These Thai Basil are in a pot with an apple tree. I don’t really care for the flavor of the leaves, but the bees love the flowers, so I let the plant do it’s thing. I whack it back a few times a year when it gets out of control, but otherwise it is covered in flowers year round.

Aeoniums don’t really count as flowers, but they look like flowers, and they have the benefit of “flowering” year round. Plus, this one has a ladybug sunning itself, so I couldn’t resist including it.

I can’t remember what the name of this plant is? I think I never knew. I don’t think it had a tag at the nursery. Any guesses as to its identity?

Strawberries still going strong! This variety produces berries that are smaller than what you can get at the supermarket, but they are extremely juicy and sweet. Definitely worth the space they take up!

These chrysanthemums are part of a container I created while following one of the cards in P. Allen Smith’s Container Gardens Deck. I’ll be publishing a review later this week.

I love that these African Daisies have beatiful silver foliage and bright red-orange flowers, which I love. But they’re in a pot with a blood orange and I’m not sure I love the combination. We’ll see. I might switch it out.

I’m not going to be discussing this matter further here on the blog but anyone who is concerned is free to contact me privately through email.

I live in a city called Long Beach in southern California. In Californian parlance, LB (or “The LBC”) is about 30 minutes south of Los Angeles so long as there isn’t any traffic. In many other states, Long Beach’s 500,000 residents would make it the first or second largest city in the state. But in California, it’s only the 6th largest city, and our close proximity to LA often leaves us in their shadow. Nonetheless, while Long Beach may not be as well known as it should be, it is still a great place to live.

Long Beach has all of the big city amenities people want with lots of smaller town charm. We have a major university (California State University, Long Beach), several great shopping areas (2nd St, Pine Ave, The Pike), great restaurants, many great cultural events/venues (Long Beach Blues Festival and The Carpenter Center, to name a two), two good sized museums (Long Beach Museum of Art and The Latin American Museum of Art), lots of great parks and one gigantic one (El Dorado Park), and plenty of interesting architecture (The Pyramid, Rancho Los Alamitos & Cerritos, two Greene & Greene homes, and whole neighborhoods full of Craftsman style homes…). Long Beach also has award winning public schools, close-knit neighborhoods, lots of mom-and-pop shops and residents who are passionate about their city.

Oh yeah, and we have miles of white sand beaches and one of the greatest climates in the world. Within an hour’s drive you can get to some of the best surfing spots in the world, great skiing/snowboarding, high desert spots for off-roading, and many different awesome hiking areas. There is a reason it costs an arm and a leg to live in southern California! Though Long Beach is more affordable than other beach cities nearby.

Here is a short video I made of my tiny little patio garden and some shots from a favorite spot near my apartment:

After uploading the video I realized I called the white dome behind the Queen Mary the Epcott Center. I don’t know what I was thinking! The Epcott Center is obviously in Florida. The white dome used to house the Spruce Goose, now it is a terminal for a cruise line based out of Long Beach.

1. “Mulching” Potted Plants
2. Very Super Cool Wall Planter Ideas
3. Lessons from the Pile: Why We Compost
4. Autumn Potted Garden
5. And just for fun… A New Way to Insulate Potted Plants

If you’d like to subscribe to Jenny’s blog–and I think you should–you can do so right here: J Peterson’s RSS feed.

1. Western Primrose (Calylophus hartwegii)
2. Blackfoot Daisy (Melampodium leucanthum)
3. Tarragon (Artemisia dracunculus)
4. Texas Green Eyes (Berlandiera betonicifolia)
5. Twistleaf Goldenrod (Solidago tortifolia)

• Video series on picking and curing olives at home with UC Davis olive expert Dan Flynn
• Safe methods for olive curing downloadable brochure
• Olive Fruit Fly: Pest Notes for Home and Landscape

I found out about these two resources because I follow their Good Life Garden project on Twitter. Check them out: @GoodLifeGarden.

If you remember, following a Garden Writers of America presentation on Gen Y Gardeners, there was quite a brouhaha on the internets about whether Gen X & Y were gardening, joining gardening associations, where they were buying their plants, etc. First, I surveyed members of Gen X & Y to find out what they thought about gardening (see my thoughts here). Then, several people suggested surveying Baby Boomers as well, to have a comparison.

Here is a bird’s eye view of the results:

• 74% of Baby Boomer gardeners report knowing 10 or more people their age that also like to garden.
• Approximately 75% of Boomers have a yard in which to garden (only 49% checked the “I have a yard” box, but the overwhelming majority of people who checked “Other” wrote about their yards).
• Learning from gardening mentors, reading books and trial and error were the most popular ways to increase their gardening skills.
• An impressive array of sources were mentioned as places to acquire new plants. More than 50% of respondents said they buy plants and seeds online, and in the nursery, and that they get seeds and cuttings from other gardeners. Catalogs seem to be unpopular among Boomers and most didn’t care to buy full grown plants online either.
• Unsurprisingly, most listed social networks and blogs as places they interact with other gardeners (both were the only places I promoted the survey), but 40%+ also went out of their way to mention that they enjoy talking with their “real life” friends about gardening too.
• 42% are members of an offline gardening organization. The most popular organizations seemed to be general interest garden clubs or a membership at their local botanical garden.
• The most common reason given by those who aren’t members of a gardening organization was lack of time, followed by a dislike for group politics or just groups in general.
• 49% of Boomers reported spending 20 or more hours in their garden.
• 52% spend between $100-500 on gardening per year.

