Garden Update- Tomatillos, Eggplants, Peppers, etc.

Whoa- this has been a fun but slow growing season for me.  My lasagna garden method is working and there is very little weeds.  The soil is very nutritious and lots of gigantic worms are tilling my soil for me everyday.  Here is an update on some of my favorite veggies.

TOMATOES
We've had some above 90 degrees weather the last few days so my tomatoes are still green. My research shows that tomatoes will only produce lycopene and carotene, two substances that help a tomato turn red, between the temperatures of 50F and 85F. If it is any cooler that 50F, those tomatoes will stay a stubborn green. Any warmer than 85F and the process that produces lycopene and carotene comes to a screeching halt.

So big yet so green. Looks yummy though.

THAI EGGPLANTS
My eggplants are doing good though. For a while, the blossoms were turning brown then drying up and I was starting to worry. They call this blossom drop. Then I read up on it and the blossom is supposed to turn brown and dry up when pollinated. I also noticed some flowers were just straight up falling off when purple so I read that it was either lack of water or lack of pollination. I decided to water deeply first. I soaked each plant for about 2-3 minutes. That worked because now my eggplants are flowering and have less blossom drop. Below are two photos of my eggplants:

You can see the purple eggplant blossoms are growing well.
Each flower will be pollinated and become a yummy thai eggplant.
A teeny tiny eggplant can seen toward the bottom of the photo.

Here's a close up of a budding thai eggplant. So cute huh?

THAI BASIL AND DILL
My thai basil and dill is coming along great. I picked some thai basil last night for chicken curry. It was so fresh.

I actually need to harvest my dill asap and dry it before it starts to seed. Harvesting instructions tell me to cut and dry the plants when seedheads begin to turn brown and before the seeds fall. I might leave a few seedheads to fall back on to the soil so my dill will just grow back next spring without me sowing them. I'm looking forward to using the dill when I pickle my cucumbers.







This dill dressing recipe for salmon also sounds delish:

Dill Dressing
1/2 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons French dressing
1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill

YATSUFUSA: JAPANESE HOT PEPPER
My peppers are taking forever to grow. I grew some Japanese Hot Peppers- Yatsufusas type in container. At first, I added way too much garden fertilizer and the nitrogen caused a ton of green foliage but no blossoms. I kept watering my container every day to flush out the nitrogen and the soil is finally starting to normalize. Tiny white blossoms are showing up everywhere. My plant looks like this:

My plant hopefully will look like this in a month:

(From: http://www.thehotzoneonline.com/)

TOMATILLOS
I have lots of updates but I cannot forget my tomatillos. I learned that tomatillos cannot self pollinate- meaning that the flowers of single plant cannot pollinate each other. Individual tomatillo plants are either female or male. So you need at least two tomatillo plants to grow fruit. Thankfully I had sown a bunch of tomatillos indoors and had four successful seedlings to plant out. The plants are about five feet tall and I support them with a cheap three-ring tomato cage. There are a ton of yellow blossoms. I keep going out to see if there are any fruit.  The little balloon-lantern looking cover of the tomatillo is so small but I stare and stare at it and it looks like a tiny fruit is inside.  Who knows?- a watched pot never boils.  It looks like the plants pollinated and fruit is growing. I have some close photos below.

Do these look healthy to anyone?  Meaning, do these look like tomatillos will actually grow? I read that tomatillos have a long growing season so I am just hoping the plant is taking a while to mature.

Tomatillo Plant: See all the little lantern things?

Tomatillo Plant

Overall, my garden is doing great. I get up as soon as the sun rises to go check on my plants. I water deeply 1-2 times a week so it takes me about 20 minutes to get to everything. I think if I expand my garden next spring, I will have to come up with a better irrigation system. I've been harvesting lots of garden beans- french filet and kitchen king. My dogs love the beans as a snack and they gobble them up like it's doggy treats. I'll be sure to update my blog regarding the tomatillos and eggplants. Happy gardening!