This is what my balcony/patio looks like from the lawn. We live on the second story. I am worried that my nasturtiums that are creeping downwards might annoy the neighbors. I will have to tell them that I will trim them up if they want.
This is the side view of the nasturtiums in the jalapeno pot. They are really taking over. Poor pepper.
This is the creepingest nasturtium I have ever seen. Before you ask, I don't know where you can get some seeds that grow like this because I planted seeds from two packets and one was a mixed variety bag, Alaskan Mix if I am not mistaken. I don't know which seeds I planted in what pots. They are all different colors, from yellow to dark orange.
Here is a front view of the poor jalapeno. You can barely see it peeking out the top. I did move the flowers aside to take pictures of the peppers. Scroll down to see those.
Yum, I can't wait till I can pick these along with the tomatoes and make some spicy hot salsa. My husband loves hot peppers in everything.
You can see how much of a jungle it is in this pot.
This is that little tiny Roma that I found in a pot and rescued earlier in the year. One of the pots that I planted hops in never came up, so I put that poor tomato plant into it instead. It desperately needs to be staked up. I will have to make it to the store to buy a stake for it soon, or it will be drooping out of the pot. It is already heavy with tomatoes.
This is the cherry tomato plant. You can see some of the tomatoes are turning orange. These are orange when ripe, and I have been picking ripe ones and eating them for over a week. There are at least a couple ripe ones out here every day.
Aren't these clusters of tomatoes beautiful. They ripen from the inside towards the tip.
Here is that super creeping nasturtium from the other side. The poor Roma tomato that shares it's pot doesn't know what to do.
This is the other Roma tomato. You can see the pole beans really climbing the railing from this pot. Every pot has at least one or two of these beans climbing around. I have not seen any bean flowers on these yet, so I will not have any beans for a while still.
This pot holds the heirloom tomato. It has been flowering for a month now, at least. It finally has two fruit set. I just noticed them today. I hope it starts really setting fruit now. I can't wait to see how the fruit look when they are ripe. They are supposed to be purple and green and delicious.
They are still both really small, but I hope they grow quickly and large.
This is the eggplant which has also been flowering for quite a while without setting any fruit. I have tickled some flowers with a paint brush without any effect.
I take back everything I said about not believing in pinching back basil. In the past when I pinched off basil blooms they just sent out more blooms and never another leaf, but not this time. Look at this huge bush of cinnamon basil. It sent out its first blossoms about two weeks after I transplanted it from the store. Look at it now.
This pot has one pole bean and two hop plants. From this far back all you can see is the bean.
Here you can see one of the hops peeking out from under the bean.
I lifted back the big bean leaves and here you can see the climbing stalks of the hops.
The hens and chicks are really filling up their pots and starting to send out little chicks.
I kind of freaked out when my basil started flowering, thinking that I would run out of basil before my tomatoes were ripe, so I planted eight of these small pots with several basil seed each. This is Thia basil. I will have plenty of basil even after I thin these to a couple per pot.
Here are the seedlings up close. Cute.
The patio garden has not been all fun and games, however. I have a couple bad things to tell you about. Have you ever heard of tomato end rot? Well, my master gardener mother says it is very common in potted tomatoes. It happens because the soil is allowed to dry to much between watering's. It turns out that Roma tomatoes are especially susceptible. I should have looked this up before I decided to plant three Roma tomatoes in containers on my porch this spring. Check this out:
I know I am not alone in saying, "Gross!?!" Well the only thing I can do is water them deeply and frequently and hope it is enough.
Another problem I am fighting is aphids on my eggplant:
Eggplant flowers are beautiful. I would grow this plant just for the flowers, but look at all the aphids.
They are covered.
This poor flower is drowning in aphids before it even has a chance to open.
These young shoots and buds are covered, too.
I tried bringing home lady bug eggs and larvae from the community garden. They ate a lot and grew very fast, but didn't even make a dent. The adults have flown away and I don't see any eggs left behind. I also, later, tried soapy water like you read about in all the home garden books. That seemed to help for a day or two, but now the aphids are back and worse than ever. I have never had and aphid problem this bad that lasted this long Usually after a while some kind of natural enemy moves in and starts getting the population explosion under control.
I will give the ladybug thing another try as soon as I find some more lady bug eggs at the garden or at work Maybe I will find some syrphid fly larvae in the orchard I can bring home to eat the aphids.
Hopefully, it will not be so long before my next post about the patio garden because things should start getting exciting soon with tomatoes to harvest and jalapeno peppers. The next post will be about the community garden.
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