand properly). Fill up a watering can (or a cup) with warm water and fill each cell about 2/3s full with water. You should see the seed pellets immediately start expanding and filling the cell. Once the pellets are completely expanded (about 5 minutes), use a chopstick or your finger to smooth out the soil. You’re ready to sow some seeds!

Once you transplant your seedlings, don’t throw the tray out. You can reuse it to grow a new batch of seedlings. Either pick up some seed starting mix at your local garden center, or buy replacement soil pellets from Burpee.

My Seed Starting Tips

1. Use the chart to mark more data than just what was sowed in each cell. I marked when I sowed the seeds, when they germinated, and I’ll mark when I transplant them as well.
2. Use an overhead florescent light and place it very close to the seedlings (a few inches from touching them). You can use CFLs for this, or regular florescent tubes and a shop fixture (Less than $10 at your hardware store).
3. Even though the directions that come with the seed starting kit say to water from above, I use the water collecting tray to water from below. Simply fill it with water and allow the soil in each cell to wick up water. This is easier and carries less risk of damaging young seedlings.

I’m trying something new in an effort to share some of the cool things I come across as well as lighten the load for me (writing 5 full-length posts a week for nearly 2 years is starting to take it’s toll). Basically, on Fridays I’m going to be sharing some links and quick ideas for you all to take into the weekend. Let me know what you think…

Great Blog Reading

• Homemade EarthBox – Mr Brown Thumb shares how he made his own self-watering container with $2, a garbage bag and a rubberband.
• What Makes a Good Gardener? – Author and blogger Gayla Trail pontificates on what qualifies someone as a “green thumb.”
• How to Make a Planter Out of a Wooden Pallet – This isn’t a blog post, per se, it’s an Instructibles post, so I’m not really sure where that fits in the scheme of things. Regardless, it’s an interesting idea for making a nice looking planter out of found materials.
• The San Francisco Garden Show: Container Drama – Christina shared her photos and thoughts on all the beautiful and interesting container designs at the SF Garden Show.
• Review of Upside Down Planters and EarthBox – Paula Lovgren provides a thoughtful review of her experience with the Topsy Turvey upside down planter, and the self-watering EarthBox.

Loving These Colors

I keep on seeing yellow, orange and silver in gardens and find it a really beautiful, subtle color palette

Book I Can’t Wait to Read

Alys Fowler’s Garden Anywhere. I received the book as a Hanukkah gift, but haven’t had time to read it yet. I flipped through a copy at the San Francisco Garden Show, and was kicking myself for taking so long to actually crack open the cover.

I’m Lusting After…

The uber modern Roost Copenhagen terrarium containers available at aHa Modern Living.

In the News

• Michael Tortorello examines several indoor herb garden kits in his New York Times column. I always enjoy his thoughtful commentary on edible gardening from a newcomer’s perspective.
• Cindy McNatt, garden writer at the Orange County Register, provides a bunch of useful tidbits and trivia about growing tomatoes.
• The topic of master gardeners was really popular this week. Google found 1260 articles about master gardeners published in the last week.
• A new community garden opened up in Tempe, AZ and replaces a vacant lot with flowers and vegetables. Although the concept is a bit different than most community gardens, the produce grown in the garden will supply local restaurants.
• The Guardian examines edible flowers and the various flavors they can add to a dish.

Know about something that should be included in next week’s grab bag? Send your tips to fern at lifeonthebalcony.com.

I recently became aware of a great new site called Do Leaf when they offered to send me some plants so that I could test out their site (it’s still in beta). Do Leaf is the brain child of Sarah, Ryan, and Micah who were fed up with the mediocre selection of plants at their local big box stores. They decided to put their web development skills to work creating a portal where people like you and me can find plants from specialty nurseries all over the country.

I ordered three plants: Ficus ‘Ruby,’ Nutmeg Scented Geranium , and Catnip. Here are the photos of the unboxing…

The plants were happy to get out of the box!

I planted the catnip under my apple tree. I’ve already pinched off a few leaves and fed them to my cats. They strongly approve!

Aren’t these leaves stunning? I was really impressed with the size of this Ficus. It sells for $7 through Do Leaf, but similar sized houseplants sell for around $20 at my favorite local nursery. And quite frankly, they aren’t as interesting.

* * * * *

The Do Leaf site has over 400 plants and seeds currently listed, ranging from Curly Boy Croton to Peachy Sunrise Day Lily, and a whole heck of a lot in between. It seems like more plants and new nurseries are being added all the time.

