Yet another balcony garden

[zipcode]

This year I'm growing in containers on balcony. It's the only place I got now, but also has some advantages, biggest one being little rain due to partial roof over the plants. No sign of foliage disease until now. Problem: only 4 h of sun max, and it's from 2 to 6 pm, the hottest part of the day, and it gets impossibly hot due to being in the inner courtyard of a building and wind doesn't move the air. 130F+ is normal, and we haven't had any real heat yet (which is unusual for this period).
I have 7 plants. 6 are paired, 2 together in 10 gallon containers, and a new big dwarf in a 4-5 gallon.
To maximize available sun and the tomato/leaf ratio they are pruned to 1 stem. Which is a problem, as some are getting very tall and in a few weeks will reach the ceiling.
So I have L. Cheesemanii together with a neves azorean red, then a moravsky div with an indian stripe, ludmilla's red plum with coeur de pigeon f2, and then the lone NBD.


L. cheesemani - a plant that is made for flowers apparently, not fruits. A few thousands of flowers on each truss, most of them will not make fruits it seems, also veeery late for some reason (it uses too much energy into making all those flowers I think). Also very sensitive to fertilizers, probably needs less then normal. No sign of fruits approaching ripening yet. In picture, that's part of 2 flower clusters (flowers are coming out from all sides).








Neves azorean red - serious leaf curl, but otherwise some big tomatoes growing on it. Not much catfacing, just some minor zippering. Also no green shoulders while green, which is a good thing to have for nice tomatoes. Serious thick stem and the leaves have a slightly sweeter smell than normal.





Moravsky div - early, a few fruits are ripe, only had one to eat so far. Nice looking plant, many small 1-4 oz fruit (10-15 per truss). Grows very well and fast as a seedling.









Indian stripe - unusually small plant, much smaller than NBD for example. Serious determination to make tomatoes, maybe too much. Plant got a bit stuck in a huge first cluster. 9 tomaotes on this cluster and all are already 7-9 oz each. Some minor catfacing on all.








Ludmilla's red plum - unreasonably tall plant with droopy and somewhat wispy/twisted foliage. Doesn't make more than 6 flowers per truss, but they can grow big it seems, already there's one above 10 oz on it. This plant is too tall. Otherwise grows well.







Coeur de pigeon f2 - from a store tomato called coeur de pigeon. A hybrid from france, sold by saveol. Some really good grape cherriesa with heart
shape (like drawn heart not real heart) which keep very well and have extremely thin skin. No sign of heart shape in f2. Some friend is also growing a few, all are a bit different grapes. Most healthy plant, serious setter. 50-150 flowers per truss and ALL make fruits. Some are close to being ripe, so it's quite early.








New big dwarf - has a good amount of tomatoes, with pretty serious catfacing, fruits are ripped badly. No sign of ripening. Has all sorts of problems with some deficiecny or another, looks like magnesium and iron and zinc at least, very deficient, plant looks like it will dye after it will make these 15-18 fruits set (which isn't all that bad, they are a good size).






Also 2 pepper plants in small pots (less than a gallon I think). One palanacka babura:



and a Nocturne:



They are doing very well, surprisingly so.









And an overview of the 'garden'






All use some floraself mix (peat and some compost and perlite, sold in Hornbach), and fertilized with neudorff tomaten dunger.

[sprtsguy76]

Very nice container garden you have there! L. cheesemani has some crazy blooming action going on there. Thanks for the pics.

Damon

[kath]

Yeah, it looks great, especially good results with the extreme heat and limited sunlight. Hope those grape tomatoes taste good! I've got way more curling and diseased leaves going on here. Enjoyed your photos and commentary.

[zipcode]

Thank you for the kind words.
I'll keep the thread updated with more pics and impressions about taste and production.

[clara]

zipcode, that looks very promising! It seems that in Germany, we'll have a very good crop this year. clara

[FILMNET]

All I can say is WOW!!! Beautiful looking fruit and plants

[Aphid]

wow.... amazing carpet of blooms going on there !

[mdvpc]

What I love about posts like yours is that when people want to have a garden, they will find a way to do it. Your garden looks great, the plants are healthy and you are going to have a nice harvest!

[barefootgardener]

What a beautiful container garden you have! That cheesemanii plant is still pretty w/all those blooms! Wow!

I need to go smell the leaves of my NAR plant now.. growing it for the first time this year and it's doing well. but will be a while before my tomatoes are as large as yours..Nice!!

[Mark0820]

Your container garden is very nice. The size of those tomatoes are amazing.

[zipcode]

That NAR cluster which has 7 tomatoes on it almost broke today. I suspended it now, but the branch is badly constricted and partly ripped. I sure hope it will recover, they looked like could get big, towards 12 oz.

Also, I thought I'd share the staking system, which was a big problem to come up with. How do you properly support tall and heavy tomato plants in containers which have a much fluffier mix than soil, and not as deep. Also, how do you space the 2 tomatoes in the same container? They would be very close to each other.


Solution is as follows: buy plastic pots with edges. You can see how they look in the last pictures. Then buy some bamboo stakes of about 2 m or more, 1-1.5 cm thick and preferably strong. There's nothing better than bamboo as far as non metal goes. Metal ones were very expensive, these were cheap.


Make a hole near each plant in the container edge (without getting too close to the edge of the ... edge or else it will break when plant gets heavy). Drive the bamboo stake through it all the way down. Do the same to the other plant. Then wrap the best sticky tape you can find all around the stakes and the container (wrap multiple times, till all the container is covered). You can see a bit how it looks in last pic.


Now you have a well fixed stake which will lead slightly towards the outside of the container, which is good, as it will lead the plants from each other. Now when plant gets heavy with fruit, the stakes will bend towards outside maybe a bit much. When that happens, connect them with a hard thread in the middle of the 2 stakes in same container, and bring them a bit closer together. What I noticed is that when plants are young, the leaves are very spread, and they droop quite a bit when plant is older, so they don't need to be so far spread, instead, it's better for the stake to be more vertical, so the weight of the plant doesn't break the stake, all the weight will be supported by the ties you made (preferably make one tie under each flower cluster).


Well, there you have it. I hope you understood what I meant to write, and hopefully someone will find it useful.

[zipcode]

First indian stripe of the year. A megabloom at 13 oz. The picture shows the blossom end. As you can see it's a doughnut tomato, sepals are coming out from the middle (that's how it was even as a flower).