brooklyn farms

Diary of a rooftop garden that dreams of growing into an urban farm.

Harvest day!

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 [...]

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Thank you squirrels (not) – lesson learned.

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 [...]

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Chiles survived the vacation.

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 [...]

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Farmers shouldn’t take vacations.

I’m worried about my plants. Hope everything is growing fine on the roof back home.

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First fruits!

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 [...]

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Morning Glory stranglehold.

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 [...]

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Possible parasite.

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 [...]

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Melon trellis.

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.

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Gutter compost.

Cleaned the gutter at the low edge of the roof yesterday morning for the first time in about a year. Mucked out about 20 lbs of composted maple seeds, soil runoff, wood chips and other organic matter while laying flat on my belly. My heart was pounding the whole time. Once upon a time I [...]

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More fertilizer.

Hard to decide when to fertilize give our tropical weather of late. Seems like we have intense afternoon thunderstorms many afternoons lately so I don’t think the soil is ever really drying out. Had the drip system off over the weekend and it had been about 24 hours since the last soaking rain when I [...]

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