Thank you PV for your post all all great tips:) My balcony is facing north and there is a bit of sunlight in the front of in usually by noon. Then its all shade for the rest of the day...Lemon trees seem to be doing fine so this will be an experiment with herbs. I didn't know about carrots that they will not grow without full sunlight (too bad was excited for some sweet young carrots) but i will look into lettuce! Your basil is amazing. what kind of basil do you have? i bought seeds of sweet basil but saw some other kinds and had a little bit dilemma of which one to choose so went with sweet one. I like growing from seeds - more fun to watch and more satisfaction than buying a grown plant. Does growing broccoli or cauliflower require a big container? I might be interested in that but I don't have room for a big container on my balcony. Fortunately I am the only person who will be using herbs for cooking and veggies (if that works out for me) so I don't need a lot. I guess just a bit of everything that I like. I still want to get some dill seeds. I bought 2 new containers - one smaller one medium and will have to figure out what to plant there.... Thanks for tips on plants and flowers! i am interested more in once that will live longer than one season... and that will add some color to the balcony. unfortunately its more of a concrete balcony and I don''t have any railings to use for attaching a windowbox. SO I am left with whatever pots/containers I put on the floor i guess. I am excited to expand flowers/plants on my patio. It's probably not he best time of the year for it -fall - but in I live in San Diego so another 2 months should still be quite warm before it's around 45-50 degrees in the winter. I also attached below pictures of how the balcony looks like and other ones in the building (it wasn't a sunny day so actually it looks a bit more gray than usually): Magda

Hello I had to relocate too and had to leave all my mint collection behind along with 6 years of collecting plants. I should have brought some with us. I dont have anything but spearmint, mint wise. But I do have Joshua tree seeds, Scabiosa(pincushion flower)in black, pink, blue, white and and one more that I just picked. I have veggie seeds I just got, let me look and see what I have. I really want all your mints(I did have all the ones you want at old house) lemon gress, and verbena. Thanks Lisa

Thank you for all of the wonderful and generous replies! For some reason, not all of the replies came to my email, so I apologize for the delay in responding to some of you. I emailed everyone back! Yes, we plan to be seed savers, so we can trade and plant more next year, or donate to other people looking to start gardening... or maybe to a community garden. I keep coming back to this site and finding there's always something new that I didn't see before (or didn't have time to check out). I hope to learn all kinds of things here and check out lots of forums and pick up tips and hints as we go. Maybe in the future, in turn we can mentor someone else. We're also experimenting with multiple gardening techniques including indoor container gardening, aquaponics (over the fish tank), and of course, outdoor gardening too... It's all a lot of fun, and the kids are having a blast (and it's not even warm enough to plant outside yet)!

If you want "SUPER" hots then find some Bhut jolokia. They are the #1 hot. I seen someone one on here had some for trade. They can be a little hard to get sprouted. 1,000,000 SHU's. They are the pepper than can put a person in the ER. He wants "HOT" they are it. FYI! Hope this helps.