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.

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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.

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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.

I thought I would collect all of the product and book reviews posted on Life on the Balcony in one spot in case you’re planning on any Black Friday or Cyber Monday internet shopping…

• Soil Scoop: My first video post (go easy on me!) of a useful product for container gardeners and traditional gardeners alike. The post contains a discount code that is good until April of next year.
• Review of P. Allen Smith’s Container Gardening Deck: A short video explaining P. Allen Smith’s latest contribution to container gardening. If you (or the intended recipient) loves lush, overflowing containers, then this is a thoughtful gift that won’t break the bank.
• Black Plants: 75 Striking Choices For the Garden: An almost stocking-stuffer sized book of plants for the gothic gardener. Every plant has a full color photo and description.
• Welcoming Wildlife to the Garden: A great book about providing wildlife with what they need. Plenty of ideas specifically for balcony and patio gardeners.
• 5 Great Herb Pots: Herb pots (smaller pots that are meant to be kept together as a group) make a great gift this time of year because they often fit perfectly on a windowsill for indoor herb growing.
• Hello! Cupcake: You wouldn’t expect to find a baking book on a container gardening blog, but the book contains many garden inspired designs for those of you who enjoy both gardening and cooking (and eating!).
• Children’s Garden Tools: A collection of different well-made tools for the younger gardener on your list.
• Holy Land Olive Trees: A lot of people really seem interested in growing their own olives these days. These particular trees come from cuttings taken in Israel from ancient trees.
• Self-Watering Containers: Another great gift idea for a gardener who wants to be able to do some indoor gardening during the winter. Self-watering pots don’t have drainage holes, so they don’t make a mess inside.

I recently received a review copy of P. Allen Smith’s Container Gardens Deck. In order to test it out and see whether I would recommend the deck to other people, I took one of the cards with me to the nursery and used it to create a container design:

As you can see, I think the cards are a pretty good idea. It’s easy to stick the card you want to use in your purse or back pocket and take it with you to the nursery. And with the diagram that clearly shows where to place each plant, it is equally easy to create the pot pictured on the front of the card. All in all, I think these cards will really appeal to LOTB readers who like lush flower displays in their pots.

Here is the card I used and the completed container. The container will look even better when the cabbages fill in a bit.

I also think they’re priced really well to give as a thoughtful gift that won’t break the bank. The list price is $14.99, but Amazon is selling them for $10.14 right now. If your office has a holiday gift exchange and you draw the name of someone who likes to garden, I think they would really like these cards (but be sure to buy one for yourself too!)

Previous Life on the Balcony Videos:

• Life on the Balcony Vlog #1 – Soil Scoop Review
• Life on the Balcony Vlog #2 – Guerrilla Gardening
• Video Tour – Where in the World is Life on the Balcony?

UPDATE: Jayme of aHa Modern Living just sent me a discount code for Life on the Balcony readers who would like to try the soil scoop. If you use the code “balcony” (without the quotes) you’ll receive 10% off. This deal expires on 4/11/2010.

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I am so, so, so, sooooo excited to have finally finished my first vlog (video+blog) post. I had some technical difficulties, but finally figured everything out last night.

This first video blog post is about a great tool called a Soil Scoop. Jayme of aHa Modern Living sent me the scoop because she thought it would be a great multi-purpose tool for container gardeners. I have to say, I totally agree! If you have a soil scoop and a pair of bypass pruners, you can do pretty much everything needed to create and maintain a beautiful container garden.

Subscribe to Life on the Balcony’s YouTube channel to be updated about new vlog posts!

I’m very excited to tell you guys about a great iPhone app from Botanical Interests seeds, my favorite seed company. You know how Botanical Interests seed packets have beautiful drawings and an insane amount of info? Yeah, well they brought their great sense of style and desire to share tons of info to the iPhone and iPod touch.

The app starts up with a menu screen that allows you to browse through information about vegetables and herbs, search their database, look at your favorites list, or find general growing information.

There are 300 varieties of vegetables and herbs in the app’s database. Each entry contains the front of the seed packet, and all of the info that would normally be on the back and inside of the seed packet. For those of you who have never purchased Botanical Interests seeds (uh, why not?!) this is a ton of info: a paragraph or two about the history of the plant’s cultivation, suggestions for how to eat it and use it in the garden, nutritional factoids, when to start the seeds, any special growing information, when and how to harvest, etc.

The search feature is particularly useful. You can search for a plant by name, number of days to maturity, or by checking one or more of 10 plant characteristics. This is great if you want to know which herbs can be grown in partial-shade, or which tomatoes mature in 75 days.

