It’s August and I thought I would do a quick garden journal before baby comes and the garden gets neglected. Although I’m hoping to add that to the list of “things visitors can do to help” – water the garden.  The mint is steadily growing. Caterpillars are seen here and there but they are getting harder to spot and catch because of the thick growth.

I was worried we were going to lose the Home Depot Tomato. It was getting yellowish leaves and white spots on it and every day I was cutting it down to a smaller and smaller plant. But, I think I may have saved it and now it has tomatoes galore, growing steadily. The Hop plant is winding in and out of it’s trellis sticks and I’m wondering if the tomato is enjoying the company?

I thought I had lost this tomato plant too because it had broken in a significant spot, but we bent it back up as best we could and waited to see what happened. And thankfully it continued to grow and now it has little cherry tomatoes all over it. The only problem is that the tomatoes are hanging over our balcony. Picking them may become an issue as well as ripe ones dropping to our neighbors below. We would pull the plant in, but it’s so delicate, it would most likely break in half. We shall see what becomes of this one…

Another one of our saves, the ground cherry. I planted this from seed and it was so puny for so long, I didn’t have much faith in it growing. Then when it did grow, we found rust or mites on half of the plant. I cut the whole plant back to only a few green leaves and waited to see what happened. It grew back fantastically. No more mites or rust and you can see there are ground cherry husks finally growing too.

Here is our largest tomato plant which we did not do a great job at staking. It’s just getting so large, its like a tomato tree! It hasn’t produced anything for us yet and I don’t think it will. I had two of them and one of them completely died off. As you can see this plant also has some patchy yellowish brown on it. I will try to stake it better before baby comes and maybe that will help. I think it may just be too large of a plant for a tiny balcony.

The cucumbers have gone rogue. Last year I trellised them up some sticks and it worked fantastically. This year they wanted nothing to do with the fancy store bought trellis and have branched out over their trough and are working their way down and out over our balcony. I’m waiting for my neighbor to come knock on our door with all of our bounty of cucumbers and tomatoes, since that’s where most it looks like it’s going to end up. To the left of the cucumbers, I’m still waiting for that little mini pepper to turn yellow. It’s almost there and I think that may be the one pepper we get from that plant this year.

And my husband wanted me to include his pride and joy- the flowering of his hop plant. This will turn into a hop cone which will then be collected and dried for use in his home brewed beer. Very cool! These plants are crazy growers and sprawlers. The balcony railings are covered in hops, its lovely but I’m thinking we’re going to need to move soon before the hops take over the building and we get kicked out.

And I had to end the post with this funny little monkey. She loves warming herself in the sun every morning while I tend to the garden. She’s like a cat- but cuter. 🙂

Happy August Gardening!