Penthouse Farmville - Starting the Farm

Despite the fact that there are thieves and juvenile delinquents hanging outside my apartment (can't blame them, the view's great with a nice breeze), I remain very determined to cultivate my container garden. In fact, my Christmas present from B1 was a bag of soil, 2 portalucas, 2 pots of zinnias (now dwindled to 2 zinnias), 2 pots and 2 lime plants. My non-fiction reading now includes gardening books. B1 jokes that I am doing a real-life farmville, after I told him my new year's resolution of cultivating a vegetable garden. Perhaps I am very inspired by Onkel H's garden, when I visited him und Tante H last year and saw their grapes and other plants.

The apartment is E-W facing, so there are two places to do my little farmville, namely the long L-shaped area outside my place (which is suspectible to naughty people with thieving hands and thieving birds) and my very tiny balcony. However on top of the aforesaid problems, I have the added complications of extremely high humidity and less than 4 hours sunlight on the L-shape side due to the high wall.

It's a wonder that my interesting in gardening has persisted so long, seeing how fickle and un-green-fingered I am. I am still learning how to look after the plants, and my casualties have dwindled. So far, I have murdered 3 pandan plants, 1 strawberry, 1 lime (technically it was the thieving birds who rob the plant of its leaves), 1 potato plant, and 1 chilli plant.1 beautiful lemon basil was stolen from the L-shape side.

These are the survivors that I am starting with in 2013:

Bought grown from the nursery behind my mother's garden

2 limes (blossom drop!), tomato (now 2, after I cut out the subplant into its own pot, suffered from blossom drop!), chilli (which refuses to flower), edamame (no flower, maybe too young yet), orchid (lost its flowers already, read that I should cut down the branch to 2nd joint, but it seems too late as the branch has browned).

Those I am growing from seeds and cuttings

sunflower, cherry tomato, pandan (from Mutter's cutting), sweet potato leaves (Mutter's cutting from her garden), loads of aloe vera, cactus, spring onions and leeks.

The spring onions and leeks are an experiment based on an article I read from reddit (see Nibblezware Feb 2013's magazine for the link). They seem to be surviving pretty well on water, which I must remember to change if not mosquitoes will come and rape me and B1 in our sleep.

I remember very fondly of the sunflower fields we saw in Germany. I know their national flower is the cornflower, but sunflowers will always remind me of Germany. And missing Füssen, I decided to grow sunflowers from seed. It's been 4 days, and finally 1 of the seedlings decided to germinate. I was very delighted and carried the entire pot into the house to show B1. The insufficient sunlight is posing a significant problem. Sigh.

[updated!!!]
All new posts related to my garten will now be posted at a different kind of PENTHOUSE. The link is also available as "PENTHOUSE" tab.