Garden Update – Waiting for Red-o

Well, my garden is still pretty green – foliage is thriving, though no red tomatoes are to be seen.  I did spy my neighbor’s garden from the back deck Sunday afternoon, and saw only one red tomato amongst the urban-vast stretches of green, so perhaps our little microclimate is just sluggish in getting our tomatoes to turn red.

The tomatoes that are on the vine are green, firm and healthy… except for another small tomato found with blossom end rot (BER).  This tomato was on the same plant, in the same part of the plant as the other tomato with BER.  Both tomatoes were sharing a branch that created “big bertha”, as I endearingly call her – a gigantic tomato, probably 5 inches across.  I wonder if that tomato is just sucking up all the nutrients, denying the other two tomatoes any chance of thriving.   This question will be answered perhaps if this gigantomato turns red without any rot.

I also picked this beast of a  lemon cucumber last weekend:

It’s about 3 inches across, by far the largest lemon cucumber I’ve ever seen.  It was hiding under the leaves in the corner, so I’m glad I found it when I did.

Remember this?

This is a mystery plant that appeared under my ground cherries and in the middle of my tomato plants.  I thought it was summer squash but now believe it to be more cucumber plants; the flowers are quite similar to the cucumber flower on my lemon cucumber plants.  I’ll know for sure once it starts fruiting.

I’ve also started harvesting ground cherries.

These ones beat the pants off of the ones I grew last year – they are sweeter, tastier, and bigger.  I believe the quality of soil I’m using is just much better than the soil I had access to at the community garden.  The weather – hot, hot, hot – probably has something to do with that, too.

I really can’t wait until the tomatoes ripen!