Garden update!

I've had some good luck in the garden and some bad luck, let's start with the bad stuff first and then I'll show you the pictures of the good stuff!

First of all, I haven't made the garden bed out of the pallet yet. I got started with it, but I just can't bring myself to finish it. I am procrastinating like crazy on it, even though I know it should be easy.
Second of all, I planted some rapini seeds (broccoli rape, 'raapstelen' in Dutch), and although the seeds sprouted well enough, after that they withered and died quite quickly. I read just now that they should be kept relatively dry, so I think that's where I went wrong. I still have some more seeds, maybe I'll try again soon.
Third of all, I have snail damage on my strawberry plant. They completely ate some leaves, but it hasn't been getting worse, so I guess they left again. Or something, I don't know. Maybe the damage will show up on the picture, we'll see later.
And lastly, there was a hail storm here two weeks ago, and I had some hail damage on my plants. I didn't know what it was at first and I was afraid it was something bad, but I showed it to some organic farmers working on the garden at the school where I work and they said it was fine, just some hail damage. So that was a relieve!

And now on to the pictures! I made some changes to my terrace, I got some fencing because I wanted to protect my plants from the elements, the fencing provides at least a little bit of shade and some protection from the wind. And also it keeps me from seeing my horrible neighbor every time I sit outside. He literally threatened to kill my dog if I keep him off the leash one more time, even though my dog doesn't harm anyone or anything. The bad side of living on a shared terrace, I guess. There's always someone that you don't get along with. (But god, I hate that guy.)
Anyway! Here are some pictures of my garden, first you'll see the flowers for the bees that are really starting to grow, the bees are all over my lavender plants right now, and once these flowers start to bloom they'll have even more reason to visit my garden!

The next pictures are of my Indian cress and of the chives that are in bloom. I didn't know chives got these pretty purple flowers! 

And here's some pictures of my tomato plants, the one in the orange pot are cherry tomatoes, in the white pot I put roma tomatoes. It's fun to me to see how different in shape the two plants are becoming! The cherry tomato is getting much higher, while the roma tomato is growing a little wider, not even reaching the top of the bamboo stick I put next to it.

 And lastly, my strawberries! They're really doing well. My terrace gets a lot of sunlight and the temperature there is always some degrees higher than the actual temperature. In the summer it gets really hot, but for now the strawberries are loving it! Some of them are already turning red, I bet if the weather keeps up I can harvest some next week or the week after. The first (actual!) fruit of my labor, I'm so excited! These pictures are actually two days old, and already they have more color than on these pictures. It's great!

How is your garden doing?

Getting started

This is basically going to be a big photodump of my progress so far.

Two weeks ago I started with buying some basic necessities and some strawberry plants. They looked like this, then:

Still inside because of the cold.

They were doing very well in my bathroom window sill, where I never have the heating on so it wasn't too warm for them. I don't want them to get too used to warm temperatures here in Holland! This afternoon I put them outside, because the weather is getting nicer, finally.

Outside in the sun!

They have grown quite a bit! And they have a lot more flowers than before. I'm so proud of my babies! I put two plants in a crate that used to have beer in it.

More strawberry plants. Look at the flowers!

Last week I also put some seeds in containers, some for tea herbs and some for flowers that bees are attracted to, like corn daisies, phacelia, Indian cress, mallow and limnanthes aka poached egg plant. Last week they looked like this: 

Seeds in their container

A week has gone by, and now they look like this: 

I think this is mallow.

And like this:

Poached egg plant

I was so proud of myself for figuring out the phacelia is a plant that only sprouts in the dark (you can see it in the corner of the mallow pic and behind the poached egg plant). I put a lid on the container and it's doing really well right now! The Indian cress took the longest to sprout, but it's slowly coming. Now I'm worried about how I'm going to get them in their own pots when they're big enough, some of them don't like being moved. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there. 

And lastly, I went out today and bought some flowers to brighten up the terrace. It looks so nice now:

With my dog Cash (after Johnny, of course) in the middle picture, and our jungle cat Sam in the first one. I love all my terrible pots, like the one with the donkey and the tea pot that I put my chives in. I always look for the weird ones, I love that I have this assorted mix of pots. The donkey one has special meaning to me because I used to be a volunteer at a donkey sanctuary, but now this is the only donkey I take care of.

As long as my vegetables can't go outside yet, I think my terrace looks pretty good with just all these flowers!