Greetings from the balcony garden! It’s me, again, Sig — beginning gardener, budding grower and blog contributor for the new season of PBS Wisconsin’s Let’s Grow Stuff. While our show co-hosts, Ben Futa and Qwantese Winters, are hard at work filming and sharing gardening techniques, insights, how-tos and hacks from their wells of expertise, I’m chiming in throughout the growing months to share what I’m learning as a newbie urban gardener using containers to transform a small apartment balcony in Madison into a green(er) space begetting good eats (veggies)!

I plan, I plant, I “please, Mother Nature, help me pull this off.”

We last touched base in April when it was still brisk outside. Fast forward to early June (hi there!) and . . . plants are planted (yip!). For the most part, I used purchased transplants which, while less purist and economical than starting seeds indoors, is fun, social and helped me get to know our local economy of independent retailers, suppliers and workers in the garden and landscape sector (super nice folks).