Patio Plants are Going Strong: The latest pictures are in

I have to say, I have the greenest balcony I have ever seen.  I won't lie and say it is very tidy, but it definitely is very green.  The most exciting two pieces of news are:  the eggplant is finally making fruit and the pole beans I plated to grow over the balcony rails and up the side of the porch are making beans.

This is the biggest eggplant.

This one is still quite small.  I counted five of them that are definitely fruiting, and loads more flowers, as well.

You can't see the beans here, but the iPhone does not take close up pictures very well and the bean pictures just would not turn out.  When I pick a few I will take a picture of that.  Don't you think the beans look nice growing like this? 

Oh, I forgot.  There is one more piece of exciting news.  We got our first tomato off of the Belgian beauty heirloom tomato plant.  It is small, but cute.  I will let you know how it tastes.

This is the little guy before I picked him.  He is so cute.

The rest of his brothers (don't ask me why tomatoes are boys today) are much bigger and very lumpy.  They are not showing any color yet.

These two are hanging on the outside of the balcony railing.

There are s few hidden inside the foliage.  The pole beans have used some of the branches to climb up.  I am not too worried about that.

Here are a couple more future Belgian beauties.

This is what the eggplant looks like now.  If you look close you can see the leaves that were damaged by the aphid infestation.   Many of them have fallen off, and lots of new clean wonderful leaves have grown in.  It is really flowering strong.  Eggplants make such beautiful flowers.

This is the super hot jalapeno plant.  We have picked about 5 or 6 of these, and they are quite hot.  I was wondering if growing in a pot would make them wimpy, but it does not seem to have affected them.  They even made my husband cry and he loves hot peppers strait from the garden.  There he was crunching away on a whole pepper, with tears streaming down his cheeks saying, "wow, honey, these are great peppers."  I am not that into hot peppers.  I don't eat them strait and raw like that.  I like to make salsa and use them in my cooking.

This is the baby roma that I rescued.  It is just as big as its two larger twin brothers, but is a little behind.  It has has only one ripe tomato while its brothers have each had around 10.

I have always liked hens and chicks.  These are very cute.  If you don't remember, I found these in my mothers garden when she moved into a new house and we were clearing it to make room for vegetables.  They were very small and cute.  I thought they might be a smal variety, but they have grown quite large to prove me wrong.  I will definitely take these with me and plant them in the ground when we get a house.

Here are the lavender plants my daughter rescued in the same weekend.  I think they have grown as big as their pots will let them. We have picked and dried some flowers for my daughters magic potions, or should we call them chemical solutions.  She loves to mix things up and see what happens.

The cherry tomato has also run out of room in its pot, I believe.  It has really stopped growing.  It is still making tomatoes ( I took this picture after I picked the ripe ones), but I think it might not do very well in the future.  You can see the roots crowding in the pot.  Notes for next year: do not plat cherry tomatoes or romas in pots. Peppers, beans, and eggplants seem to do great though.  I think next time I will listen to the experts and plant determinant varieties of tomatoes.  There are several nice heirloom tomatoes that are determinate.  I bought one late this spring, the Bradley that I squeezed into the garden plot between the peppers and tomatoes.

This is one of the Roma twins.

The Rosemary is doing quite well.  I believe I will cut it back and dry the clippings for an herbal soap.  I do love rosemary soap.

This is the other Roma twin.

This picture is very blurry, but you can get the idea.  The cinnamon basil is huge and the flowers have gotten away from me.  I was trying to keep them clipped off, but there are just too many now.  The beans are loving them.  That is good.  That might be why everything else is fruiting so nice when it wasn't before.

This is a picture of the Belgian beauty from farther away.

Remember when I freaked out because I thought that my basil would go to seed and I wouldn't have any to go with my tomatoes when they were ripe?  I went and planted several small pots with cinnamon and Thai basil.  Well, those are now starting to bloom as well.

This is the prettiest one. The pots are kind of small. I was thinking I would transplant at least some of them into the big pot, but the other basil is so huge that is not possible,

I caught Cooper at it again.  I really should change his name to Ferdinand the Cow.

You can even see his teeth chomping on that leaf.  He is incredible.  Well, I hope you liked the virtual tour of the balcony garden.  Next up:  a tour through the community garden plot after the vandals have gone.