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Water…It’s what plants crave! (And you thought it was Brawndo.)

3 Apr

So, I have no direct access to water on the roof.

Now you’re thinking:

  • Attach a hose to your outdoor spigot? (Can’t! Don’t have one!)
  • Uh, attach a hose to your faucet and send it up through your window? (Highly impractical. I’d probably need about 150′ of garden hose…and it would go across my living room…and I’d have to leave my window open.)
  • Get a rain barrel and hook it up to the gutter? (Can’t! Condo building…not allowed.)

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I’d been carrying water up to the roof from my kitchen a few hours after filling a 2 gallon watering pail. While it might make for some good weight lifting, it’s exhausting and not very efficient. Plus, those plants are THIRSTY up there with no shade in the heat of the summer. That means several trips back and forth. That was all of 2011.

There had to be a better way! In 2012 I started to collect water from the bottoms of the 3 gutters I could reach during a rain and dump it into a 5 gallon pail. A few problems with this method:

  • The bottom of the gutters are about 6″ from the deck, so I need a small containers to collect the water. (See below…I also used a quart sized yogurt container.)
  • Small containers don’t hold a lot of water = many trips to the big 5 gallon bucket. I had a flexible bucket that helped a bit, but I could only fill it about 1/4 of the way every time, maybe a gallon at the most. In the photo, it’s the pink one with the handles. It wound up cracking in the fall, probably because it’s not supposed to be abused as I had.
  • When the 5 gallon pail is full, it weighs about 40 lbs…that’s a lot for me, and it’s hard to carry a bucket of sloshing water.
  • I got sopping wet every time. (Umbrellas are not practical devices while harvesting water I learned after about 12 seconds.)
  • No photo of the 5 gallon bucket, for some reason, but I swear it’s there!IMG_4121

What was nice about filling up all of these container was I usually didn’t have to water for two days or so after collection because the garden drank up from the sky and the tomato buckets reservoirs were pretty full. But then we’d have several days of no rain….sometimes over a week and the bucket water would be used up in one fell swoop.

I also tried to make a bottle drip irrigation type of thing. It . You can find directions all over on the interwebs.

It worked, but not very well. I started with full bottles and well watered soil. The water was gone in a few hours, I’m guessing because it’s hot up there. (Have I mentioned that?) I did try it in late July, so who knows. I think this would work better for house plants. 😦

This year, however, I’m going to create some kind of rain sculpture thing for collection…not really sure how it’s going to look, but my other option is more buckets.

Or Brawndo.

 

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2012 Recap – It’s Tomato Time!

21 Mar

The pride of the garden….the tomato.

cherry tomato on rooftop

I mentioned in my “About” section that my grandfather, who grew up on a farm in southern New Jersey, insisted that we didn’t have enough tomato plants and would add them to my mother’s rock garden, our front landscaping, and other various flower beds around the house where tomatoes….just don’t go. He also tried to grow them on fire escapes on the commercial building the family owned in lower Manhattan. Even without his additions, we always had nice tomatoes from our garden.

In 2011, I had four tomato plants, as you may remember from earlier photos. I went with red and yellow cherries, red grapes, and some other larger purple-y fruit. The three smaller plants did much better, but it was still a lot to work with. In 2012, I decided to stick with the small fruits, so I had only one cherry plant and one yellow pear tomato plant. They were all quite sweet and delicious, unlike anything from a plastic container at the grocery store.

These photos are from early May to mid June, 2012.

Yeah, so I picked off those suckers when I saw them. Didn’t really have any problems with bugs on the plants.

These photos are from early July to mid July, 2012. More on those glass bottles in my next post.

I was able to pick dozens of tomatoes every week starting about this time. My brother also got me a pasta machine for my birthday last summer. BAM! This is early August, 2012. I hand made or grew this entire meal….except for the cheese. (No cows on the roof just yet.)

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My tomatoes seemed happy on the roof. I’m pretty sure they’d appreciate some more root space, but all in all, I think this was a successful venture. They were still producing fruit into October, and then a few pathetic little ones after that every now and then. These photos are from mid to late September, 2012.

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2012 Recap…In search of beta carotene

12 Mar

I don’t know where to start here. Maybe at the Carrot Museum? Though it exists online, the International Carrot Conference is real….and it’s in Madison, Wisconsin this August. Fascinating.

