Eagerly anticipating cucumbers

I mentioned in my last blog that I had lots of cucumbers coming and I needed to have a way to support them so they weren't sitting on a hot roof turning to mush. My better half and I went to the roof yesterday to build a simple lightweight support structure made of bamboo and plastic netting. Hope it works!

I also noticed that the siphon buckets were getting a bit slimy, no algae but I elected to drain, rinse and refill the buckets.

Lastly, I expect to harvest my first zucchini before the end of the week!

After several days of quite heavy rain...

I'm pleased to say that all is doing very well up on the roof.

First, my new algae prevention system is working well and the plastic garbage bags secured with the rubber gasket from spare lids is allowing rain water to pool on top and drain slowly through the small hole poked in the bag. The siphon buckets are fuller than when I topped them up last weekend.

Second, everything from the tomatoes to zucchini and cucumbers have grown larger, produced more blossoms and in the case of the latter two, have lots of veg coming.

First zucchini!

Cucumbers with loads of blossoms and several little cucumbers.

Lastly, the tomatoes are all doing well. All are in bloom other than the one that is planted in the ground. The one planted in the topsy turvy and those in the roof top containers are all blooming including the Pink Lady which I just planted last weekend to replace the broken Roma. I fertilized all those in bloom with a 4-6-8 fertilzer. 

Romas doing very well

Pink lady tomato planted last weekend is already in bloom

Early Girls in Bloom

The topsy turvy early girl is also in bloom

Traditional early girl is growing well but not in bloom yet

My next step is to come up with a plan for supporting the cucumbers and zucchini to keep them suspended so they don't rest on the hot roof. I have a few ideas but need to sleep on it...

One down, due to my own incompetence

I lost one Roma tomato plant because, although I had put a bamboo pole in for support, I had failed to tie the plant to the pole. The otherwise very healthy plant snapped so I now have three romas rather than four. I replaced the broken plant with a Pink Lady (tomato) which I've never tried before. Otherwise things are looking great up on the roof. My cucumbers and zucchini have blossoms so I fertilized them with a 4-6-8 fertilzer which I hope will be good for all the demands the rooftop containers.

Zucchini going great guns

Cucumber and blossom

I also had to find a better way to secure the garbage bags to the siphon container as some had come lose. I used the rubber gasket from 3 spare lids and put them around the containers. I think this will work better than merely tucking them under the container itself since the wind had blown the bags off. The bags (per early blog) are used to block the light and hope fully stop algae from developing in the siphon container.

I now have a good arrangement for the tomato being grown in the topsy-turvey. The plan is to compare the yield between the rooftop containers, the topsy-turvy and the traditional garden tomatoes. As such, I'm using the same type (Early Girl) but three different growing scenarios.

The container tomatoes are growing well

Topsy turvy also doing well

Traditional (directly in the garden) is growing more slowly

34C

Wow and it's only June. I, of course, went up to the roof during the hottest part of the day to change the siphon buckets (to get rid of the Algae). I used a dark garbage bag over each bucket (and tucked underneath) which I hope will cut off enough light to stop the algae. I poked a small hole in the middle of the bag to allow rain water to drain in. We'll see how it works!

Otherwise things look good. The water level is good in all the buckets and the soil moisture is good. The tomatoes are looking robust!

Algae!

It took till this weekend to get the ladder back up. I went up today and found that the siphon buckets are filled with algae. I plan to dump, clean and refill them and cover them to cut off the light source  (in this case the sun) which I understand is required for algae growth. I'm not sure that algae in the water source would do any harm other than eventually building up on the siphon tubes and clogging them but in any event I will try to get rid of the algae.

Otherwise, everything is fine so  actually made 4 more buckets this weekend and planted 4 Roma Tomatoes. Some of the plants are showing a little transplant shock ( a bit of yellowing on some of the leaves, mostly the cucumbers). I've been measuring the moisture in the buckets, soil seems reasonably moist and the level of water in the siphon buckets hasn't changed much. I actually haven't had to water the plants since May 22. We've had quite warm weather, between 20-30 C but we've also had some rain which will keep the buckets topped up.

Big Winds, Down comes the Ladder

With the heavy winds today Wednesday the ladder blew down, fortunately no damage but I need to come up with a way to secure the ladder so it doesn't happen again.