Our Diminutive Balcony Garden

This year we have the same Honeysuckle which was planted in 2006 along with the variegated Ivy both are doing very well. One tub still contains the Geraniums that Maureen planted in 2006 and in one of the large tubs is some mint. We are now growing our own salad leaves and radish and if we just had a bit more room we would be trying other things as well, but with the room we have got we are very satisfied with what we have been growing.

Japanese Honeysuckle Prolific (Lonicera Japonica Halls Prolific)

As its name suggests, this is an especially vigorous and free-flowering variety with masses of sweetly scented, tubular flowers from April to August, opening pure white and ageing to yellow. The handsome, dark green leaves are retained all year and in hot summers, the flowers may be followed by small purple-black berries. It looks lovely scrambling over an old boundary wall or growing through a robust, mature tree, or in our case up the wall and trellis work

Garden care: Cut back established plants after flowering, removing a third of the flowering shoots. Apply a generous 5-7cm (2-3in) mulch of well-rotted compost or manure around the base of the plant in early spring.

Ivy Common (Hedera Helix Oro Di Bogliasco)

A handsome ivy with lustrous, three-lobed, dark green leaves splashed with golden yellow. It is a self-clinging, evergreen climber suitable for brightening or covering a shady wall or as groundcover, although it will lose its variegation if grown in deep shade. Mature plants bear spherical green flowers in autumn.

Garden care: Keep moist during the winter months. Plants may be pruned at any time of the year to keep within bounds.

Tomato and salad Crop This Year

This year we are using for our large toms a variety called Turbo Elegance which is a grafted stock, they arrived from Dobies in April as plug plants and are doing very well.

A vigorous growing variety, producing good trusses of standard size tomatoes of fine colour and delicious flavour.

As well as Tomato Tumbler F1 Plants

This trailing British bred variety is ideal for hanging baskets and containers on the patio, producing up to 4kg (9 lb) of delicious fruit in a single season. This amazing tomato tumbler can be sown later than most and harvested before others are available. Bred for patio pots and hanging baskets, the plants cascade over the sides. We did start with three plants but I broke one planting out and a gust of wind one day sent the second plant flying onto the balcony floor we couldn’t save it so we only have the one plant up on the trellis we have had 750 grams off of it so far so not too bad really.

Our salad leaves have been marvellous we have been harvesting them on a daily basis for 7 weeks now and they include, Rocket (Arugula) mixed, mixed spicy salad leaves, salad bowl red and green mixed, and radish French breakfast 3. All these are from Mr. Fothergill’s collection and the salads are all from the collection of Mr. Fothergill’s seed mats a superb way to sow your seeds. Today we have just sown some Lambs lettuce, Mizuna, Mustard Oriental red, Lettuce Salad bowl mixed and Watercress Aqua.

The Glens Tags: Astrochef, Lancashire, Molly, Salad Leaves, Lambs Lettuce, Mizuna, Land Cress, Water Cress, Mustard, Oriental, Rocket, Arugula, Radish, Tomatoes, Elegance, Tumbling Tom