Thankful for my little rooftop garden...

It makes me smile in the morning. And makes me feel like an urban farmer - my Papa is a farmer, so it's in my blood :) And it grows even when I forget to water it.

It's going to be over 90 degrees today in LA, so I took some time this morning to water my little garden. I really need to set aside some time to replant/prune etc. but haven't done that yet. I have been kind of neglecting my summer garden, as I knew I'd be planting some 'fall/winter' crops soon, and I was pleasantly surprised this morning to find one last tomato of the summer. Lovely - and five or six flowers on my other tomato plant, which is thriving despite it's neglect.

I love growing my own food, and love having a little balcony oasis - love my rooftop garden!!! And I'm really looking forward to my fall tomato harvest...

Rooftop Garden ~ tomato harvest

Well, so far tomatoes have been the most successful crop from the rooftop garden. Look at these beauties!!!

Rooftop garden ~ Panzanella!

My rooftop garden is yet to produce a zucchini, but the tomatoes are doing very well! I've already had several, and I found three more juicy ones ready to eat when I watered on Monday morning. And there was a sad, neglected, stale baguette that didn't get eaten this weekend. So I made this yummy salad for dinner last night, and it was delicious!

Bread, cut into 1 inch cubes (stale or fresh, I used about half a baguette)
3 tomatoes, cut into large dice
Roasted red peppers (to taste)
Kalamata olives (to taste)
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
one clove of garlic, minced
Sea salt and pepper to taste
Optional: fresh basil, chopped, and/or sliced cucumber

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Brush the bread cubes with olive oil, then toast in the oven for 5-10 minutes, until golden. Combine olive oil, vinegar and garlic in a bowl, and whisk (or put it all in a container with a lid and shake :P). Allow bread cubes to cool a little, then put them into a bowl and pour the dressing over them. Add diced tomatoes, roasted red pepper slices, olives, and other optional ingredients if using, and toss. Let the salad sit and marinate in the dressing for 30 minutes, tossing several times to distribute the dressing evenly. Add sea salt and black pepper to taste. Yum!

We had this for dinner with an assortment of tapas and it was the perfect recipe to use my homegrown tomatoes in - tastes like summer!

Homegrown!

Well, I've been busy getting ready for a week in AZ, and one of my concerns was that the two juicy orangish tomatoes growing on my patio would ripen while I was away. Thankfully, the timing was right and they were ready to pick before I left, so I HAD to make this delicious tomato tart. YUM! The recipe is included below, although it's so easy, it's not really a recipe.

This picture doesn't really do it justice, and is upside down because I am frustrated with my technology today and no matter how hard I tried to flip the pic, I couldn't succeed... But you get the idea ;P

Mustard (coarse grain)
Parmesan cheese (shaved or grated)
Tomatoes (preferably juicy and delicious :P)
Puff pastry
Salt and pepper

Heat oven to 400. Thaw the puff pastry on the counter for 10 minutes, or in the fridge for several hours. Cut to the size you plan to use. Line baking tray with parchment paper (I am lazy and hate scrubbing trays, so I always do this :P). Spread a layer of mustard over the puff pastry, almost all the way to the edges. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese over the mustard. Thinly slice the tomatoes, and arrange on the crust. Add a little sea salt, and pepper to take, then sprinkle with a little more Parmesan. Bake until the crust is done - about 15 minutes.

Fresh basil would probably be delicious, but I didn't have any and this was still a very tasty pre-airport treat!! :)

Ladybug migration

After a really busy weekend, I puttered around my little garden this morning and noticed that there seems to have been a bit of a migration. The ladybugs are either VERY good at hiding, or they've left the building. Alas. I guess I'd better start researching other organic methods for getting rid of garden pests!! Because I want some TOMATOES and those little aphids aren't stealing them all!

Breakfast from my garden!

I am a realist, and I know that it's unlikely that I'll ever eat a meal that comes entirely from my little garden. But I LOVE the idea of incorporating some things I've grown myself into my meals and this is why I battle the aphids :) Maybe it's because I am the daughter of hippies, or perhaps because my grandfather is a farmer... At any rate, it made me very happy to add strawberries from my little rooftop garden to my delicious fruit salad I had for breakfast! Yum! :)

Ladybug invasion!

