First Harvest 2014

Most of the tomato plants are out growing the wind collars so I think I'll remove them this weekend. That would probably be good time to get the soil covers on and cage/supports installed. The larger the plants gets the harder it is to work around them.

Sunsugar F1 cherry tomato

Little Baby Flower F1 watermelons. Once the vines get long enough I'll remove the wind collars and train them up the reed fence.

Lil Keeper F1 melons

Beaverlodge tomato, some flowers have already started to form. I'm not sure if this plant or the cherry tomato will be the first to fruit.

Orient Express F1 eggplant

Yukon Gold potatoes. The container is about 3/4 full, there's room to add more soil but I'm not in the right state (I sprained my ankle) to lug bags of soil to the roof so I'm stopping here and just letting it grow.

Sugar Buns F1 corn

Orange Blaze F1 peppers

Bush Goliath F1 tomato. I'm very curious to see how this plant turns out. It's the slowest grower out of all the tomato plants and the growth has been extremely compact. Right now it's smaller than the Beaverlodge tomato plant, which is the smallest tomato plant I've ever grown. I'm not sure if it even needs a tomato cage. We shall see.

Giant Aconcagua peppers

Pink Berkeley Tie Dye tomato

Ozark Beauty strawberries

Ate the first few strawberries over the weekend. They were utterly delicious, as expected. The flavor floods your gums and jaw as soon as you take the first bite. It's hard to go back to store bought strawberries once you know what fresh, homegrown ones tastes like.

The best thing about these plants is that they survive winter, which means no seedlings to coddle year after year. The fruit output is low (very tasty, but still low), but since the effort in maintaining these plants is equally low I think they're worth the garden space. I've got 2 empty planters on hand, I think I'll use them to expand the strawberry patch.

I used to think a cherry tomato plant would make a great gateway plant to vegetable gardening, but now I think a strawberry plant is the way to go. The minimal maintenance requirements coupled with the intense flavor of the fruit would leave a very lasting, positive impression on the novice gardener and probably encourage them to try growing other things.

Strawberry (Ozark Beauty): 0.625 ounces

2014 Running Weight Total: 0.625 ounces

Visit bucolicbushwick.com to read more about rooftop vegetable gardening.