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.
Bell Peppers have set fruit:
