The weather has been promising enough, and the sight of tulip, narcissus and crocus tips and forsythia buds have bitten me, and I have put aside my winter obsession, and it's time to focus on the good-weather obsession :-)

I am still (!) doing some winter sowing, and a bit of clean-up out on the balcony, and when it's time to sit down and rest, I want to come here and talk about our balcony stuff! :-)>

I did invest in a minigreenhouse last fall, and bought some perennials (which I hadn't done much of before; I am too much into instant gratification), and I am excited to see a bit of green in some of those pots!

What's going on at your place?

I'm still in the 'one size fits all' mode. I'm too lazy and life is too complicated :-)>

I'm going crazy right now because I can't even remember what I definitively decided was going in those window boxes that burned things to a crisp last July.

I am a newbie here, just starting to attempt a patio garden on my back deck. I am in rural Ontario, Canada, and the deck area is very shaded. It will be challenging to try and get just the right kinds of plants, I think. I am not a very good gardener. I am a retired dairy farmer(into a second career) and was great with animals, but not always good with plants. I will appreciate any help that you can give me. I have a vision in my mind's eye about an "oasis" where I can have the privacy from the main street that I would like. Not that it is a teeming city. Only 4400, but after farm living, it seems busy to me. I want to put up some hanging plants, and lots of pots. I want to find a good picture of a patio full of potted plants to paste on the fridge to inspire me. I shall enjoy your ideas and input. My season will start later...after May long weekend to be frost free.

Make sure you use potting mix in your baskets/containers, not regular garden soil, which is too heavy for containers and doesn't drain well. A visit to the Container Gardening Forum might be worth your while.

I don't have much shade on my patio, so I can't help you much there. I have the standard impatiens/fuchsia/bleeding heart/ coleus, etc.. in my one shady area.

As for more help, well, you need to decide what you want to grow (you might try googling plants for shade), and then come ask questions :-)

As for pictures for inspiration, well .... you asked for it! :-) Follow the link below, though I notice lots of the pics that were there last summer aren't available anymore. Still, it will give you some good ideas.

Now I'm just waiting until the city farmer's market's start filling up with herb plants and seedling flats, and it's time to fill up the boxes again!

And then at some point when it gets up to the 60s during the day (probably sometime in August at this rate), I'll bring out the brugmansia cuttings and the family will actually be able to walk around the house again.

Ahhhh, spring!

Jim

Speaking of windowboxes/boxes, I have a question. Last summer I decided it was really time for me to think in terms of perennials, instead of just splurging on annuals all the time. But now that it's almost time for preparation of the soil, I'm looking at the boxes I put some perennials in and wondering what to do. I am accustomed to thoroughly cultivating my boxes, taking off the top 1/3 and adding compost, manure, and other amendments. But I can't do that without disturbing the perennials I can't even see yet. So do y'all limit your boxes to annuals, and do perennials in their own individual containers?

Meg and Jim, I visited NYC last May for the first time since 1972. I grew up in Cranford, NJ and used to visit the city with my family as a kid. I went in '72 as a young adult and was scared to death. I was SO glad that my fella took me down to Manhattan last May. I fell truly in love with the city. Would go back in a heartbeat. Spend four wonderful days there. You are lucky to have made this city your home.

Thanks for the pix, Meg -- you've reminded me I have to find somewhere to put in some astilbe. Maybe downstairs at the building's entryway...

In a 4x4-ft. space (counting the overhang from my railing) i'm planning far too many plants, probably. It's also half-sun, half-shade, as it's a southern exposure with the bottom half of the balcony walled in.

I have one shade plant -- a small pot of coleus from the seeds my upstairs neighbor's plants dropped in my window boxes last year.

Sort of at a loss as to what to plant at all my other plants' feet -- I find a lot of bulb plants that are supposed to be good for shade, but I don't want to have to overwinter more than a few pots, which are already spoken for, for the most part.

Anybody know what i can expect, colorwise, from kentucky pole bean blossoms? It's going to be huge, I'm sure, but every other seed packet I found was for bush beans...

Thanks!
Dee

A few threads down, you can see pictures of my porch about a month or so ago. *nothing* on it!

Now I have a lilac bush (it did look like 3 twigs sticking out of the ground, but is now sprouting leaves), a rose bush (the first leaves finally showed up yesterday! yay!), a lavender bush, strawberry plants that belong to my 9 year old son (just recently got their first 2 flowers, and boy is he excited!), tulips, dafodils, and hyacynth all in flower, and a chocolate mint plant.

I planted some of my gladolia bulbs weekend before last. (I need to remember to plant more this weekend!) I also have several cherry tomato and bell pepper seedlings inside. Thy are all growing nicely and should be ready to put outside in a few weeks.

My husband and grandmother think I'm crazy lol :) Although, even though my husband thinks I'm crazy, he's glad I'm doing this. He says I seem a lot happier, and that I seem to be sleeping better. *shrug* Therapy through gardening?

Hopefully I'll remember to take some pictures this weekend.

