Hopefully the 1st in a week of more firsts…This is Yellow Balconi, a compact determinate (the ones in the inner pot circle). A couple of the plants now have yellow, which presumably for this variety, means ripe fruit ! They’re quite tricky to spot and get to. These small ’patio’ varieties have fleshy, stiff leaves which don’t like to give or move aside for picking purposes. Instead the leaf canopy forms a protective cage over the fruit.
And then this…. a little bonus fruiting. I bought a red pepper plant from an allotment plant sale, got used to it being the ‘small green plant in a big pot that didn’t do much‘ and then one day spotted some quite showy white flowers, followed by this:
For zoos it’s the arrival of a panda or polar bear cub – for the vegetable gardener it’s the moment a tiny vegetable appears – a tomato or pepper cub ? You can see the ‘adult’ it will grow into but for the first few days it’s a little bit separate from that and whilst no ball of fluff, it’s crowd pleasingly cute and endearing .
