Balcony Gardening - Week 1

I know this past week or so has been a bit intense in terms of gardening updates, but from now on I will be limiting them to a maximum of one a week (on exciting weeks, less when there's nothing exciting). So if you're not interested in the gardening please bear with me! (And for those of you that are, I will still be posting periodic updates).

Week 1 of my balcony garden has definitely been exciting, and only partly because it's all still quite new. We have had some seriously strong winds the last few days, particularly Wednesday night, with gusts of up to 100kph (according to the good old BOM). I was very worried for my plans on Wednesday and moved them from their spot near the edge of the balcony as far in to the building as I could, making good use of my shelves, to try and protect them a bit.

The next exciting thing was a parcel I received in the mail from my lovely friend Lorraine - she had offered to send me a couple of seeds, but when they arrived I discovered that she'd sent this massive bounty:

All bagged up in zip-lock bags with instructions written on the bags. Wow! There's seeds for Mixed Lettuce, Carrots, Dwarf Sugar Snap Peas, Dwarf Green Beans, Dwarf Butter Beans, Capsicum, Scallions, Basil, Corriander and Purple King Climbing Beans in that pile. So generous - Thankyou Lorraine!!!

On Saturday I planted some of the seeds from Lorraine- I've sown some of the dwarf sugar snap peas, green beans and butter beans into egg boxes, and the capsicum, scallions and basil into strawberry/cherry tomato punnets (with drainage holes punched into the bottom).

Another exciting thing of the week is also seed related; the seeds that I planted last Sunday started growing!! When I got home from work on Wednesday one of the first things I did was take a peek at the seeds (just as I'd done morning and evening every day since planting them!) and there were tiny little seedlings growing!! In the "inside box" there were a couple of marigold seedlings and a heap of tiny tiny rocket seedlings.

Then, on Thursday there were rocket and marigold seedlings appearing in the "outside box" too!! Interestingly, although the inside marigolds appeared first and are currently bigger than the outside ones, I currently have two seedlings from 12 seeds inside, but 11 outside. By the time the weekend rolled around the tomatoes in the inside box had started growing little seedlings too - it looks like all 5 seeds I planted in that pot have started growing. Exciting!!! Sadly nothing has yet appeared from the string-o-pearls, but I am still patiently waiting and hoping that they do. Here are my seedlings 1 week post sowing the seeds (outside box first, then inside box):

As well as exciting progress with my seeds, the plants I bought are doing great guns, including some strawberries starting to appear on one of the strawberry plants!

Hopefully I'll find week 2 just as exciting as week 1.