Windy

Really windy today. Enough to blow my basil over. Teaches me for not watering it this morning. All of the plants in this container have flowered and are producing seed. The aphids are back too in huge numbers on the top 6 or 8 inches of each basil plant.

My tomatoes are almost done now. Just a few little green ones left on the vines which stopped growing a long time ago. The leaves are starting to yellow and brown from the bottom up. These plants drained all the nutrients from their containers a long time ago. I've still got lots of peppers to harvest - hot wax and California wonder. And my celery is starting to die off. I better use what I can before it's all turns yellow and withers.

Blossom end rot perhaps?

I've lost a few California wonder peppers this year to what I believe to be blossom end rot. I see it in tomatoes occasionally and although this doesn't quite look the same, I believe it is. Could be a calcium deficiency. Thinking back to what I put in the container this plant grows in, I wouldn't be surprised. But I think it's more likely a problem with water. I've been subjecting my peppers to an unbalanced watering schedule and that might be interfering with calcium uptake. Maybe next year I'll try growing these in a self-watering container.

Dying Golden Midget

I've grown other plants in this spot on the balcony, in this same container with a similar potting soil mix and fertilizers: watermelons, pumpkins, tomatoes... but I've never had one die a death quite like the one this plant is going through. The yellow leaves at the base of the plant, that have been yellow since mid June are finally turning brown and dying off completely. The plant stopped growing a little while ago. The one melon on the plant is not quite 6 inches in diameter and just turning yellow now. Golden Midget watermelons are suppose to turn yellow as they ripen but this one could be turning because the plant is dying. The melon probably needs another month to ripen. But with all the leaves dying I don't think there's much chance of that.

The one nice thing about all this is that the yellow leaves add a bit of colour to the balcony.

Yellow leaves on the Golden Midget

The leaves on my Golden Midget watermelon plant are starting to turn yellow faster now. The oldest leaves are a pure pale yellow and some have started to turn brown and die. The plant puts out a few male flowers every day but very few females. And the female flowers wither and fall before opening. The one melon on the plant is still growing and is now the size of a really large grapefruit. But it hasn't started to turn yellow yet, like it's suppose to.

Golden Midget watermelon plants have been known to turn yellow but I'm not convinced that's what is happening to my plant. I started adding ferts to the water over a week ago. Just general purpose water soluble crystals. But it doesn't appear to be slowing the spread. It almost looks like a spider mite infestation but I can't find any anywhere. It's got to be a nutrient deficiency. Or maybe over-watering. It's in a self watering container and I've never had problems with it before but who knows. Maybe it's getting more water than it wants. I suppose it could also be a virus of some kind but more likely something simple, like a lack of nitrogen. I suspect the plant will be dead before that melon is ready to pick.

Something eating my basil

I've been finding basil leaves that look like they've been nibbled on. A worm perhaps or an earwig. I'll have to go out some night with a flashlight and take a closer look. Only a few leaves though and they've been like this for a while now. A couple of weeks ago it was celery. One of my plants had all of its new growth eaten to a nub. I suspect a worm of some sort in that case. It was just the one plant and after I discovered it new growth returned to the plant and I haven't seen any damage to the celery since.

Strong Winds

Big storm with lots of gusting wind while we were out this afternoon. My four front line tomato plants were knocked down but did not completely fall off the chairs they sit on and there appears to be no damage to the plants. I'm sure a few branches and leaves got bent or crushed but it doesn't look like I lost any tomatoes. And other than those plants falling over, everything else survived just fine.

Relief from the heat

Lots of wind. We had a few days of constant winds that didn't result in any severe gusting but it was enough to beat up a few of my 'front line' tomato plants. I had to pick up some taller bamboo poles and get a little more serious about staking. Even had to add some extra bracing to keep things from falling over. One of the German Green tomato plants was leaning heavily and eventually bent out near the base as the whole plant slide a foot down the pole. I only noticed because the top of the plant looked a little droopy. Guess the pinch in the vine was cutting off it's water supply.

The poor hops vine at the back of the balcony that has been largely neglected all season has started flowering which is nice to see.

Jungle Balcony

Starting to get bushy on the balcony. There is barely enough sunlight to go around. My poor hops vine gets very little sun now. Need to give the tomatoes priority. In fact some are a little too shaded.

I've reached that point in the season where the growth seems to slow a little. Need to get some more fertilizer in the containers. Prune some of the wild growth from the tomatoes. I notice lots of suckers that have gone unpinched. I pulled up the yellow bush bean and fava bean plants that were done for the season and after mixing some ferts and compost back into the container, reseeded with peas. Hopefully I can get something more out of that container before the end of the season.