My spring fever was 'cured' by the snow/sleet storm that hit us yesterday with wind chill of sub 32 :-(

I feel with you Daphnel, we have enough snow left in Ottawa, too. I have overwintered bulbs in the fridge, and now daffodils and tulips are blooming indoors.
Have a colourful spring, dear fellow green thumbs!

I'm having a ball, looking for places to buy cheap containers to plant some of these seedlings, once they're up, any suggestions?

Happy Spring!

My last year's weigela and lilac are budding out; the baby forsythia and daphne survived the winter; two of three clematis are putting on the green (the third year jackmanii is growing like mad). The pot of scallions is putting on new growth; the one lone daylily fan is doing OK - hope the birds leave it alone this year.

I've got a lot of seed sprouting and expect to see many more sprouts in the coming days. Indoors, the brug and fig have been leafing out for a while; I expect they will lose all that when I finally get them outside, but they are alive!

And best of all, after three years of trying, I have got tulips and daffodils coming up!!!

Still have other stuff that I'll have to wait and see if they have survived the winter (hardy hibiscus, callicarpa, etc.), but all in all, I am one happy camper!

PV

And best of all

Since I had my very first hummingbird visit last August, I have gone into full hummer overdrive with respect to plants I wanted to grow this year. This means having to do some rearranging out there to fit it all... But then that has always been par for the course for balcony gardeners. LOL

Anyway, am back in the gardening mode. My lilacs' buds have swollen open and should start to leaf out in the next week or so amazingly enough (and I hope we have no more frosts because it's a nuisance covering the buds when they do that), I have LOVs, asiatic lilies, tiger lily babies, daylilies, peonies, and my hosta all peeping up. One honeysuckle is leafing out nicely and the blueberry buds are swelling. A new little pussy willow that I planted last year is opening up its catkins. The figs look like they are still alive (have to repot both) and I'll have to see how the evergreens fared with their burlap screen and Wilt Pruf (all but the leucothoe, which is older, look pretty ragged). The 2 weigelas are still asleep, although both definitely have buds. The dappled willow, I cut all the way back at the end of February (when I cut back my clematis) and that is still asleep, as is my beautyberry and my pee gee hydrangea. The ferns and dicentra are still asleep too (hope the dicentra didn't get rotted or something, as it should be waking up around now IIRC).

Still.. I'm glad to see the sun!

First time this year it actually feels like spring. I wish I could be out on my balcony and not at work.

I spent the last couple weekends clearing out about 1/2 of the old dirt from my containers and adding fresh, and getting rid of my deck detris. So now I have nice pots all filled with soil. My perennials - daylilies, shasta daisy and clematis, show signs of life. My fig I brought in before the winter got too cold Months ago, and never put it back, so of course it is all leafed out with figs on it.

Got some cherry tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes (some italian sort), and eggplant seedlings started inside.

Otherwise, I'm going to do the stuff that worked for me last year - zinnia, cosmos, sunflowers (which were a huge hit with guests to my balcony - don't see that everyday in NYC), morning glories and moonflowers. And of course leave a couple pots open for things that jump into my cart on any expeditions to the nurseries.

BUT ... I have sprouts from some of my winter sowing (which I only started on 3/13)! I'm pretty excited about that, because I kind of doubted that I would be successful with that, but it WORKS :-) Good thing, too, because I haven't started my indoor sowing yet.

My forsythia is starting to POP. Tulips are pushing up, but the daffs and crocuses seem to have poked up a tiny head and not liked something, cause they are just sitting there.

Can't wait to put out the many coleus cuttings I took, cause I need a COLOR fix :-)

Spring has sprung in Brooklyn; I'm on my own personal Magnolia Watch -- as soon as the buds start opening on the neighborhood trees, it's off to the Botanic Garden for a serious flower fix.

Pretty much everything survived this winter; though I've hardly got any flowers on my quince this year (I plan on bonsai-ing it anyway), the honeysuckle's leafing out, the buds are fattening on the fothergilla -- one of my favorite spring shrubs -- and I need to get another blueberry before mine flowers if I hope for more than one or two berries this year.

Budget constraints (read: overspending on orchids) will keep me mostly doing seeds this year: nasturtiums, night phlox, moonflowers, cardinal flowers, etc.

The big show will be the brug cuttings I got last fall, which are all sitting outside ready to sprout up. Can't wait for the blossoms . . .

Jim

Jim

Brugs are tougher than we think -- the hardest part is probably keeping small plants with small, young roots alive during the winter.

Jim

We've a member here, Gordon, who grows beautiful brugs in pots on his rooftop garden. Gorgeous, gorgeous!

If you want to see what one looks like, I grew one last year from a 6" cutting, and it actually flowered! Right now, it's sitting in my living room, beginning to leaf out. Have to start acclimating it to the outside soon ........

Here it it last year - it got to be about 3½ feet tall:

and here's a closeup of the flower:

Gordon's are waaaaaaaaay nicer!

There's also a brugmansia forum here at GW you can check out ....

PV