I don’t know how I’d get along with the pros, though. So here’s a gallery of my early rooftop carrots from mid May to early July, 2012.

Everything is moving along nicely, right? The swiss chard next to the carrots wound up not working out. The leaves were very, very bitter and didn’t like to be picked, or not to be picked. Quite possibly because they shouldn’t have been grown in a small container like that, but I was still curious.

These photos are mid July to early September, 2012.

In general, they were all pretty attractive carrots. Not the sweetest, but they were all crunchy, and I was proud. At that point, a few of them started to get really weird. These photos are mid to late September, 2012.

I wanted to see how long they would last in the box, kind of see if they’d rot in the ground or if they’d be ok through the winter. These photos are from mid January, 2013.

I visited a friend’s farm this past weekend in Mineral, Virginia. More on that in tomorrow’s garden update. Was given an assortment of carrot seeds that I will use this year.

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Here are some REAL carrots. We pulled up a few of them from the rows.

 

And of course, the obligatory Image 2altered photo using unnamed mobile device software.

 

 

 

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2012 Recap…Herbal Issues

7 Mar

I thought herbs would be the least of my problems up on the roof. I was half right. So, earlier this week I wrote about the survivors, the herbs that wintered nicely and seemed to be alive in the spring.

One small snafu…I was away for about a week and the herbs didn’t get much water. I lost my thyme, so I replanted that one. photo 2Also, the rosemary got very dry and looked like it was about to totally kick the bucket. The main branches were nice and thick, so I thought it would come back to life eventually.

Here it is on May 9. —–>

IMG_4022And here it is a few weeks later on May 22. It did, in fact, grow back, and the hard, woody stems had some softer, white additions as well. I was happy with the regenerated rosemary. I knew it would be ok eventually, as the plant my mom has in New York now is probably ten years old, at least. Plus, in many parts of the Mediterranean I’ve seen them planted as shrubs.

 

Parsley also came back during the second year, however, we had some issues. Instead of lovely, soft parsley leaves, I was getting really thick, straw-like stalks, and it was flowering constantly. My rabbit enjoyed the stalks, but it wasn’t what I was going for. Eventually I got fed up and just pulled it all. They roots went all over the garden box, which I expected. I have since been told that the plant was likely stressed. Why? It didn’t have mortgage payments to keep up with or anything. Argh. Photos from mid May to late September, 2012.

I was given a similar opinion regarding the basil; it was stressed. I started them this season again from seed. The early plants looked lovely, with round, plump leaves. I thinned the plants as I always had as the weeks went on, but looking back on it they were probably too squished in there. Also a chance I didn’t pick enough of it. These photos are from mid May to late July, 2012.

Also, quickly, mint. Mint will never die. Ever.

EVER.

I got a second mint plant this year, so now I have common mint (kinda fuzzy leaves) and the newer chocolate mint, with more leafy leaves. The plants have both flowered several times and have faked death, too. They keep coming back, leggier and leggier each time. Again, check the earlier post for the first wintering comeback. These photos are mid May to late July, 2012.

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2012 Recap – The Radish Diary

5 Mar

I decided to break up the 2012 updates by vegetable. Today, I will gloat about my red globe radish success. Spicy radish success. The seed packet said they are 28 days until harvest, and by golly, I think I picked the first one at 28 days. I was able to get two rounds of beautiful, crispy, super spicy beauties out of the 1’x1′ space they were allotted in 2012. Some nutritional info about these babies.

These photos are from mid April to mid May, 2012

I think I left the square empty for about a week or before replanting. Ate most of them raw with a bit of salt. Some on crusty bread with some butter. Some pickling addition in there, you’ll see in the second gallery. In addition to the radishes themselves, we also enjoyed the leaves chopped up in salad for a little punch with every forkful.

Radishes were successful. I was pleased. I will do them again in 2013. Don’t need a lot of space, grow quickly, pack a tasty bite.

These photos are from mid May to early June, 2012.

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2012 Recap…The Survivors

4 Mar

Welcome to 2012! I thought about the garden all through the 2011-2012 winter. We didn’t get much snow, didn’t get TOO many cold days. I considered covering the garden with some hay (that my rabbit decided not to eat) or some of that gardening fabric, but I decided against it.

