Yet another plant issue.

My Moses in a cradle (Rhoeo spathacea or Tradescantia spathacea) was getting quite leggy because I had kept it in a room with very, very little light. I ended up moving it to a much bright room, but the damage was already done and it looks quite sad now.

Now I have a couple of options, I can either dump the poor soul and start over with some other plant, or I could try to get it back into some decent condition which would require pinching and replanting the tips of the leggy bits. I think I’ll try to save it first before giving up all together.

The new outdoor dining set has arrived and it looks rather fabulous. I haven’t taken any photos yet as it’s been raining today, but when the sun comes out again I’ll bring out the camera. It’s taking up quite a bit of room on the balcony, just something to get use to since the balcony is usually rather empty therefore rather roomy.

None of the seeds have germinated yet, but then again, it’s only been 3 days

Now that I’m back for a little while, I can do a little planning on what to do next in my garden.

First thing would be to re-pot the Asiatic lilies so they’re clumped together in one pot. I managed to secure one more plant just before I left, so I have 3 lilies now. I wanted to plant the Asiatic lilies with perennial candytuft, so I’ll need to germinate a few seeds of those as well.

I also want to get a compact garden shed to store spare pots, tools, potting mix and all the other gardening bits and pieces. There were 2 different ones I was interested in, one was a Keter Compact Shed and the other is a Spanbilt Storage Cabinet with doors. You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to find compact garden sheds for a balcony! I was ideally looking for a 100 x 60 x 180 cm shed, and these two are the closest thing to it. I have no clue where to buy the Keter Compact Shed, but I found that Bunnings hve the Spanbilt shed, so I may just go for that.

The outdoor dining set I bought on eBay.com.au didn’t arrive before I left. I still have to organise for delivery of the table and chairs. It’s such a neat little set; it’s wicker and there are 4 chairs and 4 stools (8 seating places) that tucks neatly into each other and under the table so it forms a sort of cube. Pictures will be coming soon.

I’m probably going overboard, but I bought more plants for the office. The old lot of plants are looking severely sad, and I mean S-A-D, the only plant that didn’t look like it was going die was the bamboo palm.

The old plants consisted of a corn plant and dracaena marginata donated by my mum, she’s not going to pleased to know that they’re both suffering. We also have a yucca just clinging onto life. It suffered from a really bad infestation of some sort of mites. The leaves were covered with white, weird smelling, powdery stuff and I just couldn’t get it cleaned up in time. It’s such a sad looking plant, I’m considering putting it out of its misery.

So anyway, since the old plants weren’t doing so well, I thought I’d spruce up the office with some new plants that are harder for me to kill. I bought a mother in law’s tongue/snake plant, a peace lily and 2 more bamboo palms. They look rather attractive clumped together.

With a little more knowledge under my sleeve, I choose these plants because they do well in low to moderate light conditions. The only one I have to watch out for is the snake plant, it might suffer from my over-zealous watering.

Which brings me to mention my new device! I got a water/pH/light/all in one meter! I couldn’t believe it, for under $20 from Waldecks I got this fantastic little tool, and it’s so easy to use!

Oh, and I also got a little froggie ornament. He sits on the edge of the peace lily pot.

Wow, despite the huge amounts of rain in the past 24 hours and the crazy wind we’re getting here, the new gardenia has already given me a pretty flower. It started opening up yesterday and this morning it was pretty much in full bloom.

Here are some photos of the little darling.

I’m so surprised at the quality of photos that my point-and-shoot camera can produce! It’s a Canon Ixus 70 with 7.1 megapixels and the usual goodies that decent point-and-shoot cameras have. The macro function is actually quite good, compared to the unusable Sony DSC that we had for 6+ years. Amazing how technology advances so quickly.

The last photo is really pretty when cropped close up. You can really see the detail and texture of the petals. I think I might print it out one day, the quality of the image is definitely good enough to print a 6×4 inch photo at 180 dpi.

There’s quite a few more buds that look like they’re going to pop open in the next day or two. Fingers crossed that they do!

When we first moved into our little place, we got a gardener in to plant some gardenias on our balcony. The gardenias flowered exactly once before neglect over their second summer killed them. The soil was in such bad condition that even weeds couldn’t grow!

So I had to remove all the old soil, put in new soil, but some new gardenias and plant them. Sounds easy enough, but it took me about 2 months to complete!

The containers that held the gardenias are probably about 70 L, they’re massive! It took me three loads of soil for each planter, and I had three of them, to empty out the soil. Eventually, the soil removal took 3 weeks, but then the planters sat empty for another few weeks because I got distracted.

So last weekend I went to the garden nursery, mostly for a bit of a browse, then I saw that they had gardenias for sale at half price. So many varieties, which one to pick? I was initially going to go for the Four Seasons variety, but then the photo on the label didn’t look as appealing. I ended up settling for a variety called “Ocean Pearl”, which I later learned is an old variety of gardenia re-released under a new name (previously known as “Veitchii”).

I bought six Ocean Pearl gardenias, two for each planter. There were 3 per planter with the previous lot of gardenias that I killed, but I always thought they looked a little cramped. So, 6 pots of gardenias, 6 x 30 L potting mix, some perlite, fertiliser for acid loving plants and one Saturday afternoon later, I can say I have gardenias. Take a look:

Note the flower in the middle planter? She smells devine! If I’m [extraordinarily] lucky, the other buds may open up for me in a couple more days. Mind you, it’s raining something terrible in Perth right now, so I don’t really expect the flowers to open, but you never know.

I bought some Lavender seeds from Bunnings. It’s just some generic Mr. Fothergill’s seeds, nothing too special. I thought since I was going for a rather fragrant collection of flowers for my garden, that a dwarf lavender would be a nice addition. Only problem is that I have no idea where I’m going to put them!

Anyway, it’s the Munstead variety, also called English Dwarf. I thought they would look very nice in the 3 terracotta (yes, I know, sinful terracotta, but they’re so pretty!) pots I have. 2 of the pots are being used to grow cherry tomatoes (now that’s super sinful), but I expect them to finish fruiting, if they ever fruit that is, I kinda planted them in the wrong season since I was so eager to try to grow them. Anyway, after the tomatoes finish fruiting I’ll be throwing them out and planting the lavender seedlings in their pots. I think the purplish blue flowers would look quite nice against the orange red of the terracotta.

So anyway, I successfully germinated some of the lavender seeds. I’ve got 5 seedlings right now, but I’m afraid one of them might be dying on me already.

Here are a couple of photos.

Thanks for visiting Balcony Flowers. I haven’t quite got everything up and running yet, so please bear with me as I build up this site.

I’ve just discovered the joys of gardening, but I only have a balcony, so everything I grow, or try to grow, are in containers. Since I’m new to gardening, all the care information for each plant I’m trying to raise kinda gets a mushed up in my brain, so I thought I’d start a web site to gather information about how to care for my plants.

In addition, I intend to keep a blog, or an online journal, about my gardening successes and mishaps. There’s probably going to be more mishaps than successes since I’m so don’t have a green thumb!

So for now, you can bookmark this page and come back later when there’s a little bit more stuff to read on here.

Happy gardening!