Finally...

This afternoon, I finally planted our lettuces and spinach. Only the carrots are left, and I still need a deeper pot and soil for those.

For the last while, the weather has been terrible on our poor little balcony garden. Many days, it was too cold to take the planters outside at all, and certainly not overnight. I left them out too long one night, and almost lost them. The chives handled it well and the parsley seems to have recovered, if a bit rough around the leaf edges, but the thyme looks like it's having difficulties, and I will most likely have to replace 3 our of 5 basil. I'm glad I still have a few extras in my starter tray. The rosemary is growing so slowly, it's hard to say how much it was effected, but the tarragon looks to have sprung back nicely.

We're seeing some higher temperatures today - finally getting into the ranges expected for this time of year. I should even be able to leave my planters out all night.

As for my greens, I ended up not getting planters at all. At least not "proper" planters. I was looking to get a couple more planters that fit over the balcony rail, but those are quite narrow and would not have held as much as I wanted to plant. While walking through the store, however, I noticed that some rectangular storage bins were available at about the same depth as the planters (since the planters fit over the rail, most of the space isn't actually that deep). So instead of getting two narrow rail planters for almost $12 each, I got a couple of larger storage bins for under $5 each. I just poked a bunch of holes in the bottoms for drainage, then placed them on their upside down lids to catch any drips.

Each bin was large enough to fit a 30L bag of the special herb and vegetable soil I had. One of them was sown with just a red and green leaf lettuce mix. There should be room to do a successive sowing in 2 weeks or so. The other has half spinach, half romaine lettuce.

The big challenge for these, once they're sprouted, will be keeping them from getting too hot and the soil drying out too quickly. Direct sunlight for as long as we get on our balcony is a bit much for these greens. I should be able to move them around to take advantage of shade as needed, though. We have a low wall on each side of our balcony. One provides some shade in the morning, the other in the evening. If that's not enough, I can slide them under our patio swing.

As for the carrots, I'm not quite sure how to go. I want to plant quite a few, but I don't want to have too large a pot. I'll probably get a couple of smaller deep pots instead of one large one. I also need to keep in mind that our balcony is going to be completely renovated sometime soon. The floor, which is wood, is covered with a waterproof membrane, then a special indoor/outdoor carpet. The previous tenant had hammered so many holes into the floor - something that's not allowed on these balconies since, obviously, they destroy the waterproof membrane - there's a real concern for rot. It feels pretty solid, but there may be patches that will need to be cut out and repaired. The rails themselves are showing signs of rot near the bottoms, and one of the side walls has damaged siding that will need to be repaired somehow.

I'm hoping that they choose something other than black when they replace the indoor/outdoor carpet. The black gets so hot, I had to put on my husband's grandpa slippers (which have a thick rubber sole) because my bare feet were burning.

Which reminds me of something the girls and I saw the other day that was really interesting. A wonderful example of radiative heat. At the end of our street is an historic building of red brick. All along one side is a row of trees. I don't know the name of them, but along with their new leaves, they are growing long sprays of flower buds. With the cold weather we've been having, these clusters of buds are very small and still covered with a green protective "skin" on the outside. Only on the largest buds could a hint of whitish pink petal be seen, and only if you were looking for it.

Except for the ones against the brick wall. Because brick absorbs the sun's heat so well, then radiates that heat out again will into the night, the flower clusters next to the wall are in full, glorious bloom.

A perfect example of how just one thing can create a micro-climate.