Autumn Surprises

The days grow shorter and my shadow gets longer.

Friend or Foe? I'm Thinking Foe

The garden is coasting its way through September.

Still Simmering

The majority of the garden is starting to show its age, but there are still plenty of fruits left on the plants to steadily harvest until the cold arrives.

Major Haul

The garden went crazy while I was away. It was incredibly nice to come back to such abundance. As an added bonus it looks like I caught all the hornworm caterpillars. I was fully expecting to come back to at least one devoured plant, but no. No more plant damage!

No News Is Good News

Nothing exciting to report. Just watering and harvesting my way through  summer. No aphids, which I find somewhat unbelievable, but I'll take it. No more tomato hornworms. The Lil Keeper melon plants have a mild spider mite problem, but all of the fruits are close to maturity so I'm not worried about it. And besides the Beaverlodge tomato plant no signs of disease. This summer is turning out to be the most uneventful growing season I've ever had on the roof. Let's hope its stays that way!

Trickling In

The summer crops are beginning to trickle in. First it was the eggplant, now it's the cherry tomatoes. What will be next? Personally, I'm hoping for a watermelon.

Cracks in the Calm Facade

The long weekend allowed me to take a break from the garden and return to it with fresh eyes.

Enjoying the Calm

I sound like a broken record, but I don't care because the garden is still doing great! So far I see no signs of any pests or disease. Usually I'm battling aphids or spider mites this time of year, it's a nice change of pace. I'd like to say this is all due to my steadily improving gardening skills, but frankly I think most of the credit goes to the mild weather we've been having. Heat waves put a lot of stress on plants, which opens the door to pests and disease. No heat waves means less stress. I'm going to enjoy the calm while it lasts because I expect this to change as soon as the first heat wave hits.

Plugging Along

Nothing exciting to report. Just watering and harvesting my way through the summer.

A Casualty of the Heat and the 1st Rooftop Vegetable Harvest of 2012

Wow! Not even halfway through July and I've already lost one vegetable variety to the heat. I'm afraid to find out what the rest of the season will bring.

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.

Not the Kind of Excitement I Was Looking For

Last Friday's storm tore down a cage from one of the Garden Patch Grow Boxes. Surprisingly, the Yellow Perfection tomato plant survived and only 2 tomatoes were lost in the collapse! The main stem bent, but did not break. The fun isn't over yet though, let's see if it survives Hurricane Irene.

Surviving the Scorching Heat

While it's always hot on the roof in the summer last week's dangerous heat wave was the first time the rooftop garden has had to endure such extended scorching temperatures. I was extremely nervous about how the garden would weather the incredible heat, but I was pleasantly surprised over how resilient the plants proved to be. Even the stressed Valencia tomato plants, which do not like the rooftop environment at all, made it through, and I fully expected those plants to just keel over and die.

Taking the Good With the Bad

What a Difference a Week Makes

Daily monitoring of the garden can make it hard to see the steady, incremental changes in vegetable plants, so I was excited to see what kind of progress was noticeable in the garden after not viewing it for a whole week. I was not disappointed!

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.

Out on the Rooftop

 

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.

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.

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

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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Garden Gallery Shots 01 2009

Celebrity Tomato

Hansel Eggplant

Golden Star Bell Pepper

Orange Paruche Cherry Tomato

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Vegetable Plant Update 4 2009

Broccoli: These were planted a 4 weeks ago in my DIY self watering container. They're monstrous now. I hope these guys produce heads before the weather gets hotter.

Eggplants: These were transplanted about 6 weeks ago. They've adapted really well to the rooftop garden climate and they're already producing flowers.

Peas: They were harvested a couple days ago. I'll talk about them in a future post.

Peppers: It's been about 5 weeks since they were transplanted. They're taller and a lot bushier. All of them are flowering and a few have even started fruiting. The leaf shredding continues, but the reed fence does help to reduce the damage. Pepper plant leaves are thin and floppy so they're especially vulnerable to the wind.

Tomatoes: These were transplanted at the same time as the eggplants. I'm amazed at how fast they're growing. There's tons of flowers and several fruits. The celebrity tomatoes are just steamrolling through the growing process. I can see why they're so popular, they're like Ron Popeil's rotisserie, set it and forget it! As for the orange paruche cherry suffering from magnesium deficiency, the epsom salt solution seems to be working, the yellowing is almost completely gone.

I saw signs of aphids on some of the vegetable plants, but not a lot of bugs. I suspect the strong wind is preventing them from gaining a foothold anywhere in this rooftop garden. At least it's good for something besides shredding leaves.

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