Not over yet

I didn't think I'd get any tomatoes this year, but the brandywine plant I started late did eventually put out some fruit for me. This is the largest and it has lots of visual character. I cut the first tomato from this plant a couple of weeks ago and it was very meaty. Juicy, with few seeds. Just what I like from a brandywine. There is one more large tomato out there I'm going to let ripen for another day or two. Then I'll be ready to take the plant down.

I've also got beets and celeriac to pull. The weather is getting cooler now. Doesn't feel quite like autumn yet, but it's coming.

Progressing quickly

This little radicchio plant is growing up the way I want it to. Inner leaves are curling and slightly red. I would like to see this one turn into a tight ball of red leaves like the radicchio I see in the grocery stores, but I just can't see it happening. Red leafed plants never grow that red for me. Lack of sun maybe, or something missing in the soil. Time will tell.

Never any trouble from my tomatoes but the one has a long way to grow. This brandywine is growing in the north corner of my balcony so it's still getting lots of shade throughout the day. Plants need to get tall in this spot to really see the sunlight. Cherry tomato plants in this part of the balcony grow well but I seem to remember not getting a lot of tomatoes from that last brandywine plant that grew here, although there might have been other reasons for that.

The tomatillos are doing well. No spidermites yet but I know they're coming. I have two plants like this in buckets and both have flowers open on them. Too early and cold to set fruit though. My night time temps for the past few nights have been around 10C and daytime under 20C.

And the cucumbers I transplanted last week are doing alright in their new homes. I tried two vines in each container last year but only one in each survived past the first month. I figured I would just go with what worked last year, although these are different cucumbers. With luck, these will be as tolerant to mildew as the Talladegas I grew last year. I find that anytime I try to grow a melon or cucumber that isn't marketed as mildew-resistant, I fail miserably. I've read that these Eureka cucumbers are the most disease resistant cucumbers you can grow so I don't expect any problems.

End of the summer heat

Lots of heat and humidity here at the end of the long weekend and I think the air conditioning has stopped working. Just beans and tomatoes on the balcony now. The melon and basil plants are gone. The tomatoes are still reaching for the ceiling, still flowering and growing like wild. I try to keep them pruned now so they don't get too top heavy and topple over.

I broke down and bought more fertilizer: inorganic water soluble. Still fruit to harvest and plants are crying out for mercy. Older growth on the tomatoes is getting yellow and curled. Leaves on the bean plants are going yellow again telling me their container needs an injection of nutrients.

I've still got lots of clusters of cherry tomatoes. The determinate plants are starting to ripen tomatoes as well. The plants in that container have a number of aphids on them but the plants don't seem to care. 

The largest tomato to come off my one brandywine tomato plant this year was 18 ounces. Thats 1/2 kg. It's the one at the back of this image. Not bad for a plant grown in a storage tote on an 18th floor balcony without full sun. Size isn't everything though and I'm guessing the taste will be so-so. I find it's always the first couple of tomatoes off the vine that taste the best. Still lots of tomatoes to ripen, and the beans are growing again. Summer isn't over yet.

Ugly Tomato

Heirloom tomatoes are notorious for growing into cracked and misshapen blobs. This brandywine is a good example of that. It had some serious cracking around the stem and decided to grow one side into a pair of lobes. On the bottom is a "hole" where the tomato seems to fold into itself. They don't all turn out like this. This is the most extreme I've seen this year. Apparently it tasted great. I left it on the counter this morning and it was devoured before noon.

Poor Tomatoes

I transplanted these a few weeks ago and they don't appear to be growing very fast: brandywine on the left, black cherry on the right. I expected them to be twice this height by now. The weather has been unusually cool here for the past couple of weeks so I'm going to blame the lack of warm weather. Otherwise they seem to be doing fine. Some of the lower leaves are damaged from rubbing up against the lids of the tote but that's ok.

I want to plant some pole beans and melons. Might be getting a little late to be starting melons from seed up here but at least I don't have to worry about frost. I've got to start some basil inside as well. I always start basil too early so this time I'm going to start it late.