Interestingly, the areas where Boomers and the younger generations seem to differ are not where you’d expect. More Boomers, for example, reported buying seeds and bulbs online than Gen X & Y. And it wasn’t just a few people more. 13% more Boomers bought seeds and bulbs online than the younger folks. And 17% more Boomers were willing to buy plants online than their Gen X & Y counterparts.

Another interesting difference, though I’m not sure what it means, were the number of known contemporaries who also like to garden. Overwhelmingly Boomers reported knowing 10 or more people their age who also like to garden. Almost exactly a third of Gen X & Y knew 10 or more people, a third knew 6-10 gardeners, and the remaining third knew less than five fellow Gen X/Y gardeners.

In addition to those areas where people might guess the results would be switched, there were areas where Gen X & Y and Baby Boomers reported nearly the exact same thing. For example, 50% of each group’s respondents have a yard to garden in. Likewise, all three generations said they learned about gardening the same way: mostly from mentors, books, websites and from trial and error. Neither group reported taking very many gardening classes, but nearly twice as many Boomers had taken a class than the younger generations.

Then there were the comparisons that are totally unsurprising. Way, way, way more Boomers are members of gardening clubs than Gen X & Y. 42% of Boomers have joined up, while only 18% of Gen X & Y have forked over any membership dues. Though the reasons both groups’ non-joiners gave for their lack of membership were largely the same: no time and dislike of group dynamics.

Also in the category of “I didn’t need a survey to tell me that” is how much each generation spends on gardening. While most gardeners, regardless of the age group, spend between $100-500 a year, twice as many Boomers spend more than $500 per year than Gen X & Y.

What do you think? If you’d like to download the results and analyze them yourself, you can read a pdf summary or view all of the results in an excel spreadsheet.

Guerrilla gardening was lots of fun and the City of Long Beach now has a beautiful succulent garden on Orange, just south of PCH. I used to be a little skeptical about guerrilla gardening, and there are still types of guerrilla gardening I can’t support, but I think today’s guerrilla gardening was completely win-win-win. Long Beach got some free plants and landscaping labor, the people who live and work in that area now have a pretty garden to enjoy, and all of us guerrilla gardeners had a blast!

Oh, by the way, I used the Soil Scoop for some of the hand digging and it worked out great. The cement that was pretending to be soil at the site didn’t even phase it. Several people commented on how great a tool it is.

UPDATE: Check out all of the photos Scott uploaded to the So Cal Guerrilla Gardening blog.

Previous Vlog Posts:

• Life on the Balcony Vlog #1 – Soil Scoop Review

By the way, you can subscribe to the Life on the Balcony YouTube channel to stay on top of the latest LOTB vlog posts.

As the title alludes, the book contains 75 plant selections, each with a paragraph about the plant and a large, full-bleed photo. I like that the descriptions are written in a light, conversational tone. You don’t have to be a plant scholar or even know the proper way to pronounce “clematis” to enjoy reading the book and get useful information from it. Each plant description is accompanied by useful icons that tell you what zone the plant is hardy to and how much water, sunlight, etc it likes.

The plants included are a nicley curated collection of deep burgandy, midnight blue, darkest purple, and other exquisitely dark colors. I appreciate that the plants are a really diverse collection. You can tell that the author tried to include a nice mix of trees, shrubs, annuals, herbaceous perennials, bulbs, etc. The plants also seem evenly divided between black foliage and black flowers.

Another nice thing about the book is its size. You might think that a book of this sort would be coffee table book size. But instead this book is about 7 inches by 6 inches and has a soft cover. I imagine that I’ll put post it note flags on the plants I like and stick the book in my purse and take it with me to the nursery. The small size and light weight (along with the conversational tone and gorgeous photos) also makes the book perfect for reading in the bath while daydreaming about next year’s garden.

I do have a minor quibble with the book’s author though. Some of the plants in the book are not black. For example, ‘Java Red’ Weiglia. The leaves are described as deep green with a purplish cast, but I think it is a real stretch to call anything on the plant even remotely black. There are a couple of other similar plants in the book, but I’d say 95% of the plants are black or nearly black, the sort you’d expect to find in a book about black plants.

Along the same lines of my pettifog above, there are black varieties of certain plants that I like better than the ones chosen for the book. For example, I think ‘Black Stockings’ is a prettier variety of black daylily than ‘Night Wings,’ which is the selection included in Black Plants. It has ruffled petals and a deep yellow throat that really emphasizes the blackness of the flower. But ‘Night Wings’ is often referred to as the blackest daylily, so I guess it really is just personal preference.

All-in-all, this is a great book if you’re looking for some black plant inspiration. And you can’t beat the price. Amazon is currently selling it for $10.17, but even at full price ($14.95) the book is worth every penny. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

(Please excuse the weird white flecks on the Sweet Potato Vine’s leaves. The last time it rained, it washed this weird white stuff off the roof and onto my plants.)

I still haven’t decided to do with the iris bulbs yet. Any suggestions? Here are some other recent photos from my container garden:

I’ve posted these all in the Life on the Balcony Flickr group. If you have any shots of your balcony or patio garden, it’s a great place to share them. I often click over and browse other people’s container gardens when I’m in need of a little inspiration or just daydreaming of what I’ll grow next year.

Oh, by the way, if you dig black plants as much as I do, check back on Friday. I’m posting a review of Paul Bonine’s Black Plants: 75 Striking Choices for the Garden.