First Proper Harvest

The largest tomato is Big Beef, the mid size reds are Bloody Butcher. 3 Black Cherries and Matt's Wild Cherries round out the picture.

I'm now getting a handful+ of tomatoes every day. My zucchini has made a comeback of sorts. There is still some powdery white mildew, but since I thinned the pot from 2 vines to one, the plant has been outgrowing it. Maybe the plants were choking each other somehow, but once I cut the second vine, things began to improve almost immediately.

My afterthought Cuke has also produced a couple fruit with more on the way. They are much better than I expected and won't be an afterthought next time.

I haven't picked any hornworms off my plants in a couple days. The one I found has eggs from the hornworm-parasitizing wasp on his back, so I left him there to spread more death and destruction through hornworm-dom.

Plants need water every 24 hours or so now. It's amazing how much they drink. I wouldn't use anything smaller than 10 gallon pots next year. Plants will grow in 5 gallon buckets, but that gives very little margin for error in watering. Matt's Wild Cherry sucks his 5 gallon bucket dry every day.

Bad Day to Be a Hornworm

I picked 3 more of these ugly beasts off my toms today. Holy cow, do they get freakin' huge. The little balls of poo give them away.

Ball and Chain

This is a picture of my Black Cherry tomatoes. The first two are about to ripen and there are probably 30 unblemished fruit on the vine. I'm quite excited about this since it is consistently mentioned as a favorite among the e-growing community, but is completely new to me.

I've been out of town a couple of times in the last two weeks. This, combined with a week of 90 degree weather has left my rooftop garden somewhat weary. There are still plenty of greenies on the vine, but not as many as if I had given them the constant care and attention they want at this point. The bigger pots really want 2+ gallons of water a day in this heat.

I'm still picking off a fruit or two a day with blossom end rot, but this seems to have subsided on the bloody butcher. I also picked off my first tomato horn worm yesterday. Basically, it's a 3 inch green caterpillar that I found because of all the former-tomato plant-now-caterpillar poop next to one of my plants. I'll post a picture of the next one; this one had to die fast.

In spite of the various things afflicting my garden, I'm still going to have toms soon. Here's Big Beef. The yellowing leaves you see are the result of one of my vacation-droughts the poor guy suffered.

Watering mishap

My pot of Bell Peppers is doing well. I once picked fresh peppers from a friend's garden and found them to be beautiful plants. I'm glad they're happy on my roof.

I am currently watering heavily about every 2 days. I was recently out of town for 2 full days and half of a third. I figured my plants would be ok. While they all survived, they were definitely too dry by the time I arrived home. Many, many blossoms dropped and these would have led to my first serious harvest. So now I'm interested to watch what the plants do now.

Bloody Butcher has already produced four tasty little toms, and has 20+ on the vine. Big Beef and the cherries are fairly loaded up as well. It won't be long now. I've still been picking a couple each day with blossom end rot, but there are many tomatoes on the vine which seem to have developed just fine.

Almost there 7-9-08

Things are well on their way. With the exception of my sad zucchini, the plants are all happy.

Big Beef:

Bloody Butcher: look at all the blossoms. It has a pink one hidden at the bottom.

Druzba: 2.5 feet of solid plant:
Bell Peppers have set fruit:

Long Chile Peppers:

Fire escape herb garden + bush beans:

Last but not least, my fire escape cuke:

The blossom end rot seems has disappeared on the bloody butcher. It has a ton of fruit set, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Blossom End Rot

I found blossom end rot on a 6 more bloody butchers. I've looked this one up, and the variety of conflicting opinions suggests that no one really knows what the cause(s) are. Insufficient calcium? Inconsistent watering? It is not a disease and for most people it goes away as the season progresses. BB still has 20+fruit set and at least that many more blossoms. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

My california wonder bell pepper has set its first fruit, improved espanola has a bunch of peppers going now, I believe peguin has set its first few fruit, and my cucumber plant as a couple set as well. I'm picking and immediately munching a half dozen beans every 3 or 4 days now as well.

Tomatoes setting

All my tomatoes, except a bloom-filled kellogg's breakfast that went in a week late, have set fruit. Bloody butcher as 20+, Big Beef 10+. The rest have just started.

