Jianguo I guess, the large one up town. The chili plants were up the far end near the jade market and it was the only one I saw selling them as well as many of the herbs they had.
Bought some radish seeds there as well, planted them in a long flower tray on Thursday, went away for the weekend on Friday, got back tonight and all but one of the seeds have come up and developed leaves…!
The packet claims a 25 day growth period, so if this is a success, I’d say it’d be the easiest thing you could grow at home. Will take a picture and add tomorrow.
I planted radish on the 24th of this month, it’s already pretty big. Radish are the quickest think you can grow without a doubt. In 20 days you can eat them. An they are good too.
Any tips for Basil? I planted some and it’s all come up, but they seem to grow really slowly…
At this rate I’m not going to be able to cook with it for another six months… 
Basil needs warm weather and good sun; it’s still a little early for basil. Next time you can start earlier with indoor trays and a sun lamp. Don’t forget to never let it dry out, fertilize it regularly and keep it pruned so it will branch out. Start pruning the tops when they’re only a handspan high. Don’t let the flower part form. Around this time of year I usually pick up a few pots of basil that were started in a greenhouse, to keep me supplied until my own basil from seeds is big enough. Also, get a couple of big bags of basil at the market and blend in a blender with olive oil. Freeze in ice cube trays, for use in cooking until the balcony plants are ready.
Ok, that explains why they’re so slow, but they’re growing, just taking longer than I expected.
Also got some other chili plants of my own, some dill (of which most for some reason died from the root up???) and some chives which are growing like grass, but for some reason doesn’t seem to want to get any thicker which is also weird.
Is anyone here into cultivating roses? Where can I find seed? Also, what flowers are good for a really hot balcony with lots of sunshine?
Dunno about seeds, but the big flower markets all have plenty of roses of various types on sale.
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]Has anyone had good luck with strawberries? We haven’t. Our plants are looking great. They’re a good, strong, vibrant green color and have thrown out runners and multiplied so well that I’ve had to transplant their babies repeatedly. So, no problem with the plants themselves. But getting a good crop of berries ain’t easy.
They were attacked by little worms last year, and I think squirrels and birds will be problematic too. For the latter, I planted them deep enough in their containers that the top of the leaves are level with the top of the containers, because I intend to buy some wire mesh and place it over the top of the containers to keep the vermin out. For worms, I don’t want to spray poison on them; maybe diluted organic dishsoap will do, or just painstakingly looking through them periodically to pick out invaders.
But another problem has been that the berries sit on the soil, so after I water they get rotten and moldy. Seems tedious to have to periodically look through the plants, find any berries, and somehow prop them up so they’re not lying on the soil but are suspended above it, but perhaps that’s what I must do.
How about you? Have you harvested lots of strawberries before? How did you deal with vermin and mold/rot?[/quote]
We grows tons of strawberries… OK, not TONS, but last year we harvested over 20 kilos from a tiny plot.
STRAWberries. Every year, spread straw thickly under them. Nice clean bright yellow large-stem straw, like you’d use for animal bedding. Don’t pack the straw; you want there to be some air flow through it, but you want a good mat of it to keep the berries off the dirt. This will help with rot, fungus, and bugs of all kinds.
NOTE: these are not photos from our garden. I didn’t take any last year, but you get the idea.
As for critters, you’ve got to fence them out of the area (broadly) and cover the plants specifically with finer mesh cages (we like 3/4" hardware cloth, and I’m sure something similar is available in Taiwan). Just build little cages that you can lift off the plants to harvest the berries.
NB: On a balcony, you still want a good mat of straw around the strawberry plants in the pot.
Roses are grown from cuttings grafted onto rootstock, rather than seed (too variable and a long time to flower). You usually buy them as little more than a branching stick in a pot.
Flowers that thrive in hot, dry conditions (though I don’t know if they’re available in Taiwan) are mesembryanthemums, echinacia, thrift, dianthus, scabious, verbascum, sedums, nigella…there are many. What height of plant did you want, and do you want annuals or perennials?
I have roses, rosemary, thyme, lavender, pansies, nasturtiums, magnolia, camillia, bamboo, and various other stuff, including a couple of big tree-like things. About 70 or so containers all told. All my other places have been a struggle to keep even the hardiest things alive. Now, though, its like I’m needing a 
machete just to keep things in check! Lovely!
I got a slight problem with my radishes, I’ve got some kind of bug putting small yellow eggs on the leafs, any ideas what they are and how I prevent it from happening again in the future? It’s easy enough to pick them off, but it’s fiddly and time consuming.
some butterfly, probably. Lots of loverly caterpillars later…
Yeah, be meticulous in removing those eggs every day or you will soon have a massive caterpillar infestation. Check the top and underside of every leaf. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. We had literally five hundred to a thousand more caterpillars last year on our radish and similar crops. I picked them off by hand every day, 20-50 per day, for a month (we don’t use insecticides). It’s easier to remove the eggs than the caterpillars.
Well, I guess that’s good to know, anything else they like eating?
I also have some other “bugs” in some of the pots, they’re not caterpillars, but something similar, but they stay in the dirt rather than on the plants, any ideas? So many damn bugs here that I’ve never seen before.
Also, my parsley seems to have caught something which discolours the leafs and I’m not sure you should eat them with that stuff on it, any ideas what this could be?
Use a net around the radishes and tomatoes and what not. I am working on a very small scale greenhouse, mainly to prevent bugs and for those few rainy days. 
Yeah, they eat brussel sprout, lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage leaves. And spinach.
Yeah, it’s really cheap at the market. If you can get to one of the wholesale markets, even more so.
Ok, I’ll leave those off my list of things to grow for now then 
A bunch of new eggs again today, so I guess it’s just one of those things where you have to keep picking them off…
Yeah, it happens for about 4-6 weeks each spring to early summer. It’s a pain, but if you have any pets that like caterpillars, it’s a good source for them. 