Balcony Gardening

As usual,  the sudden change to warmer weather does tend to change my daily routines quite a bit - like when is the best time to go out, vs doing various things at home (or doing nothing at all!); taking into consideration outdoors and indoor temperatures and light etc. It also affects my blogging habits, as my study gets too hot in the afternoons...

This morning I set aside for a bit of "balcony gardening"; while the balcony was still mostly in shadow. (In the mid afternoon it's now too hot to even sit there and do nothing.) 

Planting and replanting etc is a messy affair when one lives in a flat - also involving the kitchen on the other side of the building (while the balcony is outside the living room). First  I need to clear the kitchen sink and workbench of everything else that should not get dirty. And when it's all done, a lot of cleaning up and putting things back in their usual places...

My "gardening" today consisted of: 

1. Emptying a box of old dead strawberry plants. (Not the one in the photo, but another one like it, which did not survive the winter.) 

2. Cutting down my half-dead clematis from the trellis on the wall, and emptying that big pot of soil as well - but trying to save one or two green shoots at the bottom, replanting those in a smaller pot. (If I succeed to keep the plant alive, I'll keep it indoors until next spring. I've done it before, so I know it may be worth trying.)

3. Replanting my two new cherry tomato plants (recently bought) into bigger pots; and letting those make use of the trellis this summer instead. 

4. From the two pots of "painted nettles" (coleus) I've taken cuttings for new plants (they usually easily grow roots if just put in a glass of water); and moved the old ones out on the balcony. When they grow this big they aren't happy on the window sills indoors anyway.  

The geraniums I just keep in the small pots that I bought them in - easy to move around, or take in/ out depending on the weather. Possibly they may want bigger pots later.