Houston, we have a tomato! (and other 21st century gardening tales)

I've meant to write a post about our roof garden all summer, but so far I haven't finished even one.  Maybe that's because, though it's our third summer of roof gardening and we even added a new box this year, it's been a slow summer getting the plants started.  It took until late June to find any tomatoes small enough to grow in our boxes, and then the birds got all our first blooms.  But we now have, I am happy to say, our first green tomatoes (Sweet One Hundreds), and hopefully there will still be enough warm weather to harvest a nice crop to go in salads and mozzarella/basil combinations.  

Last week we found a tomato hornworm munching on our plant and deposited it in a jar for observation (and to protect the tomatoes).  I recognized this fat, green caterpillar from gardens down South.  This one was covered in small white globules, which brought back a vague recollection from our family's reading about insects.   I Googled it, and found that sure enough, the worm had been parasitized by a wasp, and the white globules were wasp pupae, or "cocoons."  The site said to leave the hornworm in the planter, so that in the future, the wasps would lay eggs on future hornworms.  So back it went.  I'm omitting some unsavory details of the Annie Dillard variety, but here's what the caterpillar looked like:

A parasitized tomato hornworm

Our zinnias and basil are likewise thriving after a shaky start.  C.Z. grew them from seeds, which unfortunately suffered from no fewer than five vandalism incidents.  No, not the kind that produces graffiti!  They were likely the work of curious, but unsupervised, toddlers, or perhaps in one case, even strong winds.  After the first incident, one family sent us some new seeds.  How nice!  The old seeds that C.Z. had saved from last year (to see if they'd reproduce in the same color) were yellow, while the new ones were pink.  Some of these new plants got pulled up as well, but one huge zinnia bush (we can only call it a bush) remains, and now C.Z. regularly decorates our living room in zinnias.  

Zinnias, in our new tea cups from Chinatown

The basil, meanwhile, was part of a NASA experiment, begun when an employee visited our homeschooling co-op.   C.Z and a friend each sprouted, in little pots on our roof, "earth based" seeds and those that had been kept on a space station.  Supposedly space exposure might alter the DNA!  Well, the space basil is now monstrous, but we don't think it's the result of altered DNA:  The space seeds got spilled into the planter in one of the vandalism incidents, and the soil in that planter was laced with Miracle Gro.  The other pot of space seeds later disappeared altogether.  So much for scientific method!  The earth based seeds, which remained untouched in their little pots, are sort of wimpy by comparison.  Too bad it was the space basil that spilled instead of the regular kind, because don't want to ingest the altered plants.  Otherwise, we'd be making pesto by the pound about now!

Our riotous, Miracle-Gro laced planter box, with tomatoes, space basil, and pink zinnias

We also got space based tomato seeds from Canada's space program, but by the time we got them and had time to read the instructions, it was too late to plant them.  Maybe we'll try it next year.  At any rate, I think if you sign up on their website, they send you a similar experiment each year.  But they won't tell you which seeds are which unless you send them your results! (Clever way to motivate people to follow through, isn't it?)

There was some talk in our building of starting a roof compost bin, but I don't think it's going to happen this year.  It would be nice, since the Miracle Gro effect wears off after the first year of using the same soil, and we'd rather go organic anyway. My other planter, which has impatiens, parsley, stevia, chives, some strictly greenmarket basil, and a long ago shot-to-seed cilantro plant (I can harvest coriander now), is anemic looking.  I think it may have gotten too much water at the beginning of the season.  So far, as fertilizer, I've contented myself with dumping coffee grounds in it.  

Thus are the hazards of roof gardening.  I'm learning, and so I'm happy to be growing anything at all.  This is mostly my way of not giving up on plants altogether just because I live in a north-facing apartment.  And I like being able to pick fresh herbs for dinner.

Meanwhile, some much more sophisticated people on the Hudson River are trying another urban gardening experiment.  C.Z. and I happened upon it during one of our river walks and went back for a free tour on Tuesday.  It's called the Science Barge, and is basically a sustainable, stackable hydroponic garden.  The potting soil for germinating seeds is made from rocks that are exploded and then reconfigured into a substance with the consistency of pink wall insulation. The greenhouse climate is controlled by the most low tech means possible, all powered by solar panels or wind power.  The water for the whole garden is rainwater filtered by reverse osmosis. The plants are fertilized, if I have this right, by tilapia waste!  And like everything in Manhattan, it's all so vertically oriented that it takes up very little horizontal space. The group who developed this garden has calculated the amount of unused flat space on NYC rooftops, and if similar systems were installed into every such building (and properly cared for, I'm sure), supposedly such gardens could grow enough to satisfy the average produce needs of 25 million people!

21st century sustainable basil, on the Science Barge along the Hudson

(Doesn't that backdrop look marvelously fake?  But it's not!)

On the way home, we stopped to enjoy the sailboats along the Hudson and the well-kept flower garden at 91st Street in Riverside Park.  (It's also the place where Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks finally meet in You've Got Mail.)  Nice gardens don't have to be mine.  I can enjoy them wherever.  Sometimes, as with my weekly CSA share, I can even literally enjoy their fruits (the tomatoes are literally fruits, at least).

Houseboats on the Hudson

91st St. Garden in Riverside Park

CSA vegetables

So, that's my urban gardening report!  Enjoy your gardens, whatever kind you may have.