My little garden in Japan July 2011

Sunny July was a good month for the plants, most of them grew a lot. Here is how my little garden in Japan made it through the month.

My little balcony garden has done well this summer

Summer flowers are in full bloom, the petunias, geraniums, marigolds, amaranth globe and others are doing amazing. Even the calla lily and the osteospermum give out a couple of unexpected flowers.

Summer flowers are in full bloom

The tomatoes gave a great harvest all month long, but sadly a heat wave got to them at the end of the month and almost kill them all. Now they are recovering slowly. Hopefully I will be able to get a couple more crops out of them before the season ends.

The grape has grown very well. It really has loved the sunny days. It already formed a whole circle around the poles like it was intended. Everything is going according to the plan. I am expecting a lot of great fruit bearings for next year.

The grape has grown a lot and it's getting ready for next season

The pumpkin finally started to give out some female flowers, unfortunately none of them has kept yet. I guess the plant is still not strong enough. Maybe in august we will have some, but the time is running out.

Hopefully some of the pumpkin flowers will set before the season ends

The blueberries started to become plump. I picked a couple, but they were not ready, so I will let them be another week
or so.

A lot of growth in the strawberries. I think next year will definitely be much better than this.

Summer at the balcony

So far most of the balcony garden is doing well. Summer has made most of the plants grow very well but the heat has taken a bit of its toll too, still not enough to worry. I am wishing august will be as good.

Slugs in my garden

A very weird thing happened, just the other day, while I was watering the tomatoes, I discovered one of the flowerboxes has slugs. They were just a few small ones, but there they are.

Small slugs in my garden

The slugs are really tiny, and even a bit cute, I can't help to feel guilty for wanting to get rid of them. They spend most of the time strolling around the planter and not doing much.

They haven't done any damage yet

They are eating the alyssum's old dead branches, but other than that they don't seem to be doing much damage. For now I will toss away the ones I get to catch, but no heavy arms just yet. Although, I will keep an eye on them, because I would hate if they become a plague and they ruin the crops.

No idea how they got there

I really wonder how do they manage to get there, I haven't gotten any new plants for that pot or anything. Maybe one managed to climb all the way there on one of the rainy days last month, but I am not sure. I guess nature always find a way.

How to Harvest dill seeds

The dill in my garden is all gone. In late spring it started to flower a lot and it lost all of its leaves, then it dried and now is just a long stalk in the balcony. To not let it go in vain I picked up all the dead flower heads and tried to harvest the seeds. I got a bunch, enough to plant a new batch and a bit more.

The dill ready to be harvested

The way I learned to harvest the seeds is very simple.

• First, you need to wait until the flower heads get a bit dry while they are still on the plant. Just enough to see them mostly brown, but not as much that the seeds will start to fall.
  
  
• When they are ready snip off the complete flower branch and get them inside a paper bag heads first.

Just get it inside a paper bag to let it dry

• Let them be there a week or two until they finish drying and the seeds detach and fall into the paper bag. In case there are still some stubborn ones just give the bag a good shake.
  
  
• Afterwards just take away the spent flower heads from the paper bag and all you have left is the seeds

And that is all, enjoy your dill seeds.

Dill seeds ready for next season

I am not sure if I should grow dill again because, to be honest, I underused it a lot. In all the months that I had it growing in my garden, I think I only used it three or four times. The space on my balcony is very limited, and a the full grown dill was very big, almost my height. So, maybe I should put something different in that pot. But then, growing again might be a good encouragement to start using it more.

I don't know, I guess I will put a couple seeds in a starting pot and let mother nature, if they grow or not.