Thursday, May 27, 2010

Out on the Rooftop

Bushwick Rooftop Container Gardening Seedlings

All vegetable plants (except the cucumbers) have been on the rooftop for over a week.  GrowBox container #1 has 2 Orange Blossom tomato plants.  GrowBox container #2 has 2 Halona cantaloupe plants.  I have no experience growing melons and have no idea how much water they will need so I played it safe and planted them in one of the larger self-watering containers.  The GrowBox has a 4 gallon reservoir so if anything goes wrong with the plants I can at least rule out water stress as a cause (at least I hope this is the case).  For the melons I also added string to the existing support cage to give the vines more places to grab onto.  Instead of letting the vines sprawl to the ground I'm going to try to get them to circle the cage.

Bushwick Rooftop Container Gardening Seedlings

1 Gold Nugget cherry tomato is in my light blue DIY self watering container.  Last year I planted the cherry tomato in a 16" container that only had a 1 gallon reservoir.  Looking back I realize that was a mistake.  Tomatoes are thirsty plants. They need a lot of water to thrive, even more so on a hot, windy roof.  1 gallon of water was not enough to make it through one day in August, as a result the plant struggled and I had to baby it throughout the season.  The light blue container can hold over 4 gallons of water so hopefully I will avoid that this year.  Three, 16" containers got 2 sweet pepper plants each.

Bushwick Rooftop Container Gardening Seedlings

2 Gretel eggplants and 1 Padron pepper went into three, 12" containers.

Bushwick Rooftop Container Gardening Seedlings

1 Bag of Container Booster Mix: $9.95
1 Bag of Self-Watering Container Mix: $9.95
1 Bag of Fertilizer: $13.05

Running Total: $114.51

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2 comments:

  1. Looks like you're set up for a great summer! I bet those hot-weather loving plants do extra well on your roof.

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  2. They do, especially the eggplants!

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