Updates From My Rooftop Container Garden, June 2015

I'm planning to be more focused on planting vegetables next seasons in the effort to harvest more for daily needs. I've been too focused on planting fruit trees like citrus, pineapple, soursop and grapes, and some ornamental plants, thus, have quite neglected vegetable plants. It's good to plant shrubs and ornamental plants in your garden as they give some aesthetic touch to it but you need to once in a while retreated back to your goals and do some evaluation. You need to trace how you have been doing and what needs to be done in order to achieve your goals. Like in my case, my main goal is to have a kitchen garden and a container orchard.

 So far, I have 2 varieties of mango trees, 1 longan, 3 lemons, 5 limes, 4 kumquats, 1 kaffir lime, 3 soursops, 2 papayas and about 18 new pineapple trees I planted from the crowns, ratoons and suckers of my 3 previous trees. As for herbs and medicinal plants, I have lemongrass, white and red ginger, galangal, sweet and red basil, oregano, parsley, pandan leaves, curry leaves trees, red and yellow betel, and I also plant onion and garlic seasonally. Except for that I have some roses, jasmine, false lavender, ice plant, cactus, moringa, and some other ornamental plants like aglaonema, coleous, mother in law tongue, aloe vera, palm trees and a few more. These ornamental plants have grown so much that I keep re-potting and all these have taken away my attention for a while. 

The bean plant I planted last season have gone through their prime.  From 4 plants, only 1 remained. It still bears fruit but very little since the weather has grown hotter in the summer and rainfall is low. I'll soon discard it and rotate it with another plant. 

Oregano

Kaempferia Galanga

For 2-3 planting seasons I haven't planted any tomato plants. This spring, I germinated Marizold and Tobolks tomatoes but they failed to grow, and a couple of new seedlings of Marizold Tomatoes that remained were eaten by either birds or insects. So, no tomatoes for this season. 

After harvesting some swiss chard leaves, the plant died. At the moment I have 6 Kale plants producing and 3 plants of swiss chard. I decided to try planting okras this season. 3 from 4 seedlings I re-potted have died, 1 that remains are blooming and fruiting. I have harvested a batch and it's now still growing new bulbs.

       

Watermelon is one of my favorite fruit. I eat a lot of them in Summer. Last year I planted sugar baby from the seeds I bought from America, but this season I planted yellow-flesh watermelon from the seeds I saved myself from the market-bought watermelon, and it grows well and bears fruits. Only, recently the leaves are heavily infested by aphids and many leaves dried up. I am a little worried since there are some watermelons growing and not fully ripe yet. Hope the new leaves will come out again to uphold these fruits.

What about you? What are you planting last and this season?

Verticillium Wilt

This is what nasty verticillium wilt disease has caused to my tomato plants! It's started with one or two lower stems wilting and at the final step the whole plant succumbs to it.

Verticillium wilt is a disease caused by fungus pathogen from one of the three species of Verticillium genus, that is: V. Dahliae, V. albo-atrum and V.longisporum. The symptoms are superficially similar to Fusarium wilts. Wilt itself is the most common sympton, with wilting of the stem and leaves occurring due to the blockage of the xyem vascular tissues and therefore reduced water and nutrient flow to the stems (note: xylem is the vascular tissue in plants that conducts water and dissolved nutrient upward from the root and also helps to form the woody element in the stem). Other symptoms include stunting, chlorosis or yellowing of the leaves, necrosis or tissue death, and defoliation. Internal vascular tissue discoloration might be visible when the stem is cut. (source: Wikipedia)   

Blockage of water on the xylem vascular tissue is visible on the tree trunk.
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There is no chemical control for the disease but some ways that maybe be useful to reduce the spread and impact of the disease is doing crop rotation, planting resistant varieties and deep plowing. Only, I have no idea if we could reuse the container soil for the next planting season since the disease can stay in the soil for many years. :-(  So, far I discarded the dead plants with all the soil.

New updates from my rooftop garden

My rooftop garden has gotten bigger in size as the 50 something tomato seedlings survived after being repotted and I've added a mango tree, several flowers and a citrus tree, as well as 3 pineapple crowns which I replanted from the scraps and some ginger, turmeric, galanggal, garlic, onion, and bell pepper. 

Btw, I am so happy to see my tomato seedlings are not only surviving but also growing and branching, though they are not growing into the same size. Some are growing quite fast, but some are slow. I also have given 3 seedlings to my brother's employee for adoption and have also promised to give several others to my tuition student. I am happy if they can thrive and bear fruit in the hands of their new owners. 

These 3 seedlings are bell-peppers from the seed I dried myself. Btw, I'm a little perpelexed to see these orange bell-peppers turned out to be different in forms. Maybe it has accidentally mixed with other seeds. 

Garlic started to sprout

The Citrus Tree which I bought from the market

This is the watermelon radish I replanted from the scraps.

The Cilantro I replanted from the scraps started to grow but then were deterorating and several plants eventually died of rotting roots. Probably the cause was soggy soil because it's been raining a lot lately. I should have planted them indoor though...

I planted some ginger heads from the scraps and the young shoot of this one has grown.

Can anyone of you recognize this seedling? Is it really an orange bell pepper?

Learning from mistake

These several days I've been preoccupied with the attempts to save the lives of my tomato seedlings! Since my last blogging I noticed that some of the cotyledon of my nearly-4-week tomato seedlings were turning yellowish. I was frantic but at the same time feeling perplexed. What had I done that was wrong? 

After some assessment I was convinced that it's overwatering. I was inexperienced and had no idea of how much water is enough for my seedlings, so all I tried to do was keeping the vermiculite moist but I might have watered it too often that one time I noticed that the water in the container was brimming over since my container doesn't have holes at the bottom, so I had to pour the water excess out.

At the beginning, it was only started with one or two leaves turning yellow but then I noticed that more leaves were affected. The first thought that crossed my mind was they were going to die! And honestly that made me grief! My love has grown for them and that thinking had really made my heart sunk. 

The other possible factor was because they grew too close to each other. I was a novice gardener, so I impulsively emptied the whole packet of seeds into one container! I had no idea that all of the seeds had decided to germinate altogether! So, crowding they were in that little container. 

I'd been impatient to move them into bigger or perhaps individual containers but the instruction said I have to wait until at least they had reached 10 cm tall, but upon encountering this I had decided it was my only way and chance to give them an emergency CPR! So I rushed and mixed the soil with some compost and replanted them. I had also decided to place them out in the open space of my rooftop against the wall facing the west, and above it there's a small-rectangular iron-sheeting shade, so they won't be directly under the scorching tropical sun at noon. Well, honestly I wasn't thinking of how direct exposure to sunlight might affect them or whether it would stress the plants out. I simply hoped that with the new soil, access to sunlight and wise watering they would have a second chance to live. 

I waited restlessly, and observed if they managed to survive. And though the yellowish cotyledon stayed the same, I began to see new life thriving! I started to see that new shoots were coming and branching out! Hallelujah!! 

It's been four or five days, and they are growing healthier now, though size-wise I think they're pretty small or growing slowly, but I am very happy with their condition now. It's as if that they have managed to pass their critical moment and I am wishing that they will continue growing into big and healthy tomato plants that will bear multiple fruit in the near future! Amen to that! Ha...

Meanwhile, my Basil seedlings continues growing healthily.