Harvested Romaine lettuce from my rooftop garden

I also plan to plant that, I think they are called iceberg lettuce, there's a curly one that looks like a cabbage and a curly one that looks like romaine. I also plan to plant those red ones for variety in my salad and some say they are even more nutritious. The pointed kangkong or water spinach is called upland kangkong. You wont believe me but I have over a hundred uplands and regular kangkong just in my rooftop creation lol! We harvested twice already by dipping in batter and frying them. A little turmeric won't make the spread spicy, it would just give color so it won't look pale and add a different flavor, I usually put French mustard but there's none in the house, my children finished it on their hotdogs

@louievill i hope you can take a picture of your kangkong. my sister loves the japanese mayonnaise. i remember eating that fried kangkong at cabalen.

@hereandthere I'm going up the garden and tree house a few minutes from now and take a picture. What is japanese mayonnaise? It's very expensive when you eat it out, I use to order that as well as fried spinach at Alabang country club almost every week when I was still active with Rotary club now you won't make me buy that again

Wow! I have a garden but it's in the backyard, it's more of ornamentals and orchids. I want to try urban vegetable gardening and the garage rooftop was my choice. I'm a prepper for a long time but I'm more into stocking up on food and water and generating my own electricity and survival gears, the pandemic lockdown gave me an idea that stored food is finite no matter the quantity and it's not fresh so I'm trying my luck on this to add to my prepping

@sofssu we all learned a lot from the pandemic I guess, I now look at a lowly vegetable plant as having the same value as a lovely orchid, it's just that their purpose for existing is different, just like people.

@louievill I am not a prepper but the pandemic did teach me a few lessons on self sufficiency. I have an ornamental plants and succulents but that is pleasure, the serious business is food, I am still learning a lot.

It's a success so I'm planning to really up it up and I know you know how delicious homegrown is. I now have hundreds of different plants planted, I hung a lot of them using a long chain so the roof won't bear all the weight, might cave in, I'm joking, I had it reinforced before I started.

@Alexandoy yes and I am sure that I only used compost, ground coconut husk, grass clippings, banana peel and crushed eggshells as fertilizer

@louievill you are right that your harvest tastes the best.

I'm also planning to plant different kinds of lettuces, different colors soon as I get seeds now that I'm successful growing these romaines in containers.

Welcome to the club of planters and gardeners on my lot, . I had not been successful with my bitter gourd planted in a large pot, it fruited but the fruit was undersized and ripened right away, do you have any secrets how to grow them? I have sweets potatoes in pots too but mostly for " talbos" ( tops) that I love.

@brokenbee i will try covering the fruits with plastic, that's what my wife also said

@louievill Yes, you can also use newspaper to cover if it is not raining, or a combination of newspaper and plastic bag with holes at the bottom. Cover it once it is already pollinated.

For small gardens ( mine are in pots) you only need to cut the leaves ( those we buy in the market are completely uprooted when harvested because it's more practical commercially) I cut leaves several times in a plant but they get smaller and more bitter after doing it several times, the bad sign that they are nearing end of life is when they start to bolt or form seeds, that means you need to sow new plants I was not successful with bitter gourds in pots, I get undersized fruits but I won't stop till I get how it could be done. Yes we need to devote time.

@florelway yep , I already used a big pot and will use a bigger one, also in pots the quality of soil I think is crucial so I would add compost and vermicast next time.

@louievill maybe you can use bigger pots for the bitter gourd. It's actually harder to maintain bitter gourd than kangkong. Okra is easier to plant. Do you have blue turnate? It's very popular in our place.

@louievill may you have a bountiful harvest from your garden.

@allen0187 thank you, may you have an Angel's tonque

So many, I have eggplants, kangkong both regular and upland, okra, sweet potato and taro ( only for the edible( leaves), pechay, lemon grass, ampalaya, patola etc... so many to enumerate, I even planted two pineapples on large pots

Will plant more that it's successful, I'm turning the garage roof into a vegetable farm

@RebeccasFarm Brrrr...must be really cold there It's nice to see you again

@louievill I will have to do it too next year..it is cold now.

@TheHorse we will by God's grace

Yes I had read those discussions of yours long before I started all this, that was long before there was a lock down

@louievill hope we all have good harvests, in spite of the lock down.

@aninditasen right, after a week or two it would be ready again, I also need it to flower so I can get the seeds for replanting.

Welcome, I only cut the leaves so in a few weeks I could harvest again.

@louievill That way you can harvest many times.

My flowers are in the back yard, flowers look very beautiful in the balcony.

@louievill That´s great. What flowers do you have?

@thelme55 wife likes orchids, we have ornamentals like ferns

Planting different kinds like buttercrunches and icebergs is what I plan to do next after the initial success, the real challenge for me is to fit in as much edible plants as possible in a given space so I'm experimenting on things like inverted planting and other self watering and hanging systems.

@FayeHazel I won't go with systems that make use of expensive nutient solutions or use up electricity to drive nutients and water with a motor as in some hydrophonics systems .Besides pots that I already have, I upcycle used containers to help the environment. Plastic pots, the large clay pots would add to much weight to the load the roof has to carry, they are better suited for the backyard.

@louievill Wow! I hope that works out for you. I know some people here who are sold on "Haybale" gardens. Apparently you can fit a lot of plants into a haybale with no soil, and no need for weeding. I don't quite understand that though. So for us - pots it is

@Lakshman15 yep, just pray typhoon season does not interfere with my plans, a strong one grazed us yesterday.

I will, I will going to plant more, just waiting for the seedlings to grow in the tray so I could repot.

@louievill wow that's great..we all are weating for see..

Do it mate, it's fun, rewarding, and a good insurance incase the post pandemic food shortage happens

@louievill yes I know.. But need some seeds to harvest... For buying is no possible hear because of lock down..

@kepweng sure.. When I start I must post hear.

@louievill

Yeah it's healthy, as a side dish it makes the main course healthier and more attractive

Urban gardening takes up very little space, you can grow some plants just on a cut Coke pet bottle hanging by a window. I had seen some videos of people growing herbs and spices near their kitchen sink ready for use but of course you need grow lights.

I cut the lower leaves the other day and we ate it, now it's growing new leaves again to be ready in a week or two. My aim is to plant different kinds now that my little experiment is successful

@louievill I’m going to try it, too!

It's the type that's usually used in making caesar salad , it's upright and looks more like a pechay lol! unlike our Baguio lettuce that's round and looks like cabbage, I also like Baguio lettuce, I can finish half a head of that, in fact I like any kind of lettuce.

@louievill i don't see them in supermarket or wet markets.

@Janet357 they are harder to find because restaurants and salad bars buy them, they may not also be very saleable because people don't know them and prefer the iceberg type, they are tastier compared to the cabbage looking ones.

@Miss_Leafy I'm going to wait

Welcome to the club, I love rooftop gardening, I wish I could see your garden

@louievill I will make some posts about my garden after my planta grow bigger.

I will post about the progress from time to time. Yes try it, I think anyone who has an interest can do it, just be careful when climbing the roof. It could also be done in decks and balconies

@louievill i will be waiting friend... thanks for inspiring