Category: Gardening

My salad garden on the balcony is coming along nicely.  I’ve had two more decent sized salads and today managed salad for two!  The baby romaine, spinach, pak choy and  red leaf lettuce plants came from the west HyVee here in town.  It’s been a little tricky to keep them adequately watered as my balcony gets a lot of late day sun with it’s south westerly exposure, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.  One nice thing about the plants being in a planter is that if it gets very hot and windy, I can just pull the box inside into the air conditioning for a while!

Here is  a Polish inspired salad I made with beets, sauerkraut, salami and my lettuce.

For today’s lunch, I sauteed some sugar snap peas ( I wonder if I could grow them on the balcony??) and added them to the greens which made for a slightly warm salad….dressed it with olive oil and a splash of soy sauce, sprinkled with toasted Chinese noodles and served with chicken breast.  Not bad!

You’ll probably be reading a lot about my little balcony garden this year…hope my passion for plants doesn’t bore you to death! My little lettuce garden is recovering nicely from the deluge. Steven’s letting me use his rotary tool for a while, and I got busy and drilled many many drainage holes in the lettuce box. No more drowned bok choy! I had my first harvests last week: a few (like three or four) leaves to add to a store ingredients salad, just to get my taste buds going, and then….mounds of fresh greens on an Omaha steaks hamburger! And I mean fresh….like picked at 4:30 PM and consumed at 4:45 PM. I just rinsed them off, wrapped them in a paper towel and let them chill in the frig to crisp up a few minutes…and voila!

 

 

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Living in an apartment doesn’t necessarily prevent you from dabbling in gardening.  At least this year, I am going to try some dabbling!  I found these lettuce plants at the West Ames HyVee, got them tucked nicely into a window box and set them out on the balcony.  “I’m a smart horticulturist, I know how to water plants….I don’t need to punch out the drainage holes in my window box…don’t want to have soil leakages, etc” I thought smugly to myself.  Well…..one day later….April rains proved me wrong.  Did I forget that balconies get rained on?  Duh…Gotta rescue my poor babies from drowning.  I’ll let you know if they survive and make it into salad and sandwiches!