Some cheeky bastards are stealing from my garden!

Damn squirrels, they've finally discovered the rooftop vegetable garden.  They ate one of my last 2 tomatoes that survived the tornado and a bunch of my cherry tomatoes.  They haven't touched the peppers or eggplants yet.  Oh well, at least it's the end of the season.  I have a while to think of some preventative measures for next year.  If anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears.

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Vegetable Harvest Report 08 2010

September 14-September 24:

Cherry Tomatoes:  7.4 ounces

Cucumber:  3 ounces

Eggplant:  4.7 ounces

Hot Pepper:  2.1 ounces

Sweet Pepper:  2 pounds, 13.3 ounces

Weight Total:  3 pounds, 14.5 ounces

Running Weight Total:  57 pounds,  8.9 ounces

Food production is really winding down, but I don't mind because I just passed last year's harvest.  Woohoo!

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Phoenix Tribal #25

Pen & ink on bristol board, 14x11.

To see more of my work please visit my tribal art site.

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So there was a tornado in Bushwick!

And not just one, but two tornadoes hit New York!  The NY Times has a nice map depicting the path of destruction.  Bushwick was hit by the weaker of the 2, the one with 80mph winds.  Fallen trees are still all over the neighborhood.  Hopefully the City can clear them before the next work week starts.

I finally spotted our lost bbq.  It's on the roof of the building behind us, hiding behind an air duct.

Actually, it's sitting on the roof of the store we bought it from so that made me laugh.

I spent the day clearing debris from the roof and tending to the vegetable garden.  I put the cucumber plant out of its misery and re-trellised the peas.

One of the tomato plants lost all of its fruits so I removed it too.  The other one has 2 tomatoes left, I hope they ripen before the end of the season.

My first DIY self-watering container was punctured by something during the tornado.  Luckily the hole is several inches above the bottom of the container so it can still hold a substantial amount of water.

So the Bushwick tornado of 2010 took 1 cucumber plant, 1 tomato plant, a few pepper plant branches and a small bite out of one of my DIY self-watering containers.  All in all not too bad.

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Mother Nature just kicked my *ss

Wow, can you believe that storm?  Tornado-like is right!  I was outside when it hit, stuck on a corner with a vacant lot.  It got so terrifyingly bad so suddenly I didn't even have time to open my umbrella, not that it would have helped!  The closest building required me to either cross a very busy street against the light or walk into the wind, which was impossible since it almost blew me over.  I was pelted with tons of debris, luckily nothing big or heavy.  Eventually a good samaritan was able to open his car door and let me wait out the aftermath.  I thought I was going to die!  I'm very thankful I didn't.  Thank you good samaritan, I should have gotten your name but I was too shell shocked to do so.

Tons of tree limbs were knocked down.

An entire tree was uprooted.

This poor guy lost his roof.

This building lost some siding.

  
A tree branch smashed the rear window of this car.

These guys lost their roof too.  It landed in the vacant lot I was close to.

I was less than 75 feet from my home, but I'm actually glad I didn't make it there.  Once the rain stopped I saw this tree limb in front of my building.  I'm incredibly happy I wasn't there when the limb fell.

Here's the roof and the vegetable garden.  We accounted for everything except the bbq grill.

Some of the pepper plants lost a few branches, but I was able to salvage the fallen peppers.  Guess what I'll be eating for the next few days?

Hopefully the peas will recover.

Overall the garden came out ok.  A lot of the containers were knocked over and I lost a bunch of tomatoes, but it definitely could have been worse.

Honestly though, I don't care.  I could have gone on that roof and discovered complete destruction and I still would have been happy with the outcome.  I'm alive!! Woohoo!!!

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Vegetable Harvest Report 07 2010

August 31-September 13:

Cherry Tomatoes:  11.6 ounces

Cucumber:  13 ounces

Eggplant:  9.5 ounces

Hot Pepper:  2.4 ounces

Sweet Pepper:  13.8 ounces

Tomato: 3 pounds, 15.6 ounces

Weight Total:  7 pounds, 1.9 ounces

Running Weight Total:  53 pounds,  10.4 ounces

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Sunscald and peppers, again

After I pulled off the nth pepper due to sunscald it occurred to me that practically all of them were from the Islander pepper plants, which is weird because the other pepper plants get a few more hours of sun than these do.  Maybe they're more prone to sunscald because of their dark coloring?  They retain more heat than the lighter colored ones?  Who knows!  I'll move them and see if that helps.

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Vegetable Plant Update 03 2010

I have read everywhere that determinate tomato plants grow to a certain size, produce a concentrated bunch of fruit that ripen all at the same time and then die.  Both the cherry tomato and  regular tomato are determinate, so when all of the tomato plants produced a bunch of fruit in July that ripened very quickly in the endless heat, I thought the vegetable plants were done and contemplated pulling them out and planting something else in their containers.  Well I'm glad I never made up my mind because the plants eventually grew more flowers and produced a 2nd wave of fruit.   The cherry tomato is actually on it's 3rd wave now.  Admittedly the later fruit is not as flavorful as the first set, but the taste of any garden grown vegetable still far surpasses anything you can buy in a supermarket.

In regard to early blight the cherry tomato plant is doing well.  It went  through some defoliation due to the disease, but it continues to grow more leaves to replace the ones lost.  The 3rd of wave of fruit is much smaller quantity wise than the 2nd wave, but considering I never even expected a 2nd or 3rd set of fruit I'm happy with whatever this plant produces.

The Orange Blossom tomato plants are not doing as well.  The vegetable plant on the right side of the container was hit particularly hard.  I already harvested most of the 2nd set of fruit and I doubt there's enough time left in the growing season for the plants to bounce back, like the cherry tomato, so it's unlikely a 3rd set will ripen before it gets cold.

The cucumber plant is surprisingly still hanging on.  The spider mites have really worn this vegetable down, but it's still producing cucumbers so I'm leaving it be.

The cantaloupe have been devoured and the plants removed from their container.  I stuck some snow pea seeds leftover from last year in their place.  I only got 3 fruits from the 2 plants, and they took forever to mature, but they were so incredibly sweet and awesome that they're definitely worth the space and time.  Next year I'll plant a variety with a shorter growing time.

The eggplants and other peppers are doing great, no complaints from me.

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Phoenix Tribal #24

I was finally inspired again, yay!

Pen & ink on bristol board, 11x14.

To see more of my work please visit my tribal art site.

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