Hi there, it's Minami.

First of all, I like to try a lot of different things, and since I don't want to get too many of each for consumption, I grow a little bit of each variety.

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The balcony vegetable garden

To be honest, I don't take care of it much.

But thanks to the cold? It seems to be fine without much watering.

Gradually, the flowers that I have forgotten the names of that I planted with them have withered away, leaving only the herbs and the mossberry (appleberry) as survivors.

The second plant above from the left is a chamomile, but it does not bloom at all...

This would squash my plan to use chamomile to soothe myself with chamomile tea on a cold night.

I did a little research and found that apparently chamomile will not flower if there is not enough sunlight.

He said that they do not need any fertilizer, but should be watered anyway (but as dry on the surface as possible) and exposed to the sun.

Indeed, I have the chamomile on the shady side, so I will reverse this planter in February and see what happens!

(Perhaps it was just not hot enough, since the correct temperature for chamomile is around 15 degrees Celsius.)

Initially, I was a bit more focused on the mint growth on the right hand side, so I think it is time to reverse the direction.

So bright green and soothing in spite of winter!

Dill continues to be amazing.

But it's been so cold lately that I don't eat much breakfast anymore, and I don't drink soup in the first place, although I have a habit of putting dill on top of soup.

It no longer appears to be overgrown and not nourished at the tips, so we will take care of those areas a bit in February.

The wildflowers are growing as if they were in a field.

Fuchsia, unfortunately, because of winter? The flowers have withered away.

But the leaves themselves are healthy.

I don't know how to take care of wildflowers (left).

These succulents, only some of them are growing vigorously.

Is it unavoidable?

The maple leaf geraniums are growing nicely.

Beautiful colors as always! They brighten up a house that tends to be monotone in the winter.

Use of Vegetable Garden, Stevia

This month we utilized stevia!

I put stevia in my coffee soy latte!

As a result, it is not nearly as sweet, although I can sort of feel it... (or rather, I can only feel the sweetness of the soy milk).

The leaves I put in the bowl are kind of tough, even though they are supposed to be stacked, not soft-toothed like the ones you can drink commercially...

I thought maybe the stevia I was growing wasn't ingenious enough to make it sweet, so I bit into it and said, "Not sweet at all."

This is just a leaf eater.

I wondered why they did not turn out sweeter, and when I looked it up, I found out that in order to make them sweeter, you have to pay attention to fertilizers and other factors.

Next time I'd like to make it into syrup for easier use.

Stevia turns out not to be wasted

I have a lot of problems with chamomile followed by stevia. lol

I did some research on stevia... and it seems...

The trick to growing stevia successfully, it seems, is to "let it dry out".

I had never dried them and will attempt to do so today.

Also, there seems to be something called farming method using stevia.

Stevia farming is a method in which stevia used for syrup extraction is mixed with soil and used as fertilizer for growing other vegetables.

This would be easy to incorporate in a home garden.

I'll definitely give it a go in February myself!