Tag Archives: cucumbers

Tomato Harvest Resumes

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Tomato harvest resumed yesterday (after more than a week) and while up there I picked a bunch of habeneros, eggplants and cucumbers.  The tomato plants are waning.  They still have mites.  Hopefully next year I can thwart the mites before they establish a colony because once established they seem impossible to eliminate.  I estimate the second harvest to last a week or so with about 8 or 9 tomatoes per plant (65-75 total tomatoes).  There is no more growth in the plants so after this they’re done for the year.  I’m not complaining about the tomatoes this year.  The morning glory vines however …. more on that later.

Update 9/11:  Harvested 15 more decent sized tomatoes today.  There might be an average of 10 greens/plant left so projected harvest might be more than 80 until the end of season.  Habeneros also are coming in as well as 9 large cucumbers.

Harvest Time

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Here’s a pic of today’s harvest.  I picked a lot of eggplants because I have been lax at picking them the last couple of weeks.  Although I don’t have numerical data, it seems like I’m producing the same number of eggplants with 8 plants as in previous years with double that many planted.  This year I went from 3 to 2 eggplants per large container and a couple of singles that have gotten rather large.  Tomatoes are still doing OK which is far better than the situation last year.

NE Corner Main Roof Status

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This corner has a collapsed box that I decided to let be this year because of the large population of volunteer snapdragons from last season.   The box contains 8 habeneros, 2 cucumbers, 1 eggplant, and 1 Cleome that I planted.  In the bottom left corner is part of the pineapple mint container which is on its third or fourth year.  Next season I’ll have to replace this box and since it supports edibles I can’t use treated wood.  This pine box painted with white polyurethane paint was built for the 2007 season so it has lasted only 6 years — which might not be so bad.  The treated wood boxes on the veranda level are on their 11th year and show no signs of wear.  I need to figure out a way to line the inside of these large box containers with some kind of plastic to protect the wood from soil moisture without introducing nasty chemicals that can get into edible plants.

Here’s the box in 2007 on SE wall main roof.

Logbook Entry: First harvest and more

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First harvest on 7/19.  Four eggplants and a cucumber.  Cuke taken from the one in the cages which is doing well.  Eggplants from caged position 2.

Possible blight on Big Boy tomato in caged position 10.  Eggplant in caged position 9 doesn’t look well.  Instead of pulling entire eggplant, took off all blighted leaves and removed all blighted stalks from tomato.  It looks like a small and isolated outbreak.  Never seen blight on eggplant before.  IMHO, the outbreak seemed to originate from the eggplant which shares its container with a Cleome (unaffected).  That eggplant has some healthy new growth so I let it be for now to see if the problem is over.

Caged Positions 11 and 12

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Caged position 11 (left) Celebrity tomato, position 12 is a cucumber from that guy in the Menards parking lot.  He usually has quality seedlings and this cucumber is doing well.

The tomatoes bounced back from yesterday.  The curled leaves are reduced in all tomatoes.  It just rained this afternoon.  I suspect the curled leaves are due to under watering and not over watering after results from an experiment done the last two days.  Will fertilize tomorrow.

Home Depot

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Tomatoes aren’t the only problem.  Home Depot sold me pickle cucumbers as real cucumbers.  Both Home Depot plants are dead in SE corner.  Normally I don’t bother with Home Depot for seedlings but decided to take a risk this year.  Note to future Mark, don’t buy any seedlings from Home Depot.  That had been my policy but I made an exception this Spring.

Cleome and Cucmbers

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Southeast corner of main roof. Cleome can grow into a monster plant and this year I decided to grow it on the main roof. Cleome might be the reason why I see more bees that could have led to increased flowering in the tomato plants.