Pineapple

In the summer while visiting a friend he made fresh fruit salad which included Pineapple. I asked him for the top and took it home, After removing the remains of the fruit and also a few of the lower leaves I suspended it in a container with water so that it cover the lower part of the base. Slowly roots appeared and when I thought there were enough I put it into a pot with some soil. In the photo below you can see some months later the resulting plant.

My research tells me that I didn't need to do the water trick but could have just planted it straight into the soil, but for me it was nice to see the roots form.. Pineapple is from the Bromeliad family and to water them it is best to fill the cup in the leaves from time to time.It should produce a fruit in maybe 18 months time and then it will also produce a pup which can be removed and planted up. They produce only 1 fruit a year but if you keep removing and potting up the pups you can soon have a good supply of fruit to enjoy or share with friends.

Orange grove

You may remember that last year I managed to get 5 orange seeds to germinate and get them through the winter indoors. Well during the summer 2 of them decided they didn't want to go on,as is their want. So it is a little over a year later and as you will see from the photo's they have become my little orange grove :) .

Hopefully they are now established enough to get through another winter and in the Spring I will move them on into bigger pots.

Falling into Autumn

Over the next few months we can start to think about preparing for the new year. One of the things that can be done is to take cuttings of some of your favourite plants.

Here is a cutting that I took recently and rooted in water, then potted into a general soil mix.

This is an example of the same plant 6 to 8 months after taking and rooting a cutting. In fact the rooted cutting above was taken from this plant just a few weeks ago.
Some plants will root easily and quickly, others will require a little patience, but the results can be well worth the wait :)

The balcony garden

I just wanted to show you what is happening on my balcony. As you can see it is quite small and now it is crowded with plants. There is a mixture of flowering plants, also some Tomato, sweet peppers and ornamental squash, I have lettuce, which provide me with green salad and also an addition to my sandwiches. You can also see that I utilize various milk containers, it's good to recycle and re-use. :)

Salad days

So on my balcony I have a small garden which includes some Lettuce and Tomato, around 7 plants of each. I have been cutting leaves from the lettuce and making small green salad a very nice treat :) . Some of the tomato plants are just starting to show flower buds, so maybe next month I will have some of those to add.
I  have just started some new lettuce seedlings to maintain a continuation. The weather has not been too warm so far and we have been getting regular rain showers so things are progressing nicely. I hope they are with you too :) .

Avocado too

In December I found a bag with 5 Avocado seeds in it which I had for more than a year. They were pretty moldy, but I found one that I thought was ok and put it in a pot and nothing seems to happen. Then a couple of weeks ago I thought to maybe  throw it out and use the pot and then noticed a small root, so I started to water it again and now you see in the photo, ( the one that looks like a great white shark eating a fish ) that it is finally send up a shoot. It took about 5 months for it to spring into life, but is a fine example of patience in the gardening world.:)

Rosemary

 When I moved to Sarajevo last May while out on a run I took 5 cuttings from a Rosemary bush, Rosmarinus Officinalis to use it's latin name. They were all similar to the one seen to the left. I put them in a cup filled with water and left them. Topping up the water level as needed. It took a little while but eventually roots began to appear. I waited until there were quite a few roots and then potted them up in separate pots in a general soil mix.
Over the summer they stayed outside on my balcony and when the weather got colder I brought them inside, pinching out the tips and using them in my cooking.

Here in the photo to the left you see the result of almost one year of growth.
Fresh Rosemary is a great addition to your kitchen so if you can get a hold of a cutting or 2  and start them as I did in water. once they are nice and big you can also plant one in your garden.
Good luck and happy gardening :)