The red sunflowers called Red Sun were amongst the flower I really wanted to see bloom this year. I have cultivated a few of them before. I did it during my first year in the apartment. I think the flowers looks awesome. They almost looks like they have been painted. The reason I didn't cultivated them the other years, is because they grow so tall. I felt they wouldn't have a place to look good on. But this year I knew they would look good behind all the other flowers.

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The Painted Daisy plants are back in full force on my balcony. The plants are blooming with several flowers and I'm very happy that I choose to have them again on my balcony.

The Scarlet Sage plants have really turned out really well. I knew they would give me bright red flowers, but didn't know they would give me so many. They are a delight to have on my balcony and I currently feel that I would like to have them on my balcony again next year.

The Clematis was a birthday gift I received this year. I was glad when I received it and I'm even more happy over it now. It has really added much color to my balcony and as a bonus it added it on a height that none of my other flowers could reach.

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Jasmine tobacco is a favorite flower. They have every year (this being the third year) given me great results. This year I was a little anxious over their development, they were growing very slowly. But during July they grow a lot and produced many colorful flowers. The plan was to have white and dark purple one, but it seems that the seed bag with dark purple one contained various colors, because now I also have pink and green flowers. Luckily I like lots of colors so the end result looks great my eyes even though it wasn't what I planned.

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Penny black it one of the newcomers on my balcony. It doesn't dominate in any way, but it does contribute to the greenery on the balcony. I think the little flowers look pretty and I wish the plants would produce more of them for me.

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My balcony looks awesome. It has never looked this good and been this cozy be on during the other summers. Almost all flowers have bloomed and I will post pictures on them in individual blog entries for the different flowers.

Thing are going good. Well, mistakes have been made, but I'm still satisfied with the results. The mistakes are putting out the Moonflowers to early and using loose, low-nutrition soil to cultivate the plants in. I thought the loose soil would let the plants grow big roots, but the soil didn't supply some of the plants with the right amounts of nutrition to grow big.

On this picture you can see almost all of the plants. It is only Sensitive plants that hasn't been moved out.

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A lot of stuff has happen since the last update. I have replanted many flowers and have started to cultivate many more new flowers.

A few French marigold have been placed in their final locations. Here is a picture on two of them.

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Everything is growing well. The decision to stop using pelt pieces and use loose soil in milk carton instead seems to be right. I have hardly been needed to look after the plants. The soil have been keeping itself moist for long periods of time.

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As I mentioned earlier, I'm planing to make this year's summer flower project as cheap (and environment-friendly) as possible. Therefore I decided to not throw away this plastic water carrier...

...but instead turn it into two flower pots.

I'm quite happy with the result. I will definitely use the one with the watering hole and if I need to, I will use a pot with the "drainage hole" also.

The project is in full swing. I have started to cultivate four more flowers, French Marigolds, Moonflowers, Sensitive Plant and Scarlet Sage. Two flowers I tried before and two new ones. The Sensitive Plant is more of a indoors plant, so I will keep some of them indoors and some on the balcony. The Scarlet Sage is a gamble. It's not suppose to be on a balcony with strong sun, but maybe it will survive if I place it on the ground in the shade.

I started with putting all the seed on moist tissue paper and sealing them in plastic boxes.

Within a week the French Marigolds started to grow, so I quickly move them over to soil. I also noted that a few of the Sensitive Plant and Scarlet Sage seeds had sprouted very thin white roots (or had started to mold), so I moved a couple of the seeds over to soil. I did it because I feared that if I moved them later I would just damage their roots (or they all would become attacked by mold).

The Moonflowers are late starters (as usual) and are still in their plastic bin.

This years project to enrich my balcony with flowers has started with the least likely candidate, Wallflower. The flower that I failed to cultivate last year and said I wasn't going to try again. I decided to try cultivate them again because I still had a few seed left and I noticed that they could be cultivated as early as February. Might as well start of the project with a new try. This year I'm trying to cultivate them exactly as told by the instruction on the seed bag. Placing them on top of moist soil instead of starting them of on moist toilet paper.

This year I also decided to try using recycled materials from home instead of buying new peat pots. Both for personal economical reason and ecological reasons. Above I have converted two milk cardboard boxes into two pots for four small flowers each.