Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Berries, berries, berries!

If there is one fruit I love, it's strawberries. I am able to eat tons and never get enough!
So I tried to grow them in pots a year ago, but unfortunately I got some bad soil with aphids from somewhere and all my plants died.
So I decided to try again.

I got two plants on Easter from my grandmother's garden and added three more climbing strawberries from Sieberz . I keep them in hanging pots on the balcony window.

They seem to be doing ok, but the ones I bought seem to be growing very slowly. The sturdy type from my garden started expanding already, the others just sprouted a few more small leaves.

I even invested in some special fertilizer for them from Leroy Merlin (it was about 5 euros/500g).

So far, they don't seem to want to bloom, but I'm hopeful :)

I also bought from Sieberz a raspberry plant (after buying a blackberry and a raspberry plant from Praktiker that refused to sprout leaves).


It's doing great, even if I didn't move it from its pot (it looked like the soil was a special blend and it was deep enough).

It's supposed to be able to bear fruit in a year - so I will probably have to move it in another bigger pot later in the year.

The main problem with it is that it needs a lot of sun, so I have to be careful where I place it, since only a corner of my balcony gets sun for a longer period.

I recently bought a couple of other berrie bushes from Praktiker - mostly because they managed to sprout leaves even if they were wrapped and packages and on the shelf in the store. I figured if they can grow in those conditions, my balcony won't be a problem :))



I added the packages so you can see the species (since the plants are dismal at this stage :p). The one on the left is a Jostaberry (a cross between black currant/coacaz and gooseberry/agris) and the one on the right is Citria (white blackberry).

I had the same problem with these as I did with the trees - they have very deep roots so I needed deep cheap pots - so I used plastic garbage cans.

Let's hope they can manage without special soil!

Oh, almost forgot, I also have a Goji plant - my uncle has a passion for the fruits and he planted a big bush in my grandmother's garden, so I took a cutting and planted it in a pot. It was attached by afids and almost died, but I managed to revive it and it's going strong.

I've had it for almost three months so far, but since it was traumatised earlier this year I don't expect it to bear fruit this year.

I also took a cutting from a fig bush we have and I'm trying to see if it will root, because Pinterest says that you can grow figs in a pot also.

But it's only been a month so I'll give it more time before I post pictures (currently it's in a plastic bottle with some water and some soil).

Let's get to actual flowers!


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