Last autumn (more than a year ago, actually), I moved into the city. From my agglomeration home, where I grew up midst of green, flowers and trees, the change into the big grey Zürich is a big one (even though Zürich too has lots of nice little parks and places that feel like close to nature, not to speak about how easy and fast it is to take the train or bike into actual nature). We have two small balcons here in our appartment. I conquered these balcons and filled them with a few flower pots.

Now, you might need to know: since ever, my dream home is one amid fruit trees. I love the thought of being able to just walk outside and take a fruit as fresh as it can be. In general, I prefer to plant plants that also provide a benefit other than looking nice.

One thing I wanted to try for a long time, is to grow my own mustard. And I actually did! In a pot that was certainly much too small, the mustard grew perfectly fine (see cover image). While I did not yet prepare any mustard from the seeds, I can highly recommend it as an experience (the flowers look quite nice, too, and the beans are very interesting how they open), if you are willing to accept, that the yield might be rather small depending on the space you give them.

Another thing I planted was some salad. The reason herefore was, that the place where I got my mustard seeds from, had a minimum value I had to order for. The two salads I chose where Rocket, and Black Hawk. Salad was my choice as I thought they would not have any problem to grow in a balcony box. Well, I was partially wrong: the Rocket was a disappointment in size, I could not harvest any one leaf. The Black Hawk salad on the other hand grew very well. If only it would also taste as well: it did not, being very bitter, even after applying tricks like cooking it.

Other things I planted include various herbs, that traditionally and here worked very well (chives, thyme, rosemary, parsley, sage, basil). For those, I generally took branches from my mother's garden and then had them in water for a few weeks before planting them in the flower pot.

What I am currently rooting for are the sprouts of pepperoni and Charentais melon, which were planted from seeds extracted from the produce as bought in store, as well as corn salad (for which we bought the seeds though).