Fungus on tomato?

Today I noticed some little brown spots on my supersweet 100 tomato leaf. I think it might be some sort of fungus since it looked a little fuzzy...I need to research organic or homemade ways to fight fungal infection. I've strayed away from the "organic" strategy from the standpoint of fertilizer (I'll explain in another post), but I want to stick with using organic methods for fighting insects/fungus/bacteria.

If you have any suggestions, it would be much appreciated!

This is just SO cool!

I was a little low on vegetables and I really wanted a salad tonight. The only thing I had was romaine lettuce and I needed a little more color but I was too lazy to go to the store. And then I remembered, I HAVE TOMATOES GROWING ON MY BALCONY!!! My second tomato was ripe (maybe could have used an extra day) so I went out and picked the tomato. This tomato was definitely better than the first. The skin was little thick, but it was very sweet. This is just so awesome.

Sweet early girl 50 tomato salad

My stevia is looking very punk rock with big heads of leaves. I'm thinking of cutting off the top to root it and hopefully promote more leaf growth near the bottom of the plant. I'll start with one to make sure that the cuttings will root.

June 27, 2011 Harvest Monday

I got my first tomato...although I think I may have picked it a little too early. Here is an early girl 50 and an ichiban eggplant.

The taste verdict...well...it was a little mediocre. I could taste the a hint of sweetness but it really lacked flavor and the skin was really really thick. The next time I will let it ripen a little longer.
        The eggplants are doing quite well! There are flowers on all three eggplants with fruits starting on the fairy tale. The plant isn't growing very much vertically, but there are quite a bit of flowers so I think I will be harvesting some more eggplants soon.

Fairytale eggplant

I am linking up to Daphne's blog for Harvest Monday! Gardeners around the world have really cool vegetable s and fruits! Go check it out!

turning color...good and bad

The purple basil are turning green. Why? I did a little googling, and it appears that this is not unusual. It seems that the heat can turn purple basil green. I shouldn't be surprised by this by now, but there are so many varieties of purple-leaf basil. I think I have a variety like the African purple basil where the leaves are supposed to turn green as they get bigger. Another site (can't remember which) suggested to pluck off all the green leaves to prevent the rest from turning green....but I don't want to do this and most likely I will just let the plant do what it wants to do. It still looks kind of cool!

On a happier note, one of the early girl 50 tomato is turning red! It happened almost over night. However, I read over on granny's blog that the first tomato is usually not so good...I'm glad I read this because if this first tomato is not so exciting, I would be really worried that the rest of the tomatoes will be bad.  So, we'll see what how it tastes - so exciting!

Harvest - June 20, 2011

There wasn't too much of a harvest this past week. I had a whole bunch of basil that I forgot to take a picture of.  But here is the "harvest" from last week - I'm hoping there will be more eggplant...and I can't wait for the tomatoes!

I'm linking to Daphne's blog for Harvest Monday!

GTTC - Jalapeno, zucchini salad & rosemary

I have no names for most of my recipes...Here is a stir fried jalapeno with salt/pepper and little soy sauce. This works only because the jalapeno is sweet and not spicy. When I was little, we used to have this dish made out of shishitou pepper (I'm not sure if there is an English name for this). Every once in a while we'd get a spicy one but that was part of the fun. It worked well with jalapeno too!

I made a little salad with the zucchini mixed in with dill and a simple vinaigrette. I only used a small sprig of dill but it gave a wonderful flavor.

Finally here is one of the few recipes I know using rosemary. It is so simple yet delicious. You pan fry the chicken with olive oil and just as the chicken is cooked you add some rosemary (let it cook for bit) then add balsamic vinegar. Let the vinegar evaporate a bit and that's it.

Chicken with rosemary sauce with beet greens and zucchini

I'm linking to Wendy's blog Greenish Thumb for garden to table challenge. Thank you for hosting the GTTC challenge!

Fairytale Eggplant flowers

The fairytale eggplant are flowering! They are similar in color with the ichiban eggplant flowers but the fairytale flowers come in clusters. It is so very cute! I hope they don't start dropping like the ichiban flowers !

These plants are supposed to get to 16-18inches, so they stay small. Right now, the plant is only 8 inches tall. The eggplant fruit is supposed to be small, but the flowers are blooming very close to the soil. So hopefully when the eggplants start fruiting I can keep them off the soil.

The zucchini continue to strive. In the larger container, the zucchini is draping to the back of the container towards the railing. I can't turn the container around because then it would be difficult to add water to the reservoir. So, I decided to stake it so that plant will grow up.

While working with plant, I noticed that right under the mulch I saw a cluster of white wormy looking thing. I yelped a little bit thinking it was maggots or something, but it turns out it was a cluster of roots growing towards a little chunk of fertilizer that I did not mix into the soil very well. I do not enjoy working with the fertilizer...it smells like fish food. yuck!

Overall, the plant seems to be outgrowing the pot (so weird because the plant in the smaller pot seems to be OK). I added ~1 gallon of fresh potting mix (with fertilizer and a little bit of coffee grounds). Hopefully this give the roots a little room to grow.