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It must be about time to bore you with an update on all the veges etc crammed on the balcony. You are interested, aren’t you? Good!

First up the exciting news on the red peppers: We are now the proud owners of two tiny peppers (one on each of the two plants we’ve got) and a heap more flowers. The only problem is that the plants are only about 6 inches high at their highest point, and the baby peppers are only 4 inches off the ground to start with! I kinda hope that the plants are going to put on a growth spurt so they’ve got more room to dangle, or they might end up sitting on the ground!  Or they’ll just be miniature peppers.

The miniature theme seems to be a general one.  All the chilli plants are also not seeming to get a great deal of height. Yet. I hope! Though they too are starting to look like they’re getting ready to flower too.  It’s about right timing wise, but I’m really sure that the plants have had a lot more height first.  Oh well. I suspect that I chucked them outside a bit soon, and they just hung in there when it was still a bit cold, rather than putting on the growth.

Even the mint plant seems to have decided to live life in the miniature.  All the new leaves that are coming out seem to be staying really, really small too. I don’t think that it’s because we keep grabbing the big ones for cooking, but it might be… We’ll have to see if they get a bit bigger, or I might try putting it in a slightly shadier corner and see if it then feels like expanding it’s leaves a bit more.

Oh, and the sweet peas look like they might be about to put out a flower or two soon as well,  and they’re only about two feet high too! It’s all a little odd!

The only thing that’s got tall is the coriander plant I mentioned the other week.  The flower stalks on that leapt up to about two, almost  three feet tall, and the flowers have just opened today. Hopefully we’ll end up with some seeds sometime.

We had a major catch with the other small coriander plants though. We were sitting out on the balcony enjoying the sun yesterday and for some reason had a good look at one of them and found another little infestation of aphidy things! ARRGGGHHH!  So we gave them all a good once over and squished all the bugs we could find for a bit. There weren’t enough to give up on the plants. It hopefully looks like we can hopefully manage them with daily squishings.  At least the plants are still a manageable size to check every leaf.

The rocket plants are still on the small side too, but the lettuce, onions, dill and radish are all coming along nicely. Far too many for the pots they’re in, I suspect, but we keep giving them a bit of a thin now and then…

So there you have it.  The update. Tune in next time to see if anything has actually grown!