A ROOFTOP OASIS

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In general, though, a rule of thumb for the container gardener is oversow and then thin ruthlessly . I learned that lesson when my unthinned chard never got more than nine inches tall — puny in comparison to the lush fronds I'd grown in my raised-bed past.

Another danger to vegetable vitality — particularly for squashes and their cousins — is transplant shock. I sowed six yellow squash seeds in each of two five-gallon buckets and then, about a month later, carefully (or so I thought) transplanted all but one plant from each bucket into other containers. The two undisturbed plants remained hardy and produced well, but their transplanted siblings were stunted and never bore fruit. Except for tomatoes, peppers, and other tropically inclined cultivars that appreciate a start indoors, rooftop garden crops can (and, I found, should ) be started in the same containers in which they'll mature.

MAINTENANCE

The most important word in the container gardener's maintenance vocabulary is water — or more precisely, watering , which is what I ended up doing almost daily throughout June, July, and August. The high heat and low humidity of the rooftop environment caused my green charges to be much thirstier than their earth-bound counterparts would be. When you add those two factors to the others that were at work — low moisture retention (in even the best tubs), shallow root sys tems, and a Sahara-dry summer — it's no wonder I lugged at least ten gallons of water up to my rooftop garden every day the sun shone. (Looking back, ten gallons a day doesn't seem to be all that much . . . but an outside faucet and a hose sure would've helped.)

Container gardens also have special fertilization needs, mostly because the soil isn't a part of a natural nutrient-building environment the way the soil in a "real" garden is. My vegetables and flowers gradually used up the nutrients in their pure compost . . . and I'm sure the daily waterings washed some nutrients out through the pots' drain holes, too. So, around the end of June, I started adding weekly doses of fish emulsion and liquid kelp to the water. Potent commercial fertilizers might have produced greener, lusher growth, but I couldn't imagine having a nonorganic garden — even one growing in petrochemical-based plastic buckets!

A FEW PROBLEMS

Being organically in clined, I also de clined to grab a bottle of bootleg DDT at the first sight of cabbageworms chomping their way through my collards. Instead, I sent many of the little rascals splatting to their ignoble ends on the parking lot below. But since there were a lot of them and only one of me, and because they are good at hiding, I finally resorted to a few applications of Bacillus thuringiensis , a microorganism that gives caterpillars a terminal case of upset stomach. The only other noxious insects that came calling were aphids (on a stunted kale plant; aphids always know which garden crop is the weakest) and a few Mexican bean beetles — but neither pest became much of a problem.

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