Well. I’ve just spent a couple of late hours of my Friday night drawing out my balcony to scale in order to assign surface area for all my current plantings. I’m pretty sleepy, but this kind of organisation is much needed and better to be done in the hours of darkness than daylight, when I’d rather be outside implementing it all!

Until now, I’ve been sowing away happily with the eagerness of a new, green gardener without much planning. I came to realise today under the grey, drizzly skies of London that I don’t exactly have a great deal of outdoor space, so I need to plan the positioning of everything quite tightly in order to make sure I’m making maximum use of the space I do have, whilst still leaving me some room to take a couple of chairs out there and have a sit in what I hope to be my little paradise. Give it a few months..

My pictures might not mean a great deal and not look that clear, but thankfully I understand them :) Turns out I can fit the following in my 3.75m x 0.86m balcony space:

- 5 x (60cm x 20cm) window boxes on the wall of my balcony
- 2 × 3 tier hanging style baskets (the two large circles bottom left)
- the mini greenhouse (the rectangle on the right)
- 5 × 30cm pots to house radishes, beets, carrots, salad, spring onions (bottom left)
- a large 40cm pot for the courgette plant
- 3+ smaller pots for mint, lavender, coriander and I quite fancy some poppies

In the mini greenhouse I plan to keep the goji berries, cayenne and sweet pepper and chilli plants. I’ll also use it to harden off the tomatoes, courgette etc. before I plant them out.

I’ve also managed to exactly work out what combination of things I’m going to grow in each box/pot (second picture), actually making use of all the seeds I’ve bought, received or already sown which is good!

More things I need to sow in addition to what I already have planted, to make up the numbers in my plans – all seeds below will be started indoors for a head start then planted out:

- 5 x sunflower (dwarf variety – for 3 window boxes)
- Pak Choi (to line the back of one window box)
- 6 x sweet peas for one tier of hanging basket
- 6 x half pint peas for the same basket as above
- spinach beets (to form a ring of leaves in bottom basket of both tiers)
- rocket (to form a ring of leaves in bottom basket of both tiers)
- coriander and mint for separate pots each
- basil to line the back of one window box
- poppies (if I decide to grow)

Everything else is either already sown or waiting to be delivered in the form of plugs or pot ready plants.

Things I need to buy for these plans:

- 1 × 3 tier hanging basket
- 1 x window box
- 2 × 25cm pots to house beetroot and turnip
- lavender (plugs or pot ready)
- poppy seeds (if I decide to grow)
Will hopefully be getting most of these on Sunday

I think this is enough for now. Apologies if you’ve taken the time to read this and it has bored you – more for me to keep a track of things.

I think I may now need some sleep..