Angela Wilcox

Bravo!!

After the word No you have one too many spaces.

Nice graphic!!

Thank you for posting this. During the peak harvest season, if possible, please upload a video of the process?

I use 5-gallon buckets and have to remove them before they get full because I can’t lift the weight of a full bucket.

In order to use the wider seat you prefer, a kitty litter or other bucket that has a corresponding lid would be fine. You could switch it out before it gets full if weight is an issue.

My bucket sits on the floor and when it comes up through the wood and everything is closed, some of the wood makes a collar around the bucket so that the bucket is now flush with or a little above the top of the wooden deck

One note: whatever toilet seat you use, be sure to run a gasket on the bottom side of the toilet seat where it meets the wood and the bucket below to keep out flies. It is important to have that seal to deter flies. Ask me how I know🙄

The added photo was taken before I added the gasket onto the bottom of the toilet seat.

Depending on your location, you might not get as many pollinators and may opt to choose self pollinating varieties or do hand pollination.

If you are not allergic to bees, and a wasp nest is built in the corner on the ceiling of your balcony, you could choose to leave it alone for the pollinating effects.

You might consider vertical gardening to maximize space. I gifted my mother a GreenStalk garden tower for Mother’s Day in 2022 to place on her balcony. The first photo is the day we planted. The second photo is 1 month later. The third photo is 2 months later. We had so much fun with so many plants growing in a compact space.  

Mom gives each new visitor to her duplex a tour of her ‘garden’ and always gets a laugh and oohs and aahs. She changes out many of the annuals each year, however petunias self seeded, mums wintered over and came back as wells as a variety of sedum.

During storms and early frosts, she rolls the tower back under the ceiling. She even has a frost cover and shade cloth that fits it just in case.

Stick-In-The-Mud

It is both a noun and an action verb phrase😉

What kind of vine did you plant?

Keen!

Fantastic set of resources! Learning more about Pawpaws is high on my list, because I have planted several trees and they are slooooow growing.

Nancy, I’m so happy to hear your blueberries have set fruit!  Yay!!

The beds are 4’x8’. I planted a tall blueberry variety on the north end of the beds and a different, shorter variety on the south end. I did not write down the names, silly me, but they are suited for this climate. The beds are south facing. The pond is south of the beds.

I put 4 comfrey nubs, and I mean tiny nubs in the middle of the beds between the blueberries. This acts as my comfrey nursery. I snip off leaves for mulch and activator for my compost.

Bumblebees love the comfrey!

If I left the comfrey alone, it would indeed shade out the blueberries and even encroach on their branches, however, I whack on the comfrey multiple times during the year, both leaves and roots.

When I plant a new fruit tree, I expose some of the comfrey roots in my ‘comfrey nursery’, cut some off, and plant 3 to 4 nubs around my tree. The comfrey leaves always fall over in a sad way upon transplanting, but they have never failed to come back. I now have over 30 comfrey plants on site.

In the newly attached photo, notice the cattle panels? I have grown pole beans on these, which offer a little shade in the hot summer.

So far, the birds have not discovered the blueberries, though they do perch on the cattle panels and leave a nice little phosphorus offering.

If the birds start to compete for the berries, I can put shade cloth over the cattle panels if needed.