So, here we are in March, 2012. I was beginning to plan out what I’d grow in the summer, thinking about what worked and what didn’t in 2011. Here are the survivors…the herbs that lasted over the winter. Some were in their own pots, some were in the SFG box. See Winston there watering everything?

These photos are from March 19-25, 2012.

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2011 “Harvest” Recap

28 Feb

First, some gratuitous beautiful herb shots. Taken with my micro lens. (Most photos I take with my iPhone, however, so the quality and detail will vary.) Mint, thyme, and rosemary were in terra cotta pots, while chives and both basil varieties were in the box. I totally squished the basil in there. Too much in one square. These photos are from July 1, 2011.

DSC_0458DSC_0461

<—– Lovely thyme (common)

            Lovely rosemary —->

Funky purple basil. The flowers are sweet and spicy, so I let it flower just to eat them.DSC_0452

I began to sample the fruits of my labor in the early summer. Herbs, a few spring onions here and there. I was really excited to see what would happen with the tomatoes. I had planted four different kinds in these buckets; grape, cherry, yellow cherry, and a deep purple red that was supposed to yield 2″-3″ fruits. Meh.

These tomato photos are from early July – mid August, 2011.

The following gallery pretty much wraps up the first 2011 experimental season. These photos are from late July – late October, 2011. The grape and cherry tomatoes were the easiest ones to grow, so I decided to stick with the smaller varieties for the future.

Another note about water. Again, it’s really hot and dry up on the roof, and I don’t have a water up there. Tomatoes are thirsty plants, and between light rain and regular watering, I probably added about a gallon to each container every day, and a gallon and a half to the box and herbs. I used these “self-watering” containers (just the container, not the whole kit) with four gallon reservoirs. It really did help, but it was still pretty tough. When I was able to collect enough rain water, I filled the bottom of the tomato buckets all the way. I usually brought water up twice a day, morning and evening, after letting the municipal water additives dissipate or whatever they did, as someone had suggested. The plants did seem to like the water that sat around for a bit more than the water right from the tap. Rain was best, of course.

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Another 2011 recap

26 Feb

I was pretty happy for the first few weeks with the garden in 2011. My neighbors were garden sheetvery concerned about the wee baby plants being exposed to sun, and before my week long absence in mid April, they insisted I create a cover of some sort. Despite my assurances that plants, do, in fact like the sun, this is what we came up with. The sheet didn’t last too long, and the plants lived after all. Everyone was happy.

All went along smoothly for the next few weeks. At this point I was happy with the garden’s progress. Things were growing and I was starting to be able to pick here and there for tasting. Rain was falling on a fairly regular basis. My municipal water is a bit on the swimming pool side, so I had a watering can that I’d fill up in from the tap in my condo and allow to sit for a few hours before watering if it got too dry up there.

Also, the bugs. I’m five floors up, surrounded by air conditioning units, Trex decking, and very few actual trees. Any bugs were welcome. I wanted them to all talk to each other and come to my garden to pollinate things and do whatever it is that bugs do. The lady bug below was a minor victory, even if it was just lost.

The photos in the gallery below are from late April-early July 2011. The close ups were taken with the Nikon 60mm f/2.8 d af micro lens that my brother got me as a grad school graduation gift that year. I HAD to play with it, and what better subjects? I’m quite pleased with the way they came out, actually.

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2011 garden – first recap

25 Feb

Before starting anything in 2011, I checked with my neighbors about taking over a corner of our communal finished roof for the garden, and I was met with excitement. Only 8 units share it, and we all wanted to make the space an enjoyable, relaxing place. They thought a garden would make the rooftop homey. Everyone was on board.

I decided to try the square foot gardening method, which seemed ideal for my small space in a container box. The potting mix they recommend is 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 compost, which I was able to get from a friend who ran a farm.

I started with seedlings inside and then planted them outside after a few weeks. These photos are March – April, 2011. Click to see a larger image.

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2011 and 2012 growing recaps soon

24 Feb
2012 pickin'

2012 pickin’

I will begin to write some posts about my first two years of rooftop gardening so we know what we’re starting with.

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