I imagine people will use the favorites feature a lot during the winter as they dream of plants they want to grow next year. Bored in line at the bank? Browse through the vegetables and herbs in the app and add them to your favorites list for later.

Another thing you can do while waiting in line is browse through the tips and information section of the app to increase your edible growing IQ. It’s also a great resource when you’re wondering why your cucumbers taste bitter or why your radicchio hasn’t formed a head yet.

All in all, I’m happy to give this app five stars. It’s beautiful and I can see it being very useful to me.

What I’d like to see in future editions:

• Expand the database to include flowers and ornamental plants.
• The ability to buy Botanical Interests seeds directly from the app. I know Apple is kind of crazy when it comes to their app rules, so I don’t know if that’s possible, but it would be really cool!
• The ability to store my own growing notes in the app. I would love to be able to note which seeds I’ve already purchased, when I bought them, when I sowed them, if they worked well in my garden, anything I learned about growing that plant, etc.
• I have no idea if this would be possible, but it would be neat (and very web 2.0ish) if you could share your growing notes with other people using the app.
• A lower price point, most other gardening apps are selling for between .99 and 2.99. Maybe the ability to buy seeds through the app would help Botanical Interests justify a lower price (I’m sympathetic to the fact that it is expensive to develop apps).

Other iPhone App Reviews

• iBird Backyard
• Peterson’s iPhone Guide to Backyard Birds

If you are a serious fashionista (or whatever the male equivalent is if you are in possession of a Y chromosome) who would love to don the not-so-stylish bee keeper’s outfit from time to time, you might be in luck. The makers of the chic Eglu chicken coop have come up with an equally modern abode for bees, called the ‘Beehaus.’ It’s worth checking out if for no other reason than the company seems to come up with ridiculously clever names for their products.

While I am only able to find the Beehaus on the manufacturer’s UK website, I first saw it featured on Apartment Therapy, who saw it in the LA Times. So I think it is available in the U.S., or will be shortly. Getting your landlord to agree that fresh honey is worth having a bee hive on the balcony of one of her units may be another story.

I wonder if this sort of apiary is a sign that bees are the new backyard chicken?

Related Posts

• How to Attract Bees To Your Balcony Garden
• Help Bees Do Their Thing, Even When It’s Hot Outside

My husband’s and my 6th wedding anniversary is coming up at the end of August and we’re planning on visiting the wine country in Paso Robles, CA to celebrate. Wine tasting vacations with your husband should fill you with a sense of anticipation, but instead I feel a tinge of dread. I’ve worked hard all summer long to nurture my vegetable and herb plants, and by late August, I anticipate they’ll still be going strong. Short of hiring someone or burdening a friend with watering duty, what can I do?

Photo by Cromely

To help stave off my vacation anxiety, I’ve started researching possible vacation watering systems. They all seem to rely on a reservoir and a slow drip delivery system.

Plant Nanny Add-A-Bottle comes with a hollow, terra cotta spike with a special adapter that allows recycled water bottles to be screwed in to the spike. You simply fill the bottle with water, screw it into the adapter and insert the spike into your pot. The terra cotta slowly releases water into the dirt and draws more water from the bottle as needed. Apparently there are too many factors at play to say conclusively how long the plant nanny will water your plants.

Moisture Absorbing Crystals are what I would have used if I was planning ahead. The crystals absorb moisture when the plants are watered and then slowly release the water back into the soil as the soil dries out. To use them, you mix them into the soil at the bottom of the pot before planting it. I guess it’s too late now to use them. Whoops.

Drip Irrigation Systems are great if you have access to a water faucet near your balcony/patio. I’ll have to check with my landlord and see if this is a plausible option for me. Basically, drip systems are water-efficient “sprinklers” that are great for container gardens (although they can also be used for in-ground gardens). There is a drip system that doesn’t require a faucet that I’m going to look into as well.

These are the possibilities I’ve found so far. Have you tried any of them, or do you know of another way to keep your plants watered while out of town?

Want to grow some herbs on your kitchen windowsill? Consider these stylish pots perfect for tucking into a sunny spot in your kitchen:

From top to bottom and left to right: (1) Red Herb Pots – Pier One $7.99, (2) Recycled Tire Herb Pot Set – Biome Lifestyle 24.99 British Pounds, (3) Solig Hanging Trio – Ikea $7.99, (4) Stackable/Hangable Planter – Amazon $34.95, (5) Herb Pot Trio – Amazon $39.95