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What my garden looks like on the first day of 2024:

1. The first sugar snap pea plant I grew possibly had pea enation mosaic virus as well as powdery mildew. The leaves turned a speckly white and started shriveling, and the flowers dried up and died without producing any peas. The two plants in this photo look like they are starting to show signs of the virus, but most of the plant and flowers still look healthy. If the virus overtakes all of the pea plants, I will need to pull them out and try growing something else.

2. The cherry tomato plants are growing slowly, but they look great! I probably won't get tomatoes for another couple months.

3. The strawberry plants are also looking pretty healthy, so hopefully I will get strawberries in the future.

4, 5, 6. The mint stems I planted recovered pretty well, but some of the stems were small and spindly. I trimmed those and I'm propagating the healthier parts to replant.

7. This rosemary is about 7 years old, and since I don't really eat rosemary, it's just there to outlive everything else I plant (lifespan of 10-15 years).

8. My oregano grows like a weed and today I trimmed off about 50% of it.

9. The incomplete bottom tier of the garden. I removed the old sweet basil that was withering because I think it reached its limit for propagation. I replanted the curly basil into the front planter, and I'm waiting on the purple basil cuttings to grow roots. I tried planting only herbs that I thought I would eat, but the planters ended up looking a bit bare. I've decided to plant more herbs to fill it out to look prettier, and it would just be a bonus if my partner could use them in his cooking. The back planter will have rosemary, lavender, and sage. The front will have oregano, basils (sweet, thai, and purple), dill, and thyme.

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First sugar snap pea! It was about 2" long and tasted good. The plant however didn't grow more leaves, stems, and flowers until I had picked the snap pea off the vine. I'll probably need to consistently harvest to encourage the plant to keep growing.

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What was supposed to be a strawberry ended up being clusters of tiny leaves, which might be phyllody. I picked off all the leaves out of curiosity, and there was no strawberry :(. This might have been caused by transplanting it inside, and the next few flowers didn't give any strawberries either. Maybe after some time has passed, the plant will start flowering normally again.

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When it's not raining, the lichen on my balcony is grey. When it rains, the lichen is green.

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1. The first tomato seedlings sprouting about a week after planting. 2. The first snap pea flowers. 3. The strawberry plant flowering shortly after being transplanted inside.

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In past years, I was visited by a house finch pair who took pieces of coconut fiber from my planters to line their nest. I didn't see them this past summer, but instead I was visited by a blue jay. He came back multiple times to 'bury' peanuts in my planters. He put the peanut into my bugleweed and covered it with clumps of moss.

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Small seedlings growing into larger seedlings over the course of a couple weeks.

1 and 2: Sugar Ann snap peas 3 and 4: Peppermint 5 and 6: Cilantro

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Interactions between 3 organisms:

My Showy Stonecrop plant is in the sunniest corner of my balcony, and even with the limited sunlight, it grows larger and has more flower clusters every year.

Every spring, the stonecrop is covered in tiny green aphids. Thankfully the plant is strong enough to outgrow the infestation and flourish.

There are usually a few ladybugs on my stonecrop eating the large feast of aphids.

(I didn't include the pharaoh ants because I don't think they are an ant species that farms aphids.)

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For the past year or so, I only had 6 cherry shrimp in my aquarium because the planaria ate all of their eggs. The shrimp were also natural colours: transparent with brown speckles or stripes. Now that I have been regularly removing the planaria, more eggs are hatching, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the transparent shrimp had offspring of varying grades of red.

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Looks like it is time to propagate the basil.

After a week or so, the basil cuttings have grown a lot of healthy roots.

I bought another IKEA Kallax shelf for the second tier of the garden, along with another set of Feit Electric LED grow lights. I used adhesive velcro strips to stick the lights to the top of the shelf, which has worked for the most part. One side of the top tier light got unstuck so I've had to secure it with string instead. We'll see how long the rest of them last.

Cat tried to supervise my gardening efforts, but then he fell asleep.

The top tier of the garden. The front planter has the strawberry plant and mint cuttings I've transplanted from the balcony. The back planter has trellises for the Sugar Ann snap peas and Tiny Tim cherry tomatoes I've seeded.

The bottom tier is the same as before, primarily herbs. The basil cuttings have been planted at the back, and the front space will be for experimenting with cilantro.

The 2-tier garden completed.

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1. This sweet pepper plant was an experiment to see if the sunniest parts of my balcony were enough to successfully grow some fruit or vegetables. The plant did grow quite a lot of flowers! But I accidentally overwatered it which led to a lot of the flower buds dropping.

2. This tiny pepper eventually grew into a 6-inch sweet pepper by mid summer!

3, 4, and 5. These peppers started growing late summer, and I was hoping they would get big enough to be edible.

6. The peppers didn't have enough sunlight in late summer and autumn to grow to their full size, and pretty much just stopped growing. I probably can't eat the smallest one, but I'll cut open the other two later.

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Summer 2022 was pretty hot and dry, and I think I underwatered some of my balcony plants. I overcompensated by accidentally overwatering my plants this summer, which turned my pepper plant's leaves yellow. At least the top of the plant still has healthy green leaves, and I've pulled back on the watering as well.

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I didn't have much success with red tiger lotus in the past, but I wanted to keep trying. I bought one a few months ago and it was doing really well, growing both underwater leaves and floating leaves. However, the leaves died one by one and no new leaves were growing, so I was worried the bulb had died as well. Recently new underwater leaves were growing again! I hope it continues to thrive in my aquarium as it is such a beautiful plant.

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When I let my oregano plant grow for too long without trimming, it starts trailing everywhere and leaning over, and starts flowering.

After the trim, it looks much more tidy and compact.

I mostly use fresh oregano on top of pasta. The funny thing about growing my own herbs is that I realized they will grow faster than I can eat them.

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Now that it's getting colder and the plants are winding down, here are the last flowers of the season.

Bugleweed

Sedum

Sweet pepper flower

Hydrangea

Euphorbia Diamond Frost

Angelface Blue Summer Snapdragon

Japanese anemone

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I had a couple of unwelcome guests in my aquarium, specifically gammarid amphipods (scuds) and planarian flatworms. I did not get a photo of the scuds, but a planarian worm is pictured above. They likely hitchhiked in on the plants from the pet store. While I found them interesting to watch, both of them unfortunately either bothered or were a danger to the Neocaridina shrimp. Planaria attack and eat shrimp and their eggs, which would explain why I only had 6 adult shrimp for several years without seeing any babies (and I only found out about that recently). Thankfully the adult shrimp know how to avoid the worms.

I have managed to removed both the scuds and planaria effectively using a pipette, though only because my aquarium is an 8-gallon cube and this might not work for large aquariums. The scuds are completely gone, but I think there will always be planaria since it is difficult to catch all of them. At least with much fewer flatworms, the shrimp population should start to increase.

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1 and 2: My mint and basil were looking a bit tall and scraggly, so it is time to take some cuttings and propagate them.

3. After cutting really long leafy stems off the basil plant, I picked off most of the leaves which I will put into the freezer, to save for cooking in the future.

4. For the mint, I cut some of the thicker stems that had new leaves growing. By this point there were not a lot of stems to choose from.

5. The basil cuttings trimmed and ready to be put in water.

6. I put the cuttings in my terrarium where they will do well under a grow light.