Start of the Season

Went on the roof today to sow my pea, beet, chard, and new zealand spinach seeds. Looks like the thyme and gao choi are totally dead. Guess I'll have to buy my 3rd pot of thyme this spring... Gao choi has to come from home though. But here's a few pictures of what IS growing from last year.

My first bloom of the year: Hyacinths

Lilies poking out of the dirt.

Chives off to a good start.

Strawberries too!

Briteblue Blueberry I planted a couple weeks ago. This came mail order form Willis Orchards.

Summer '07 Wrapup, Spring '08 Prep

A busy lazy gardener in August, I let my garden go to ruins. Never got to taste any zucchini or squash. If I had been vigilant, I could probably have gotten 1-2 more months of tomatoes and vegetables. Oh well! At least I got to taste these... YUM!
Now it's time to prepare for this year. I started my Sugar Ann Snap Peas yesterday.



Today, I received an incredible array of tomato seeds from a generous tomato gardener on theGardenWeb Forum. I really only have space for 3 tomato varieties this year, so I'm trying Bloody Butcher (indeterminate), Black Krim (indeterminate), and Hillbilly (indeterminate, potato leaf).As of right now, I have 20 5-gallon buckets, and hope to have them all filled with good soil by planting time. Here's my plan for the year:

1-4 - Strawberries (Honeoye and Ozark's Beauty now mixed up and can't tell the difference) around and 1 Rainbow Chard plant growing in the middle. Planted 2007.
5 - Blueberry - Briteblue. Planted 03/05/2008.
6 - Blueberry (type TBD)
7 - Blueberry (type TBD)
8 - Raspberry - Tulameen
9 - Raspberry - Summit
10 - Blackberry - Arapaho
11 - Blackberry - Loch Ness
12 - Fig - Dessert King. Planted 03/05/2008.
13 - Tomato w/ Basil - Bloody Butcher. Seed started 03/23/2008.
14 - Tomato w/ Basil - Black Krim. Seed started 03/23/2008.
15 - Tomato w/ Basil - Hillbilly. Seed started 03/23/2008.
16-20 from March-May? - Sugar Ann Snap Peas. Seed started 03/22/2008.
May? - August:
16-18 - Sugar Baby Watermelon
19 - Yellow Squash - Regular hybridized variety.
20 - Zucchini - Regular hybridized variety.

I've determined that growing water greedy crops like strawberries or any kind of fruit in the window boxes or flat trays just won't work on my roof, where my watering system is still in dire need of perfection. So, I'll just try baby leafy greens in those this year. The same types as last year and a couple ones I didn't get to try:

New Zealand Spinach - Seed started 03/23/2008.
Bull's Blood Beets - Seed started 03/23/2008.
Rainbow Chard - Seed started 03/23/2008.
Rocky Top Lettuce Mix
Arugula
Bloomsdale Longstanding Spinach

Sick Gardener = Sick Garden

So, I've been sick for a little under a week. Apart from getting up on the roof yesterday evening, I really hadn't ventured out from my apartment since Wednesday. Even though I'm capable of watering my garden without actually going on the roof, I usually still go up every day or so. Sickness and laziness got the better of me this past week and I didn't go up for several days.I'm pretty sure I watered my plants on Thursday, but then I didn't water them again until Saturday evening because Friday night we got what I thought was heavy rain. Turns out I was fooled, and when I checked on my plants last night several of them looked crispy. And, I missed the bloom on some of the lilies I've been waiting so patiently for. Such is life!!! Still, even with just 2 petals this one is quite pretty...

In other flower news, my marigolds and cosmos have YET to flower and i'm pretty bored of waiting so I've stopped watering them. They are somewhat of an intentional casualty...

