Well, the gardenning season is over. We got a hard frost this weekend. The tomatoes never produced the deluge I expected, but we do still have plenty in the fridge. I kept having problems with them bursting while green. And even when the frost hit, they still had plenty more on them. We brought in the larger green tomatoes before the frost and are hoping they will rippen.
The peppers produced reasonably, and I brought most of the plants inside before the frost, so we’ll continue having fresh jalepenos for a while.
The mint was doing well outside, except for the chipmunks snacking on it. It’s not really in a big enough, pot though, so it didn’t grow big enough for me to pick any. And now that I’ve brought it inside, it looks unhappy.
The beans and basil never really produced much.
There’s a funny book where a major plot element is champion cucumber growers having their cukes explode. Which I thought was really funny until I heard that the bane of real-life champion pumpkin growers was having their gourds blow up. And then it went to being … French “ahurissant” (this is the second time tonight I blank on the english term).
Anyway, what’s relevant is that the NPR interview about this issue mentioned that New England got a lot of late rain, which caused plants to take on too much water and explode their fruit. This may have been your issue.
You can get hydroponic basil and plant it, indoors in a pot in a south-facing window, preferably over the radiator. Thin it out a lot (yum!), down to one or two plants, or they’ll starve each other. But don’t break the root bundle, that just kills all the plants. Let it just barely start to vaguely wilt, then water heavily, and don’t water again until it looks slightly pathetic again.