I yanked a small greenie with blossom end rot from my bloody butcher. It has many more and bigger fruit set that look fine. Hopefully this is an isolated incident.

My zucchini, which had been looking stellar, got hit by some white powdery mildew. Affected leaves would yellow in a few days. It also aborted a few fruit. I looked this up and it said to cut the affected leaves and spray with a 50/50 milk and water solution. I cut the leaves this morning (well over 50% of the plant) and will try the spray tonight. Other than some fungus gnats and a random cocoon/worm i yanked off my bell pepper, the plants look good.

My peguin chile pepper has been looking a bit droopy. It's definitely not under-watered, but it's in a smallish black plastic pot. I'm thinking maybe it's been getting too hot during the day. I wrapped it in a sheet this morning like I did my tomatoes. We'll see if that helps.

I am not pruning anything. Plants are still able to be roped in by my improvised bamboo stake and twine trellis system. We'll see how this works out.

I'm also operating on the assumption that now, with my plants firmly established in their pots, it would be almost impossible to over-water them. With other plants, over-watering becomes a problem when media is decomposed or drainage is bad. I have neither of those problems. I read to wait until it's dry an inch and a half down. My plants looked wilty when I did this.

Espanola improved chile has set fruit. I also munched another 4 inch zucchini this morning. I also ate my first two bush beans of the season. I have the feeling none of these are going to make it into the kitchen.

Each of the large pots got a handful of manure and a tablespoon of tomato-tone.

My Container Garden Setup

Here's the view from my rooftop. The pointy one left of center is the Empire State Building.

For other poor souls trying to figure out how to garden in containers I figured I should go over my setup. There is a ton of conflicting information on the net, and I waded through most of it. The two places where I did find consensus were container size and potting medium. 5 gallons works, 15 gallons is better, and the mix should be a light, well draining, soil-less mixture.

I have 3 toms in 5 gallon buckets with drainage holes drilled about 2 inches up on the sides. The rest are in 14 gallon nursery planters I picked up on the cheap. The pots/drainage holes are all lined with black landscape fabric to keep mix in the pots.

Everything is planted in Pro-Mix, except for Kellogg's Breakfast, which got Miracle Grow moisture control. Everything is mulched with about 2 inches of shredded cedar mulch. All the pots that are not white plastic have been wrapped with white sheets that I cut up. The mulch and the sheets make a big difference since the roof gets very hot at midday.

At planting all pots got a handful of Osmocote time release, a giant handful of dehydrated cow-manure fertilizer, a handful of bone meal, a handful of epsom salts, and a tablespoon of Espoma Tomato-tone. I mixed all of this into the top 8 inches of medium.

When one is undertaking vegetables for the first time, working out the fertilizer is probably the most frustrating part. I settled on an average of sorts from a couple of different posters on various discussion forums, figuring that something would work. From here on out I'm going to stick to the tomato-tone guidelines and side dress with the manure monthly.

Garden on June 26

And here we are June 26th.

Here's what I'm growing:
-tomatoes
Bloody Butcher
Black Cherry
Matt's Wild Cherry
Druzba
Anna Russian
Big Beef
New Big Dwarf
Kellogg's Breakfast

-peppers
California Wonder
Improved Espanola
Peguin

Zucchini hybrid
Bush Blue Lake snap beans,
Cucumber hybrid


The tomato list I put together as well as I could given the late date I discovered that I could have a garden this year. The rest of my list is not as sexy as it might be, but I figured that run of the mill hybrids would be better than nothing at all.

I munched my first 4 inch zucchini yesterday btw. Fruit has set on Bloody Butcher (10 days ago), both cherries, and Big Beef. All the others have flowers and will set fruit soon I hope. Bush Blue Lake's have beanlets and the zucchini is going bonkers. Nothing on the cukes yet but they went in last as an afterthought.

Garden on June 6

Here is my garden on June 6th.

I moved in June 1. Planting began June 2. Everything was in by June 8. This is a little late, but May weather was terrible anyway, so I may have actually saved myself some headaches.

How much food can you grow on a rooftop that gets full sun all day long in queens? I don't know yet either.