Are your Tomatoes Ready for Harvesting?

I’m happy that the cold is slowly receding giving way to pleasant weather. But that’s not what I want to share with you all today. I have some very exciting news for you : our balcony garden is thriving and the tomatoes are ready for picking. Woohoo! We – my son and I – the gardeners of the house plan to pick the first harvest of the season tomorrow.

If you recollect, I wrote about five vegetables to grow in balconies last summer. We lost tomato saplings twice in succession to some annoying rodents in the balcony. We were lucky the third time and the plants have survived month-long vacation, weather changes among other things to grow into mature plants.

This is how the plants looked mid-January. In the first week of December, when we left for vacation, the plant was growing real fast, almost a feet and half tall. When we returned on 2nd January, I noticed two teeny-tiny green spheres and a few flowers. Was I excited? You bet. Within days, the spheres grew big into these tomatoes and one other flower transformed into a fruit. But all that magical growth stopped suddenly for three weeks. They didn’t grow bigger nor did they ripe.The leaves weren’t looking healthy any more. They turned yellow and eventually dried.

Some organic compost I did caused a imbalance I guess. So last Sunday, I added two spoons of milk so that the plant gets some calcium. And before we know, the growth was back; the tomatoes started turning red.

This is the transformation I was talking about. Look at the changes between Sunday and today. How are your tomato plants faring? Can we hear about some vegetable garden stories here?