So I finally got my hands on some ladybugs (they are in demand and hard to find!), and over the weekend I had a chance to release some of them (there were 1500 and my little patio garden doesn't seem to need that many, so I gave some to a friend with a BIG backyard!)... It was a little scary (all those little black legs make me think of SPIDERS!), and a bit tricky (they all kept swarming the lid!), but it's safe to say there's quite a colony released at my house! Not sure whether they'll stick around though... I guess we'll see!

Aphid chronicles...

Well, it's been a while since I posted a pic of the rooftop garden. Mainly because some beastly aphids have taken over my tomato crops :( I love organic produce, and the idea of homegrown organic produce is part of what motivated me to undertake the experiment of the rooftop garden, but boy oh BOY I wish there was something I could spray to get rid of those nasty little tomato leeching aphids! I've done some internet research, and am planning on getting some ladybugs to do my bidding - apparently an adult ladybug can eat up to 60 aphids a day!!! And they eat other pesky little critters too! So as soon as I have a chance, I'm going to get me some of these Ladies in Red. Look out aphids - you've got it coming! I'm reclaiming my little veggie garden!

My little lemon tree

I love that feeling of satisfaction, at the end of a Saturday, when I can look at something I've accomplished and feel like it was a job well done, free time well spent. My friend is coming to visit later this week, and I wanted to sweep our terrace, since the windy, rainy weather left it a little messy, and it's the perfect place to relax in the sun and read. I also have been wanting to add a lemon tree to our rooftop garden, so I figured I'd make a trip to Home Depot with my Mum (who has a green thumb and knows all about gardening!) to pick one out. Coincidentally, the Easter Bunny gave me a gift card to Home Depot last week, and since chocolate eggs don't grow on trees, and lemons have a kind of egg-like shape to them, it seemed like a purchase the Easter Bunny would approve. When I got home, I was too impatient to wait for my hubby to get home, so I hauled it (and the potting mix and pot) up two flights of stairs and replanted it all by myself. And since my hands were already dirty, I potted a little Spanish lavender plant that I bought on impulse a few weeks back (I had a mini daffodil growing in an urn in our dining room, and the blooms were all dying off (sigh - daffodils never last long enough!) so now we'll have lavender in the urn instead). And replanted another lavender in a larger ceramic pot - it now lives next to the lemon tree, and when I open our sliding glass door, the scent of lavender wafts in with the breeze. It's funny how much one little tree makes our terrace feel like a garden or park - there may even be a few more trees in our future!

My reward for my labors was a hot shower, a lovely new pair of peep toe heels that I can't wait to wear tomorrow, and hopefully soon a steady harvest of lemons for summer recipes!!

Rooftop garden ~ an update

Well, since the sad story of the squashed tomatoes, my little rooftop garden has been expanded to include a pot of zucchini squash plants (for several summers I have hunted farmers markets in the area, trying to buy squash blossoms, which I have longed to stuff since I came across recipes like this, and since I haven't managed to find any, I decided to take matters into my own hands and grow them :P), which have recently flowered. The garlic seems almost ready to harvest (I had to look up how to know when to harvest them, since the only way I could think of was to dig them up!), and I'm planning to try planting and growing the next batch from cloves. The strawberries are growing nicely (I even harvested one juicy red one for the birthday boy last week - a birthday berry!), and the green beans are starting to look a little more lively as well. But the most fruitful crop so far has come from my two trusty tomato plants. I'd say we have about ten tomatoes, varying in size from cherry (or whatever is smaller than cherry :P) to ping pong ball, and this morning I harvested three more! Tomorrow night we'll eating the fruits of our little organic rooftop garden. I haven't decided if it'll be a caprese salad, as a sauce, or as part of an entree like this yummy recipe, but whatever's for dinner tomorrow night, my yummy tomatoes are on the menu!

And by the way, the Easter Bunny brought me a Home Depot gift card, so I'm hoping to get one of those dwarf lemon trees this weekend!! Seems like a good addition to our rooftop garden!

Tea time...

