Plants in paint cans; vegetables on the veranda; basil in bathroom

If I call all of my gardening efforts "experiments" rather than "attempts", then a dead plant is a valuable lesson that informs the future, not a failure that reveals my ineptitude.   I do a lot of gardening experiments, I tell you.

This year was particularly experimental, as I have 0 yard, and so instead of planting my plants in the ground, I planted them in paint cans, a few found pots, and mostly in the shade.   To wit, my outdoors happens to be largely in the shade, as my valuable lessons informed me over the course of the summer and the trees that surround my yard leafed up all around me.

What other valuable lessons that inform the future do I now have to share with you?  

One:  The bigger the pot, the bigger the basil.  

I moved the basil from the back porch to the bathroom to get evening sun, and the above photo shows three pots of basil, plus a tiny air plant.   It's like the three bears and goldilocks, almost!

Two: Cucumbers need sun to become cucumbers that look like cucumbers, but if you don't mind cucumbers that look like little green tennis balls, partial sun works.

This one is particularly funky/tiny.

Three:  For picking tomatoes, timing is everything.

I had this one lone, but fairly impressive tomato growing off the edge of the balcony, reaching for the sun.   I figured it would stay green, because the amount of sunlight was limited.   In fact, to my delight, the tomato started turning a lovely warm shade of red, prompting this question: when to pick it?  Should I pick it shortly before it fell a dozen feet to the concrete patio below, and if so, when would that be?

The answer turned out to be instead, "Pick it before the squirrels steal it".    Well, now I know.  

 And that's the end of my gardening experiments for this year.   Pesto and spherical cucumbers are on the dinner menu this evening!