What Will the Cool Weather Do to the Garden

While the days are still pleasant evenings are getting chilly on the roof. Cooler weather means the garden can go longer between waterings, but it also means vegetable production noticeably slows down as well.

What's Left

Ok, back from vacation and back to gardening! So what's alive and what's gone?

Gardening Highs and Lows

A few surprises in the garden this week. One bad, some good and one great!

Ominous Signs

Well, the good times had to end at some point. Last week's heatwave did no favors for the garden. Very high daytime and nighttime temperatures meant practically no pollinating or fruiting for the week, so reduced yield down the line. Prolonged hot weather also leaves plants weakened, making them more vulnerable to disease, which is unfortunately the case for one section of the rooftop garden.

Knowing When to Let Go and Try Something Else

Too Good to Last

Weather Change Means Garden Change

Now that the weather is cooling down I've planted a few fall crops and prepared some containers for winter storage.

Steady As She Goes

Nothing exciting going on in the garden right now, I'm just waiting for the Tasty Bites melon and King Crimson pepper plants to mature.

Taking the Good With the Bad

Fruitful Changes

I don't want to get too excited in case I'm wrong, but I think some female flowers on the melon plants have finally been pollinated.

Where Are My Melons?

Don't the melon plants look fantastic? Now if I could just get some melons to go with them everything would be great! I guess my hand pollinating efforts have failed, I'll keep on trying though. Last year I got 3 melons out of 2 plants with no hand pollination. I thought I could easily do better this year since I had a better handle on how to grow these plants, but now I'm getting worried.

Ugh Too Hot!

FRAK, it's hot outside! These photos are a couple of days old because on 90+ degree days I don't step out on the roof until it's too dark to take pics.

At this time of year I usually water the plants every 3 or 4 days, but due to the recent crazy temps I've been watering everyday. I could probably get away with watering every other day, but I want to play it safe. If a plant runs out of water it becomes extremely stressed and the more stress a plant is under the more vulnerable it is to disease and pests. Obviously I'm hoping to avoid this situation.

Everything is Out on the Roof

2 Tasty Bites melon plants in 2 DIY self watering planter conversions.

1 Lemon cucumber in the DIY self watering water cooler bottle.

Seedling Update: Grow Light Makes a Huge Difference

I'm really happy I bought the grow light. It's made an incredible difference in seedling quality. Last year's seedlings were thin and leggy, this year's seedlings are much stouter and bushier. The difference is very clear in the pictures below.

Drat! Damping Off has Hit the Seedlings

Remember when I wrote that I've never had a problem with damping off?  Well I'm eating my words. I went away last weekend and came back to this:

Damping-off is a common disease that kills seedlings in the greenhouse. Damping-off can kill both germinating seeds and young seedlings. Several fungi can cause this disease, including Rhizoctonia solani, Pythium spp., Phytophthora spp., Sclerotinia spp., and Botrytis spp. Practically all species of plants can be affected.

Sunscald Mystery Solved

I made an interesting discovery last weekend. I found the cause of last year's problem with sunscald on a pepper plant. The door to the roof has a half circle window, you can see light reflecting off this window onto the chimney in the photo above. When the door was propped open halfway, which it often was during warm days, this light reflection would shine directly on the poor plant and roast peppers directly on the stem. The window is now covered and will no longer burn anything else!

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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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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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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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