My balcony garden 2012 - a review

No, this isn't the whole harvest. It wasn't that bad.

Summer 2012 here in Finland was not a good year for the balcony garden - cold and rainy weather with little sun meant sad plants. It's no wonder then that the harvest was also pretty sad this year.

It wasn't all tears and gnashing of teeth, though. I found a few cool new plant acquaintances which will definitely return another summer. As I prefer to look on the bright side of things, I thought I'd look at some of the gardening highlights of the year instead of crying over all the wasted seeds I planted.

I went with pinks, reds and whites as the main colours this summer, with a few spots of bright blue providing contrast.

The seating corner looked much as it has previous years, with the vine and hosta doing quite well in the big planter, and with a gorgeous dahlia providing colour on the little table.

The dahlia was an irresistible shade of bright pink, with darker pink edges on the petals, and it kept on flowering long into September. Oh dahlias, you never let me down, no matter what the weather brings.

 

The other decoration on the table was a basket planted with a couple of perennial succulents. Getting these two was one of the best decisions I've made for the balcony, for they are perfect for its normal conditions; hot and sunny. They did very well, filling up the whole basket over the course of the summer. I hope they'll survive the winter!

The main flower box was planted with white and blue lobelias, red petunias and a pink-and-red new acquaintance, which Wikipedia tells me is called "Sweet William" in English. It also did very well, as did the petunias. Unfortunately the lobelias didn't last more than a month; victims of the crappy weather, I suppose.

The notables of the other corner, shown in the photo below, were the red tobacco plant (always a good choice, it seems) and a pretty silver plant whose name I can't remember. There was also a mini rose planted with them, but the rose didn't like the poor weather at all and gave up pretty quickly.

On the right, with yellow flowers and huge leaves, grew a cucumber plant which produced the most awesome cucumbers ever. Seriously, I have NEVER eaten cucumbers as good as these. Ever. Definitely one to plant another year!

So there you have it, the highlights of my balcony gardening summer of 2012! If you've read this far, well done. I guess you really like plants!