In our day and age of corporate customer service automatons, I’ve become obsessed with businesses that act “real.”  I think Do Leaf is just the sort of company I would love to hand my hard earned dollars. I like the idea of supporting young people who saw a problem and created a solution. People who are passionate about what they do and how they do it.

With that in mind, I think I am going to order a few of these ‘Grape Magic’ Hemerocallis (Day Lilies). I’ve been dreaming about a planter near my front door that had purple lilies and orange Kniphofia (Red Hot Poker Plant). The only problem is that I challenged myself to grow stuff from seed/bulb this year. Plant lust or personal challenge?! I’m not sure I have enough self-control to resist…Does “bareroot” count as growing something from seed or bulb?

I wish the Earth Box had been around when I first started to grow vegetables back in 1978. At the time, I lived in a row house in South Philadelphia that had no yard. I grew everything in containers – large, plastic basins I bought at the hardware store – on my back porch. I drilled holes in the bottom of the containers to allow for drainage, but soon discovered that in order to prevent the soil from drying out too much during the summer I needed to water everything twice a day.

Years later, living outside of the city and with an in-ground garden, I found myself intrigued by the Earth Box, advertised as a maintenance-free, high-tech growing system that “controls soil conditions, eliminates guesswork and more than doubles the yield of a conventional garden – with less fertilizer, less water and virtually no effort.” What’s not to love?

I imagined what it would be like to grow vegetables in a weed-free environment, in sterile potting soil with no chance of soil-borne diseases. I envisioned how much easier gardening would be if I didn’t have to worry about watering.

The Earth Box kit came with the container, two plastic covers (elasticized around the edges to fit snugly over the edges of the box) and excellent directions for spacing requirements for a host of different plants.

Once I had the container filled with potting soil and the plants installed, the main task was remembering to keep the reservoir filled. The mechanics couldn’t have been simpler – all I had to do was put the end of the hose into the filler tube for the 3-gallon reservoir in the lower portion of the container. An overflow drainage hole made it impossible to over-water.

Overall, I was very pleased, and I’ve gotten good yields from my Earth Box. However, I’m very visual, and for me out of sight means out of mind. Because I couldn’t see how much water was in the reservoir, I alternately forgot to water or I added water when it wasn’t needed. So it didn’t actually save me much time. And I had to remember to water the container after days of heavy rain, because the plastic mulch cover kept the rain out.

The Earth Box does provide what it promises, and overall the results have been excellent. I think if you must garden in containers it’s a great way to go. But for me, even an Earth Box requires more work than my in-ground plantings. For starters, there’s some work involved in mixing up 2 cubic feet (about 60 quarts) of potting soil and getting it into the tub. In addition, I discovered that deer – a huge problem where I live – don’t care what kind of container a plant is growing in, and I ended up having to drag the Earth Box from my patio to inside my fenced-in garden.

* * * * *

Pam Baxter is an organic vegetable gardener who lives in Kimberton, PA. She is a garden writer and columnist for the Daily Local News in West Chester, PA. She has written for The American Gardener (the magazine of the American Horticultural Association) and is the newsletter editor for the Valley Forge Audubon Society and the Green Valleys Association. Pam blogs at http://www.gardeningonearth.com. You may also follow her on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pamsgarden.

After reading several comments left in the State of the Balcony survey regarding product and book reviews, I want to make my policy on such posts clear.

To state it simply, I never publish anything about a book or product that I don’t personally love and use. Period. I do occasionally receive products and books to review for free, but I am always very upfront about that. And I have come across products and books that I didn’t like, and declined to review on Life on the Balcony.

I do receive a small (and it is small) percentage of the sales made after clicking on a link to Amazon from this blog. Someone made what I think was a cheap shot about affiliate programs in the survey. I work hard to provide what I hope is good quality information here. On most weeks I write 5 posts a week. And they’re all free to read. Actually, it costs me money to have a blog. I have web hosting fees to pay, and things to buy so I can research them or use them as a prize in a contest. Not to mention the value of all the time I spend blogging. It’s kind of crummy to enjoy reading posts here but begrudge me the ability to at least cover the cost of writing all those posts. Especially considering that no one criticizes magazines for selling advertising, or receiving freebies to feature on their pages.

Anyway, I just wanted to make it clear that I value my integrity more than a free pair of gloves or a book. If someone wants to buy me, they’re going to have to do better than that. A lot better.