Growing on My Balcony Garden

For your food to be delicious, quality fresh ingredients are needed and there's no better way to do this than to have your own garden. I have a balcony garden where I built two planter boxes and have a handful of pots. I'm able to have quite a surprising number of herbs and plants growing in the garden and I supplement my dishes with these greens whenever I can.

I present to you some of my plants...

Lime flowers...they will give me more limes!

Big Tahitian limes...I left the spiders to do their thing...they eat up all the other bugs! These limes stay on the tree for a long time and are much better stored there rather than in the fridge. They will slowly turn yellow and then drop off naturally. They are at their peak then and the fresh lime fragrance I get from these is just so intense.

This guy is kinda gross but kinda cute...hahaha he's looking back!

The cherry tomatoes are going nuts right now, it's a non stop tomato factory! Unfortunately tomato plants only last for one season and can be quite susceptible to blight. I found that the cherry tomatoes to be more resilient and were able to thrive where the full sized tomato plants would die. I was also able to get a constant supply of cherry tomatoes which fit into my diet well, rather than having too many at one go.

This is a potato flower. The green things on the inside of the petals are aphids. They are a real pain, but can be removed with just a spray of water. The potato leaves and stems should be re-buried with more soil. The newly buried stems will then grow more potatoes.

The cherry tomato plant needs support to grow, and I found that this wire tower gave it the support it needed and looked nice too!

Zucchini flower...I'll be plucking these, stuffing with cheese and deep frying them. I'll probably let a couple of zucchinis grow but I'm more fond of the flowers really. These flowers only open in the morning, which is when you have to pick them.

What lovely looking silver beet! The leaves are so large that I usually only need a couple to make a salad.

Freshly picked from the garden. These went into a pasta I made that same day.

My new purple beans overshooting the broad bean sprouts you see in the background.

Pomelo...growing more massive everyday. Apparently these only ripen when it turns cold...patience!

Lemongrass...growing well...careful when trying to pull these up, the blades have serrated edges and can really make your hand itch.

Rosemary, thyme in the background...I pluck these the most of all!