I don't know what it is about tea parties, but I've always liked them, since I was a little girl pouring imaginary tea into imaginary cups for my imaginary friends :) Today would have been my Nana GG's (my mum's grandmother) 100th birthday, and every year, in celebration of her birthday, my Nana and my Aunty Collie go have a cup of tea (and order an extra one for the birthday girl) and remember the wonderful lady that none of us would be here without. This morning I woke up to an email from my (very tech-savvy) Nana, telling me about their little celebration, and it occurred to me that we should celebrate with tea too! So I called my Mum, called Elise's Tea Room in Long Beach, and we had ourselves a lovely little morning, sipping tea, nibbling sandwiches and savoring scones. What a fun way to spend a Saturday morning. I think (hope!) this will be the start of a new tradition for us! And after tea, we went to wander around the plant nursery, looking for dwarf lemon trees (this is the politically correct term I believe) for my patio... A fitting end to the celebration, since Nana GG is the one who taught my mum about gardening, which she then passed along to us ~ my rooftop veggie garden has Nana GG to thank for this crazy urban 'farmer' :)

Rooftop gardening tales...

Well, a blog post months in the making has now come to a sudden end, thanks to my knee! Remember the lovely little tomato that was growing out on my rooftop garden? I have been waiting patiently for it to turn red, and finally picked it this morning, along with three little cherry tomatoes, one for my mum and my sister (who I will see later today), and one for me to eat... Of course I brought the 'big' guy (about 1 1/2 inches actually but comparatively big!) to show them before I made a tiny caprese salad or something with our 'first fruits'. Well. Sad to say, for some time now, my car door lock on the driver's side can only be opened from the inside, not by the key, so I have to unlock the passenger side, reach through and unlock it. So you can probably guess the end of this tale, but I stopped to run an errand on my way to work, reached through to unlock the door and sadly, knelt right on the little paper towel wrapped tomato bundle!!!! From the smell of it, it would have been a delicious little morsel (now I have to wait for the other two to turn red!), and thankfully, it protected my three little cherry tomatoes :) I ate one of the cherry tomatoes, which had a split skin, and it was delicious and tomato-y and consoled me, somewhat. Then I grabbed the ever-present pack of baby wipes that I keep in my car, cleaned the squished tomato that represents six months of organic urban veggie cultivation, and kept driving to work...

The rooftop veggie garden...

Up close and personal with my growing tomato

I am the child of hippies - I grew up eating alfalfa home grown on the kitchen counter in a jar - and have recently been entertaining the idea of trying to sprout quinoa in my kitchen, although I haven't tried it yet. I also have the world's MOST amazing MUM ever! She raised us with a curiosity about the world around us and the confidence that inspires us to believe we can do anything, which probably explains why my first thought, upon moving into our house with a balcony last September, was ooh, I can plant a rooftop veggie garden. A little research made me realize that it wasn't the ideal season for planting much of anything (which I kind of assumed - butternut squash doesn't seem like it would stay contained in a little planter, but who knows, I might try it next fall!), but I figured what the heck, I'll buy a few veggies, stay on a budget in case they all die because it is winter, and see what happens. Here's what happened:

Crowded little windowbox with tomatoes, sage, garlic, green beans and strawberries

Now granted, it's been one of the warmest winters I can remember since moving to California, so that probably helped. But the truth is, I am a forgetful (and busy!) farmer who doesn't always remember to water my little 'crop', and with little more than an occasional watering, my veggie window box has thrived! I like to joke with my hubby that we will be able to make a little green bean caprese salad when our tomatoes are ready :) My little experiment turned out so well, I've decided to invest a little time in expanding my veggie garden this weekend. I bought two more pots, one to transplant the giant (non-fruit bearing!) tomato plant that's threatening to take over the window box, and the other for my new zucchini plants, which I hope will do well. I have wanted to try making stuffed squash blossoms like these for so long, and I can never find them so I figured this year, I'll grow my own :) I also got another strawberry plant, to fill in the windowbox and keep the other one company.


The first of two lovely green beans so far

 Our little rooftop veggie garden is a long way from becoming our sole source for fruit and veggies, and possibly will never become that, but it's fun to watch it grow and I can't wait to try a caprese salad with my homegrown cherry tomatoes! It all started with an inexpensive windowbox from Home Depot, a bag of organic potting mix, a few seedlings brave enough to weather the winter, and a little green watering can.