Harvest on 8/22. Eggplants from fat eggplant in caged position 1 which is growing extremely well. The tomatoes are producing without BER and will probably reach an average of 25/plant or 200 tomatoes total for the year. This haul was 17 and today (8/25) there were 13 and they keep coming day after day. Second wave harvest might be doubtful as some kind of blight is setting in. More on this later.
Tag Archives: eggplants
Tomato Harvest Resumes
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
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
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.
Caged positions 7 and 8
Caged position 7 (left) two eggplants and caged position 8 (right) Big Boy tomato. For some reason, these two positions sitting right next to each other in the middle of the row represent the largest of their kind. The two eggplants are the largest I have ever seen growing on this rooftop. The Big Boy is the largest tomato so far but I had never grown this type before. This Big Boy is the biggest of all four that have been planted in this row. It is clear that three eggplants per 20 gallon container is too much.
Overall tomato status update: Hard showers are a daily occurance for tomatoes, cukes, and eggplants. After the second hard pruning I have not seen any mites even though some leaves are curled. Pulled another stunted BER tomato from a Big Boy but it looked like a reject. No BER on Celebrity so far (knock on wood). Lots of green. First real harvest should be sometime this week or next. The tomatoes did a hard fail right after the first week of August last year (see archives). So far so good this year. Zeem application may not be necessary but having a bottle in storage might prove useful for later and certainly next year.
Spider Mites!
Caged positions 9 and 10 taken on 7/19. As mentioned in the previously dated post, caged position 10 sufferred from the same blight like condition as what happened the last bunch of years.
Today I cut out curled leave sections of all tomatoes and found spider mites on every tomato. It has been spider mites that have been killing my tomato plants. I pruned all the real bad branches off of all tomato plants today and gave them a hard shower as recommended by some sites including this one. Now that I know what this is I might be able to thwart it. Will look into that Neem oil at Home Depot. There are home remedies but I’m not at the stage where I can experiment with that.
Update: The bad eggplant is behind the Cleome in caged position 9. This eggplant seems to have recovered from its spider mite infestation.
Update 7/22: The tomatoes look better. Some curled leaves. Checked for mites and found some and perhaps some eggs but not as many as yesterday. Gave them and eggplants another hard shower. All the eggplants seem infested as well. In hindsight I feel kind of stupid for not realizing this over the past 6 or 7 years of crop failure. Mixing eggplants into the tomatoes and seeing them suffer first was a major clue. Plus, this little blog thingy which no one reads has perhaps helped me gather my thoughts so that this year, I actually did some investigation and observation — because I wanted to enter it in this log book. Still haven’t gotten to harvest yet but I feel optimistic.
Note: I had a decent crop in 2006 when I grew a six tomatoes on north wall. I don’t recall any sudden failure. I need to figure out the source of the spider mites. NE and SE corners do not show mites. Cucumbers are affected as well which could explain the Cucumber failure last season.
Update 7./26: Skipped watering main roof. Rained last night early morning and everything still seems soggy up there. Gave tomatoes hard shower however. Big Boy in caged position 7 is the biggest. Caged position 10, the tomato that showed first signs of distress and the one that produced 3 small BER red tomatoes, produced a small red tomato with very little BER. This is good compared to previous years. Though not scientific, my casual observation indicates that the number of green tomatoes is lower than previous years but none show distress and no BER (knock on wood). There is second growth so we’ll see what kind of harvest this crop brings. Any harvest will be an improvement from the last bunch of years.
Update 7/27: Heavily pruned tonight. Lots of mites but less than and slower than when first spotted. Caged positions got a hard shower. Might have to get the Zeem and a spray bottle from Home Depot. I’ll try and get some pics up soon.
Logbook Entry: First harvest and more
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 Eggplants on Main Roof
Caged position 2 (left) and 3 (right). Celebrity tomato in position 2, two eggplants in position 3. These eggplants are the largest so far of the 8 planted this year.
Update: I usually plant 3 eggplants in these 20 gallon tubs but only put 2 in this year. From the looks of this container 3 would have been too crowded.
Caged Position 14
Caged position 14, the last caged position, contains 1 eggplant, 1 Cleome, and a bunch of volunteer snapdragons from last year. This is an end container in the tomato line. These three plants seem to be getting along OK so far however the Cleome looks a little stunted. Some of the Cleome seedlings from Gesethemane were duds and I got no volunteer Cleome from the plants grown last season. Eggplant grow like a weed on the rooftop and are heavy producers.
Update Note: Since this container contained volunteers from last year its soil was not turned thus mushroom compost was not added. This could be an influence on plant size.