Blue wildflowers suggest there's a garden longing to bloom on this undeveloped site.

There’s a conspicuously vacant lot on my block.

Its original low-rise buildings were razed some time ago in anticipation of the coming of a condominium tower. But that work ground to a halt a few months back — perhaps another casualty of these tough economic times.

Despite the building boom of the last 10 years, it’s not the only undeveloped plot of land I spied while driving through my downtown neighborhood. There was even one that seemed to be spontaneously becoming a garden, with pretty blue flowers popping up on its perimeter.

I immediately switched into “what if” mode: What if while we waited for “sold” signs those lots could somehow be put to good use…

Of course, that’s probably the kind of what if-ing that led to community gardens, which a CNN report suggests are experiencing a boom of their own.

Not surprising, with even First Lady Michelle Obama working the land by planting produce at the White House that eventually will make its way to the President’s dinner table. And, those royals across the pond will be munching organic “veg” soon, too, courtesy of Queen Elizabeth’s palace garden.

This brings me to my own small efforts toward sustainability; sadly, they’ve suffered some setbacks… After several years of extremely successful black plum and sun-sugar hybrid heirloom tomatoes in my balcony container garden, I think my streak has ended.

The black plum looked healthy when I put the plants back outside a week or so ago, but got really fried by all that heat. I thought it would come back given a little TLC, but now I think it’s a lost cause.

The sun-sugar isn’t dead, but it only has one spindly leg going on, and I don’t have high hopes of getting many tomatoes from that.

Luckily for me, I planted six heirloom tomatoes this year, and the other four seem to be doing fine. They are Isis candy, Dr. Carolyn, Wild cherry and Rosalita — all small-fruited varieties.

Meanwhile, my yellow jalapeno seems to be struggling along, and I’ve planted new herb seeds to replace most of the ones that I lost to sunburn last week.

(I also planted seeds for a vegetable that I haven’t mentioned to you before. It seems to be doing OK, and I’ll tell you more about it in a future post.)

Have you had surprise flops in your garden this summer? Share it in a comment.