Rooftop Gardening: Our First Tomato!

Our First Tomato!

I’ve been so busy with this blog, posting away like the OCD introverted nerd that I am, that anyone would think I have nothing better to do up on the roof! But they would be wrong – lol – I figured out having a blog is like having a baby. All of a sudden you become so much more productive, getting all the chores done right away to make time for that new baby…  or, in my case, new blog!

Our 2014 rooftop garden is in full swing already, thanks to God for a very mild winter. I am aware that everyone else on earth froze their fannies off this year, and I really appreciate how horrible that must have been. But I don’t mind telling you that I didn’t miss the usual suffering through winter in a house with no heating, no insulation in the walls, and hand built windows that are more cosmetic than functional.  They do a pretty good job of keeping the bugs out, but the weather? Not so much! It’s usually a steady 45 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter here, which doesn’t sound too bad until you realize that 45 degrees is the temperature inside your refrigerator. It’s really hard to handle life in a refrigerator for eight weeks! Maybe I’m just a wimp, but I really am thankful for not living in the refrigerator all this last winter!

So, with all the great weather we’ve had, it’s actually been fun tending to the rooftop gardening. First, I went on a treasure hunt in our storage room, collecting chicken feeders. You might have noticed that five story chicken farm next door. Back when it was only three floors, Mohamed was running it himself but then his ticket to Canada popped up and saved him from all that headache. He rented the farm out and put all his equipment in the storage room, waiting patiently for his new packrat wife from America to come figure out what to do with it all! They looked like perfect planters to me, so I hauled them all up to the roof and spread them out in rows:

Chicken Feeders Lined Up All Around The Rooftop