Reading Round Up: Candy Corn Edition

Happy Halloween everybody!

Read about the history of candy corn and candy psychopaths at the Atlantic's pre-Halloween series. Candy psychopaths would make a fantastic band name.

Here's an interesting use for pumpkins.

A Washington man eats nothing but potatoes for 2 months.

Montreal gets the world's first commercial-scale rooftop greenhouse.

I hope this is true, maybe I'll do this after my annual Halloween candy binge, reduce body fat by drinking vinegar.

Burlington, VT gets a roving vegetable stand.

In Iowa the race for Secretary of Agriculture will be a bellwether of our national attitudes towards food and agricultural policy.

Food and community grow together.

London gets its first indoor inner-city farm.

Global market research firm Mintel reports vegetable gardening will be a major trend in 2011.

Cleveland, OH has the largest urban agriculture district in the US.

View a rap video about organic dairy.

Live in a ghost town. This isn't food related but I wanted to share it anyway.  I couldn't live there year round, but it would perfect as an unusual break from from city life.

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Vegetable Harvest Report 10 & Plant Report 05 2010

October 11-October 26:

Eggplant:  6.3 ounces

Hot Pepper:  1.5 ounces

Sweet Pepper:  13.7 ounces

Weight Total:  1 pound, 5.5 ounces

Vegetable Harvest Total:  60 pounds,  10.1 ounces

After I harvested the last of the hot peppers and eggplants I pulled the plants from their containers.  Now the only vegetables left in the garden are the sweet peppers, the cherry/regular tomatoes and the peas.  Surprisingly, my last 2 tomatoes are still on the plant, I thought for sure the squirrel would get them.  I wonder what he's up to, I haven't seen any evidence of him on the rooftop lately.

The lipstick pepper and the cherry tomato are still putting out flowers.  I've been pinching them off so that the plants focus their energy on maturing the existing fruit and not making new ones.  I still have a bunch of green peppers and cherry tomatoes waiting to be plucked, hopefully the fruit will change color before frost arrives.

The peas are 5 feet tall now, one plant tops the reed fence.  It better stop growing because it's got nowhere else to go!

There's powdery mildew at the base of the pea plants but I don't care, it's too late in the season to worry about it.  Baking soda is an option though if I wanted to treat it.

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Top Vegetable Seeds for Rooftop Container Gardening

Welcome!  If you’re new here, thanks for stopping by.  Bucolic Bushwick is a blog about container gardening vegetables.  Have a look around and please enjoy this post about the best seeds for rooftop container gardens.

Since I'm new to container gardening vegetables I try to grow different seed varieties every year, there's very little overlap between what I grow the previous year and the current year.  I'm not saying that none of the seeds are worth growing again, it's just that my container garden is so small that if I saved seeds I would have very little room left to try something new.  In a few years time, once I gain more experience and steadily add more containers to the garden, I plan to save a group of containers solely for my "greatest hits."

These vegetable seeds made the list because they're well suited to container growing, adapted well to the sunny & windy rooftop environment, have a high level of fruit production, and most importantly, they have fantastic flavor.  This list is really short right now, but obviously I'll add more as I grow more.

Cherry Tomato: Orange Paruche

I actually struggled with growing this plant, mostly because I placed it in an inappropriate container, but it was worth all the babying I had to do because the cherries tasted like tangerines.  I'm serious!  I didn't know it was possible that tomatoes could be so sweet.  Try them, they're awesome.

Eggplant: Gretel

Nice soft skin, practically seedless and never bitter.  This plant also allows harvesting flexibility.  You can pick them when they're small or wait for them to get larger without sacrificing flavor.  The flowers are nice to look at too.

Sweet Pepper: Lipstick Pepper (Red)

I personally think red peppers are the most flavorful peppers you can grow, the problem is that it takes forever for green peppers to turn red, usually about 80 days.  These turn red quickly.  The packet states 73 days to change color, but mine turned red in about 60 days.  Even in the green stage these peppers are pretty good. The fruits are crunchy with thick walls at all stages of growth, so you can munch on peppers throughout the summer instead of just toward the end.

I've added a new "Top Seeds" tab for this post.  In the future please go there to see the latest additions to the list.

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Phoenix Tribal #26

Pen & ink on bristol board, 11x14.

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

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Vegetable Harvest Report 09 2010

September 25-October 10:

Cherry Tomatoes:  4.9 ounces

Eggplant:  9.3 ounces

Hot Pepper:  1.3 ounces

Sweet Pepper:  12.2 ounces

Weight Total:  1 pounds, 11.7 ounces

Running Weight Total:  59 pounds,  4.6 ounces

Plus, look at what I found on the remaining Orange Blossom tomato plant in the GrowBox container.

I saw two, 2 inch tomatoes and several smaller ones. I hope they survive Mr. Squirrel, the rooftop garden menace.

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Vegetable Plant Update 04 2010

Ten days into autumn and garden growth in my container vegetable garden is steadily winding down.  I've moved all the plants (except the peas) so that they get the maximum amount of sunlight possible.

It's a shame the weather is cooling down because the orange blossom tomato plant has really bounced back from both the tornado and early blight.  In my last plant update I wrote this plant off, but removing the other plant has done wonders for its well-being.  Lost of new foliage and flowers have grown.  There's no time for more fruit to ripen, but I don't plan to plant any other vegetable in that container so I'm just going to leave it there and see how far it can progress before frost kills it.

The peppers are slowly turning to their final color.  I'm going to leave them on as long the weather permits.

The peas are doing really well, they're almost 3 feet tall now.  The only problem I've had with them is that they're not climbing the reed fence as well as I had hoped.  The wind is constantly pushing around their tendrils, making it hard for them to "find" the reeds and latch on.  I'm using twine to force them to grow back toward the fence.

I think if all goes well and we don't get anymore weather surprises the garden can squeeze out enough vegetables to hit 60 pounds of total harvest.  Fingers crossed!

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