Yesterday I dismantled the irrigation system and cleaned everything up on the roof. I’m happy to see no signs of extra wear-and-tear where the containers rested on two-by-fours. Another successful season on the roof. The action continues downstairs now.
Well, honestly, I’ve been harvesting for weeks now but haven’t taken the time to post about it. But we’ve been without rain for a while, a storm is predicted for this afternoon, and I just have a feeling the time is right to bring in everything that’s dark red. This morning Tricia came in with what might be the last apple from the tree on our corner. Both twins, T, and I all found it delicious. I’m taking that as a sign to pick my roof fruits now. While I was up there earlier a bird perched on the chimney for a moment and gave me the eye.
Last week I was really impressed that the last full de arbol plant was looking really heavy with dark red fruit and I was tempted to harvest right then. But the weather forecast looked like another week of hot sunny days and I mentally savored the extra spicy flavor that might result from another week of summer. So I waited, and the weather was hot. And Saturday morning when I went up to the roof that plant was mostly bare and the ground was littered with half-gnawed peppers. There’s either some squirrels or birds that have been hiding a taste for capiscum all this time. Do varmints distinguish between the spiciness of peppers? Have they sampled and rejected the chiltepins? Or are they just waiting for the right moment of ripeness? Anyway, I’ve learned a lesson and from now on would rather pick a pepper when it’s in very good condition and not wait around in hopes of surviving to great.
So the question is, are the remnants of the arbol crop still good to eat? I vote yes and hope no taster gets sick.
We got back from the lake Saturday night before dark and I climbed up to the roof to see how things made it for two weeks unattended. Many plants look on the dry side, leaves a bit pale and droopy, definitely look like they are wanting fertilizer. But all still basically in good health. I am so relieved. Lots of red peppers on a few plants, many more with good looking bounty in the future. A couple of plants aren’t bearing lots of fruit so maybe they didn’t mature in the hot weather. Also a bunch more melons coming on the green zebra.
I’m worried about my plants. Hope everything is growing fine on the roof back home.
A week or so ago I couldn’t resist picking a fruit or two with immature color and they were nasty. Today a few of the chiltepin were fully red and again I couldn’t resist picking some. And this time they’re delicious! The standout is a Tarahumara chiltepin which is producing huge fruits compared to other chiltepin varieties I’ve grown - maybe 2 inches in diameter. Sliced one up and was jumping for joy from the flavor. Complex red fruit followed by a pleasant heat. Went great on a sandwich. If the other varieties are this good I’m in business.
I’ve always favored a wildish yard. If a weed is beautiful I might let it grow, and this year just about anything vigorous was able to amake a run for it in our backyard as weeks went by without yardwork. Yesterday afternoon I pruned back a particularly sprawling cherry tomato plant which was all over one of the pear trees. Thinned the thick stand of amaranth - they were a dense patch of volunteer sprouts that I hoped would be sunflowers in the bed by the back fence - the biggest of which are 7-8′ high with giant feathery plumes of maroon seeds.
But I draw the line at the Ailanthus. I appreciated it more when I lived in Detroit, I’ll give it extreme toughness and ability to grow anywhere, but I can’t tolerate a single sprout in our yard. When we bought our place there were two big Ailanthus in the backyard, one definitely dead one, and a 40′er in the back corner which seemed maybe dead. All winter long the biggest one in the back corner was a towering claw littered with tattered plastic bags, a real spectre of death. But lo an behold by late spring it leafed out at the ends of all the branches and I understood why people sometimes call it the ghetto palm. So it’s ugly brittle soft wood tree that’s going to die in a few years and topple over somewhere that also shades the richest bed of soil in the backyard. It cost us a lot to get rid of those trees but now we have excellent sunlight in the backyard and many of the sproutlings that take advantage of the space and the energy are ailanthus.
Pulling them out roots and all is the only way to go. Somehow they stem, after resisting mightily for a while, breaks off above the rootline to grow another day. There’s a nutty oily smell that comes from a broken ailanthus. I hate that smell, but I can remember it at any moment and I don’t think it’s going away any time soon.
I thought it would be sweet to transplant a couple of morning glory seedlings from the backyard to empty containers on the roof. Mostly I was curious to see if they would survive the transplant, and then what the climate up there would do to them. I also had a vision of a morning glory halo around the top of our building, but I didn’t really get my hopes up about that. Days go by, the plants survived in a scrawny fashion, and I was making half-assed efforts with twine to get the vines to grow out to the parapet.
More days go by and I kind of forgot about the morning glories. Yesterday I went up there and one of the morning glories had just exploded out a net of thick, ropy vines onto the chiltepin next door. The chile plant looked so dainty in comparison to this thick skein of competing tendrils. It seriously looked like the morning glory was going to pull down the chile. It took about fifteen minutes to untangle it all. No obvious damage to the chiltepin, though it may have some emotional scars.
Haven’t been spending a whole lot of time up on the roof lately. We’ve been going away the past couple weekends and my energy level has been low during the week. So I don’t know exactly when the problem started but there are holes eaten into a couple of ancho peppers on one plant. At first I thought it was a bug of some kind, but today I noticed another fruit with a soft spot the size of a dime, as if some kind of rot is happening from the inside in that one spot. I need to get out some reference books. Other anchos and all the other peppers don’t seem to show signs of the same malady.
Speaking of parasites I’m keyed up on this topic because of signs of bug activity in a hole in the molding of one of the windows of our bedroom. At first I noticed bits of sawdust on the windowsill. When I pulled out the screen I could see that one of the holes where screen connects to windowframe looked bigger than it should be. I’m kind of afraid to look too deeply into it. When we got home after last weekend away there’s what looks like spoor dripping down the screen below the hole. I’m spooked about what may be living in there but am even more scared of having an exterminator spraying poison in my bedroom.
Went to Loew’s today and got some poly trellis for the melons and more bamboo stakes for the peppers. I never have much luck getting the little grabber tendrils to grow around the things I want them to. We’ll see what happens.