Our Snacking Garden – 1 Month Later!

A couple weeks ago Apartment Therapy wrote about our snacking garden (thank you Apartment Therapy!) and ever since then I’ve been getting emails from people asking for garden updates. :) I’m happy to report that our garden is thriving! Remember those tomato seedlings? As you can see in the photo above, they’re not so little anymore. In fact, our sun gold tomato plant is almost taller than me (I’m 5’4). We also have more than two dozen strawberries coming in and the beginnings of several cucumbers. Exciting!

Since the plants are doing so well I had to rearrange things a bit. The stacking planter I had our thyme, oregano and parsley in had to be unstacked so the plants could continue shooting upwards. We then used the extra room to plant lettuce seeds (below) and even planted the dill and scallions we harvested at our farm share. No sense in letting healthy plants wither away right?

Lettuce seedlings sharing an unstacked container with oregano.

Sugar pea seedlings behind the pansies and carrots. I put extra tomato stakes in this planter so the snap pea vines can climb up them.

The munchkin is especially excited about the strawberries and tomatoes that are coming in. It’s all I can do to prevent him from plucking them off the plants and popping them into his mouth before they’re ripe. But I think all this waiting is good. It teaches him that patience can yield rich rewards.

On the other side of the sun gold tomato plant our salad corner is doing well too. Thanks to the tomato plants and the way our balcony is set up this corner gets a bit of shade, making it the perfect spot for lettuce leaves that will wilt with too much direct sunlight.

Jack-Be-Little Pumpkins are coming in too. These will be ready for harvest in late September.

I’ve added a few more “toddler touches” to the garden as well. The munchkin already has the Safari Dinos Toob for his mud box and I added a farm animals to the outdoor collection. He actually hasn’t seen these yet. They came last night and I made little farm scenes in the planters this morning while the munchkin is out with his dad. I can’t wait for him to discover them this afternoon when we go outside to water the plants together.

Last but not least, our lavender plant is blossoming. The munchkin enjoys smelling the flowers but I’m probably a bit more excited about this one than he is. I love stepping out onto our balcony and smelling the scent of lavender and happy plants around me. We may not have a yard of our own, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the beauty of a garden right outside our door.