The Obama's White House Garden

I love this: Michelle Obama wants to promote eating local, healthy produce and even growing some yourself. And especially in the middle of a recession it's important to find ways to save money while eating healthy. It doesn't cost a lot to start a garden. My balcony garden will cost more than if I had a yard to dig into - the price of pots and potting soil really adds up. Still, it's a worthwhile investment and I'm sure I'll get much more out of it than I put in.

I wonder if this effort will spawn the kind of response that Eleanor Roosevelt's victory garden did during WWII.

I'm just warming up

It's forecasted for the temperature to get up to at least 50° all this week! It was 70° yesterday! Huzzah! I opened every window in the apartment and let the wind blow everything around all afternoon. It felt so good to let that fresh air in.

Maybe the most pleasant part was the birds singing! There's a small creek and greenway about 50 feet away that attracts some semi-urban wildlife; one of the neighbors maintains a bunch of birdfeeders and a birdbath that gets a lot of visitors; and the robins just got back in town. I don't think I've seen so many damn robins in my life. They're on every patch of lawn they can find!

Now if only those evil flocks of crows would go away. Seriously, this town would have been a perfect filming location for Hitchcock's The Birds. So creepy.

Anyway - back to the beautiful weather. I celebrated by planting half a tray of Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce. I'm going to sow them in batches so I can have manageable sized crops. I also planted a few iris bulbs I kept in the fridge over the winter. I thought about putting them out earlier, but I was too afraid they'd be killed by the intense cold/exposure. I thought now would be a good time since I saw some daffodils starting to push up. So hopefully they'll survive. I had my drill out for another project, so I went ahead and drilled drainage holes in the white tub.


My hubby is on spring break this week. I'm really hoping he'll help me build and seal the planter boxes.

Indoor projects and a bit of planning

I don't have a lot to report, I promise I'll post more when the weather warms up and I actually have things to write about.

But I've been keeping busy - I started saving larger steel cans and I painted them with Rustoleum, poked a few holes in the bottom and put on a layer of poly - voila! plant pots!
I also whipped up an apron last night from scrap fabric from my Halloween costume and left over ribbon from my wedding a couple years ago. Not perfect, but not bad for not having a pattern. At least I won't have any more spaghetti sauce splatters on my shirts. (Try saying that 5 times fast. lol)

I finally got around to taking a few 'before' pictures of my balcony.
You can just see the lemon verbena I kept inside this winter, and the dormant sage sitting outside. The white dish pans are for lettuce.

The curtains (a necessary indulgence to keep out the summer heat - and they're so pretty) didn't allow me to get a good wide shot. So, I had to venture outside - not bad, it got up to 50 degrees today!


I figured out that the last frost date is May 12 (about 2 weeks later than where I grew up. Boo.) So I'll be starting the Stevia and Scallions inside around April 1. At the same time I'll plant the peas, borage and cilantro outside. Everything else either gets direct seeded after danger of frost, or I'm buying plants to save myself the trouble.

And I'm still agonizing over how to do the railing planters!