I have two sets of pictures that I could use for today’s photoessay. I have the “happy” pictures of pretty flowers and vegetables, and then I have the depressing pictures of sick and dying plants. Since I’m guessing that most of you would rather see the “happy” pictures, and I couldn’t figure out how to turn this blog post into a “choose your own adventure” type post, I’ll go that route. However, if you really want to see the plants in throes of pain and suffering, I’ll give you a link after every happy picture to balance it out.

This first picture is a bit of a mixed bag in and of itself. This is our 100 gal. Smart Pot that has 4 pepper plants and a cucumber plant in it. The two pepper plants on the left are gorgeous and flowering. The two pepper plants on the right are pale yellow (looks like they need some nitrogen!), and chewed upon. The cucumber isn’t bad, it’s just being really really pokey about growing. I suspect that it thinks it isn’t getting enough sun in that spot.

Our three bagged apples on the columnar apple tree are growing and doing well inside their little baggies..so far. Even though this kind of looks like a smothered apple, if you want to see another sad plant picture, you can click to get an eyeful of some Black Rot on our grapes.

The Brandywine Tomato is finally starting to flower. It’s been taking its own sweet time about it. This flower is huge, and it looks like it’s actually a double. See the two centers? If this flower sets a tomato, it’s going to be huge and strange! If you want to be morbid about it, you can take another look at the Early Blight that’s getting started at the bottom of this same plant.

This ‘Early Sunsation’ Bell pepper has a few baby bell peppers set. They should get a lot bigger before harvest. Technically they will also turn yellow if you leave them on the plant long enough. I think the plan this year is to harvest them when they are mature size but still green, since that means that the plant will actually produce more peppers instead of pouring all it’s energy into 2 or 3 yellowing peppers.

Completely unrelated to peppers, but if you want to see another diseased plant, you can look at the gorgeous, highly decorative spots that are showing up on our strawberry leaves. If you find you want to know everything there is to know about Strawberry Leaf Spot, you can check out this website from Cornell. Since ours is not a commercial plot, we probably aren’t going to do much about it at this point.

This is one of the immature tomatoes on the ‘Brandymaster’ tomato plant, the hybrid version of the Brandywine. It is definitely earlier in setting on fruit than it’s heirloom parent, but the fruit at least promises to be as strange. Both plants are getting absolutely huge!

Our beets are also looking a bit puny, although they are a bit better after getting a little fertilizer. Of course, all is not perfectly well. Some of them have more of those beautiful spots…in this case they are Cercospora Leaf Spot.

The Chinese Long Beans are starting to bloom, which means we’ll have cute, tiny “long” beans next week. In the meantime we have these gorgeous flowers to enjoy!

Sorry, no more sick plant photos. It’s too depressing! Have a great weekend!