Happy Tomatoes!

One day lovely, next not so much. We had some summer, we had some autumn, spring and just about everything else other than the snow. Since the initial posts the balcony garden is taking shape and starting to look more like the terrace of my dreams. But not quite without work.

First we needed dirt and pots and window-boxes. To solve the problem of expensive pots, I found an ingenious idea in the 'IKEA Hackers' site. Under the 'outdoors' label there are multiple bright ideas how to adapt inexpensive IKEA items. However I needed a pot for two tomato plants - deep enough for their roots. Hallo FNISS - at €1,99, what a bargain (for a 14 L tub). Here is the original article - FNISS-waste basket as deep root planter.
In order to make FNISS into a planter, we had to drill a few drainage holes and add an overspill tray.
The two tomato plants we have are cherry tomatoes: Freiland - 'Cherrytomate', 'Philovita'F1. We planted them on the 21st of April, when it was getting warmer. However we still had some cold night and several evenings we had to bring the plants indoors!
We bought a special tomato soil and at the bottom of the tubs poured about 5-8cm worth of small rocks for drainage.


In the third FNISS I have planted a lovely bright red Gerbera and a Rosemary plant, which originated from supermarket veg aisle, but has survived and now enjoys a longer life. Here are a couple of pics from 20th of May - one month later.



And a week later... The plants are growing like small trees now and I have bought some bamboo stakes to provide some support.


It's June now: Gerbera gained five more flowers and tomato flowering has finished and I think I can see first green mini-tomatoes. Very exciting! Now just need to try not to kill the plants before we can enjoy the amazing taste of the home-grown tomatoes!