Blossom End Rot

I don't see this very often but on this particular tomato plant I've had a few of these now. And I believe the culprit is excess moisture. This plant grows in a self watering container made from a 5 gallon bucket but the fill hole is on a side I can no longer access. So I started watering it from the top and as a result it's probably not getting a consistent supply of water regularly.

There are more tomatoes on the plant that are not yet affected so maybe I should get out there and fix this watering problem. Another possibility is low calcium levels and I think I have some calcium suppliment I can use. But the soil mix and fertilizer isn't any different from the mix I used on my other plants, like my black cherry tomatoes. And I have lots of those with no end rot.

Too Windy

We've had a couple of very windy days recently and my newly planted cucumbers and tomatoes have taken a beating. Most of the tomato plants came through it alright actually. The single Opalka I planted got beaten up pretty bad but the Gold Medals and German Greens look great. I planted a single Cape Gooseberry plant and it too took a thrashing. Fortunately I have a few more spare plants still in their starter pots. I think I'll start again with this one and plant out as many more as I can find space for.

I have a few cucumber plants trying to grow on the balcony this year too but I waited to long to bring them indoors and after a day of constant wind gusts they are not looking too well. I like to bring sensitive plants indoors for the first month whenever it gets overly windy or chilly, until the plants establish themselves. I think my hesitation time will mean the end of my cucumber plants this season.


Another mistake I keep making is to use tomato cages to support them so they can grow vertically and I don't know why I continue to do this. Even the slightest breeze causes the plants to brush up against the tomato cage and the plants become damaged very quickly. I think there was a time when I had a successful season with cucumbers and tomato cages on the balcony but that was a long time ago.

Early Nutrient Deficiency

While inspecting my tender tomato seedlings I happened to notice that some of the leaves are developing a slight purple tinge and curled leaves: a sure sign of a nutrient deficiency. Perhaps phosphorous. And it's no surprise really. I'm a lazy gardener and should have applied a mild dose of general purpose ferts when the first true leaves appeared. So off I went to shop around for something, preferably with a higher P and K concentration to promote early growth.

But it occurred to me that I must have something kicking around at home. I don't need much and it doesn't have to be perfect. And sure enough I had a few options available. At first I considered using a very mild application of orchid fertilizer. It had a higher level of phosphorous but also a few micro nutrients. Probably things orchids need I suppose. Then I discovered the tail end of a bottle of an organic fertilizer solutions; 1-5-5 with a touch of Magnesium. Perfect. Hopefully it does the trick.

Syrphid Fly Larvae - Devourer of Aphids

I was inspecting some beets that have been growing in a box on the balcony for a couple of weeks now and discovered a few small worm like insects crawling about on the leaves. There didn't appear to be many aphids on the leaves that had these things so I watched them for a while and was pleasantly surprise to see them viciously attack and devour aphids when they came across them.

These are syrphid or hoverfly larvae. Hoverflies are small bee like insects that hover around flowers looking for nectar. You can find them everywhere in my part of the world. Even up on my balcony.

The larvae are fun to watch. They hunt around for aphids and when the catch one they hold it up in the air to eat it and within a few minutes, are finished eating and go looking for another. The one's I found are not very long: just a few millimeters.

What's going on out there?

I was out yesterday morning watering plants before work and when I came home in the evening I discovered my Hungarian Hot Wax plants had decided they couldn't take it any more. I'm pretty sure I watered them. Maybe it wasn't enough. Maybe the combination of aphids and heat and lack of nutrients got to them. So the plants are a write off. I harvested the peppers which were just starting to ripen into yellow. I got a dozen. The longest was six inches. I'm going to pickle them.




The sugar pumpkin is going through a tough time. My guess would be a nutrient deficiency. But which nutrient? I would guess all of them. Or maybe an imbalance. Too much of one and not of the others. The vine has pretty much stopped growing and only the leaves on the last few feet of it are still completely green but as you work back down the vine, the leave get more and more yellow and black. This plant needs help but my guess is it's already too late. And like the hot wax peppers, this was a rather sudden change.



The brandywine tomato plants are getting big - over 6 feet tall now and half a dozen tomatoes on the go. My beets are coming up nicely. And although the jarrahdale pumpkin has yet to produce a rflowering female (i see one on the way though) the plant look great and is growing fast. I might not get any pumpkins from it but it sure looks good. So things are all that bad.