However, some of the other plants that have suffered from drought are my thyme (which was supposed to be drought tolerant! Hmph, but maybe the pigeons got to it), Tomatoes, and Strawberries. The Stupice in particular looks dry, yellow and brown. Eeek!Another casualty in the last couple weeks was my lettuce, but not due to underwatering. It fell victim to some strange bug I never saw, but whose little black eggs were everywhere. When I saw first saw the damage, about half was eaten. I moved the lettuce far from the rest of my garden (a benefit of growing things in containers), and in the next couple days the rest was eaten up either by the bugs or pigeons. Thankfully those bugs didn't get to anything else. I don't have the heart to post pics of that carnage....

In brighter news! My watermelons are looking good and hopefully ripening soon:And, the zucchini and yellow squash I seeded around the time of my last post has sprouted and grown quickly. Both plants already have flower buds:

Demented Watermelons, Fish Fertilizer, Window Herbs

So, early on in the watermelon growing process my 2nd largest melon was touching the surface of the roof on a hot day and got a little dry/burnt. I figured I would let it keep growing to see if it would fix itself or somehow or other survive. No such luck! It and any other melons that were scalded by the roof have become demented or aborted themselves. The big one even split open a crack at the scald point. The melons that grew early off the vine so that they were hanging in the air during early growth are the ones that survived (2 looking nicely these days). I decided to take off any messed up ones remaining on the vine, so I got a chance to see what pre-ripe watermelons look like inside. They still smelled pretty watermelony, but I bet they wouldn't have tasted very good:

Also, last week I decided that maybe I should start fertilizing some of my vegetables. I hadn't fertilized anything yet, and things seem to do pretty well without it. But, I didn't want them to run out of nutrients all of a sudden and die. I have some Miracle Grow but have decided maybe I'll leave that for my non-edibles. So, the best organic fertilizers I've read about are Fish Emulsion and Kelp Meals. There were several recommendations for the Neptune's Harvest products but they're not cheap and I wanted to see the product, maybe shake a bottle, before buying. So, I went to Saifee Hardware in the East Village where they have a truly amazing array of gardening products for such a non-descript store. They might not have as many live plants as they do at Plantworks, but they have a GIANT variety of fertilizers, soils, containers, hoses, etc. Neptune's Harvest is not an easy product to find in stores, but they had it. So, I brought some home and put it on my tomatoes and watermelons. I'll let you know how it goes. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to tell... perhaps that's an experiment to run next year.

On the herbal front, my rosemary and orange mint from my previous purchase are doing well, but the English thyme died from being burnt to a crisp in it's little pot.... Doh. So, I bought some more English Thyme along with some baby and 1yr chives at the Union Square Greenmarket on Friday. I planted the Thyme and 1yr chives on the roof with my lilies and went on to make an indoor herb window box. Here is baby chives, basil I grew from seed, and orange mint from left to right.

I found early on that orange mint prefers being indoors to being in full sun. It burns easily but also comes back quickly. I have basil growing on the roof too, in a tomato bucket. It grows a bit better on the roof, but I figure I should keep some inside if I can. Here, I cut 1 tall basil plant into 3 pieces and stuck the extra 2 into the dirt. I hope they root and grow. I've read that chives are hardy and will come back next year on the roof, but they can also be kept indoors at a sunny window. My window has a south-east exposure. I hope it's sunny enough!

First Harvest! Growing Watermelon & More

Here is my first harvest from my rooftop garden! 5 wonderful Stupice tomatoes. They are the perfect size small tomato, and I think I will just grow these and forgoe the smaller Peacevine cherry tomatoes next year. This sandwich is for CJ, but the bite of tomato I had was reaaaaally good.And, remember that baby watermelon I had last week? Well, it just about exploded!
The plants are just growing like crazy so I ended up moving them from their present location and finally hooked them up to the irrigation system. Now they can get water witthout me going up there every day.

In other news, my strawberries finally look like they're going strong. This one even has a runner, which will root and turn into a new plant for next year.And, I've got salad!
Rocky Top Lettuce mix:

Bulls Blood Beets:Rainbow Swiss Chard:New Zealand Spinach: