Converting oxygen into carbon dioxide: In my English Urban Garden

Urban Gardening...is one of my new favourite hobbies. And as spring is approaching I need to start thinking about this years garden. Last spring I decided to set myself a challenge, this challenge was to create my own garden in the city. The coined term for this now is 'Urban Gardening'.

I am lucky enough to have a balcony so in the spring I decided to get planting. My inspiration for this idea was purely sparked by going into the local 'Tiger' shop (cheap £ shop type thing-Danish style) and seeing the seeds and gardening stuff. Which just made me want to try. Typically being a student this prevented me from buying actual gardening equipment so then I knew I would just have to use what I had around me. This made it a lot more fun, not only was the challenge to turn my not so green fingers green, but also use totally un-garden equipment to do it.

So basically every-time I saw some type of container with a depth, I would collect it. It just so happens there's a lot of random useful crap around. People throw away some truly brilliant stuff.

First things first, what to plant first, how to start... find some soil. I used egg cartons and the boxes you find in supermarkets for grapes and mushrooms to create little greenhouses to start the little seeds lives. I just simply filled the bottom with soil, water slightly and poked a seed in with my fingers. After either a few days or a week these seedling began to grow, I then moved them into more appropriate housing. (bigger pots)

Tip: Painting the bottom parts of see
through containers, prevent the roots
from being burnt

And then just basically watered them when I remembered and spent any free time I had just moving things from pot to pot and coming up with new contraptions to make the most out of my space, whilst still keeping a balcony to be able to enjoy without plants being everywhere. I learnt so much from this experimental experience. I saw seedlings I had planted at the same time grow at different rates due solely to where I placed them. I knew sunlight makes a difference, but I was shocked at just how much.

I would also like to share with you my mutant carrot army, who tasted absolutely amazing, despite spending ages washing the dirt out of their little legs. I grew them in old buckets I found outside a hotel. I know growing vegetables needs space, but this is one thing I did not have so I chucked a bunch of carrot seeds in a bucket loaded with soil and hoped for the best. (tip: don't forget to punch holes at the bottom of any hole-less container so the roots don't rot.)

So what did I end up growing, I can make two lists here: successful and not successful.

Lets start with successful;

Radishes- (You can actually call me radish queen I feel like a radish expert)
Tomatoes
Bell Peppers
Carrots (cute small and mutated army, just how I like them)
Parsley
Variety of Lettuces
Runner Beans
Strawberries
herbs (except basil and rosemary, epic fail)

Not so successful, but its the attempt that counts

Sunflower (not taking responsibiliy for this one)
Lemon cucumbers
Gooseberry tree

As a proud city garden mummy, here's my video of my first pick of the season enjoy and get gardening. (no space is too small, unless you don't even have a window):