Sunday, January 06, 2008

Update on my vegetable and herb garden.


The tomatoes are doing well and we already picked some grape and cherry tomatoes. The fat boy tomatoes are growing nicely but they are weeks away from ready.

This year I have a couple of eggplant plants and they are growing very nicely. My only problem is--how do I know when they are ready to be picked? If anyone out there has any ideas, please let me know.

Most of the herbs are doing well except for the sweet basil. This is the second year that the leaves turned brown and the plant looks sickly. My local nursery tells me that it is a problem from the growers that supply the plants; maybe next year I will grow my plants from seeds.

8 comments:

Carol Michel said...

That eggplant looks ready to pick to me! The size looks right.

Carol, May Dreams Gardens

Meems said...

Rusty: your eggplant looks perfect to me... the size, the color. But what would I know? I only pick them out at the supermarket- not from the vine. LOL

I've been told by my favorite nurseryman the trouble with your basil is some kind of mealy something(?)(can't remember what he called it). I keep mine in my screened-in lanai where it gets lots of sun. It's given me lots of yield there so far.

verobirdie said...

yummi! I hope my tomatoes will grow that way, when time comes.
I heard that basil hates to have its foot in water. I was told to water it in the morning (whereas I should water all the other plants in the evening, when the sun is gone).

Tira said...

Those tomatoes look great.
Looks like you have leaf miners in your basil-just give them a good pruning and throw the infected leaves in the trash.

Meems said...

That was it - leaf miners- thanks Nicole.

Tira said...

I always grow my basil from seed and a couple times they got leaf miners-its actually the eggs and larvae of a tiny flying insect, similar to a sandfly. They seem to breed in warm weather. The trick is to pick and dispose of the infected leaves. Don't let them drop into the soil, as thats where they mature and continue the cycle. What I did, in addition to removing the infected leaves, was put a mulch under the plants to break the cycle.

Yolanda Elizabet Heuzen said...

Your tomatoes are looking good Rusty. Lucky you that you are having fresh tomatoes from your own garden.

The eggplant fuit is ready for picking. They are ripe when they turn that rich deep aubergine colour and have grown to about the size yours has now. Happy picking and eating!

Rusty in Miami said...

Thanks everybody for the advised