Thursday, June 28, 2012

A Beautiful Sight, Melons Are Finally Here!


I was getting ready to hand pollinate the melon flowers when I found a few surprises hiding beneath the foliage.


Yay, rooftop melons! There are 4 melons that are about size of a tennis ball and a few flowers that look like they have just been pollinated. It looks like my plan to grow flowers to attract beneficial insects worked. I'll still try some hand pollination though, just to be safe.


More peppers growing on the Flexum Hybrid pepper plants. The fruits are a very lovely pale yellow right now. Eventually they will turn orange and then red.


More of the Giant Aconcagua pepper plants are starting to bear fruit. Some fruits are already quite big, but they're hiding deep within the foliage so it's hard to take a picture of them. Maybe I'll have better luck once they get larger.


I was hoping these Black cherry tomatoes would be ready to eat by the end of June, but it looks like I won't be eating anything from the rooftop garden until July.


I thought the Pingtung Long eggplant wasn't getting enough sunlight on the shady side of the roof, its progress seems slower compared to eggplants grown in past years, so I moved it back to the full sun location.


It turned out to be the right decision, the first fruit has finally appeared.



A Summertime Green tomato. This isn't the first one to arrive, but it is the easiest one to photograph. The Summertime Green plant in the Garden Patch Brow Box has some more advanced fruit, but its location tucked between the skylight and the stairway wall make it hard for me to crouch down and dig through the leaves.

Ok, every plant on the rooftop has fruited, now I just need to patiently wait for the first harvest. I wish this would mean I could just coast for a couple weeks, but there is always something to do in the garden.

Every day I go up to monitor pest and/or disease progression, leaf and fruit growth, and to check water levels. Right now I water every other day, sometimes every 3rd day if the weather has been rainy. When it gets really hot, +90, I water every day. A consistent water supply is critical if you want to avoid blossom end rot in tomatoes. It also helps tomatoes avoid cracking/splitting.

So how's your garden doing? Harvest anything interesting yet?

Subscribe and learn more about growing food:

2 comments:

  1. Oh yes, I just found bottom end rot! I have to go water everyday or at least check the soil moisture everyday.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The endless watering is what I like the least about container gardening, but it's worth it just to avoid the problems uneven watering can bring.

      Delete

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!