Well, that last few months have been a busy time for the Rooftop garden (and we haven’t even planted yet!). On March 23, Danielle, Bob and I made the trek out to our green house in Lincoln to seed the nightshades (tomatoes and eggplant) in trays. Nightshades are a family of flowering plants (more technically known as Solanaceae). While some of the members of the family are poisonous, hence “deadly nightshade” aka belladonna, there are many members of the family that humans utilize extensively, such as potatoes, paprika, tomatoes, and eggplant. The plants were seeded early for later transplant onto the rooftop garden to get a jumpstart on their slightly longer growing cycle.

On the following Monday, March 26, we headed up to the rooftop to spread six 50 lbs bags of lime, a white rock power used to raise the pH of acidic soils. Highly acidic soils limit the amount of nutrients plants can absorb, decreasing the overall fertility. Lime makes the soil more alkaline and thus more fertile. While all this is well and good, those bags were HEAVY!!! Also on this day, we installed a new cedar composter on the rooftop. This onsite composter will allow us to put the nutrients from vegetable waste on the rooftop back into the soil, hopefully decreasing the number of crates we have to lug up next fall. A good days work, if I do say so myself.

The follow week we spread six 50 lbs bags of rock phosphorus. Soil tests that we completed last fall indicated a low level of phosphorus which inhibits the plant’s ability to grow fruit. So let’s see then, that’s six 50 lbs bags of lime and six 50 lbs bags of rock phosphorus bringing us to a grand total of 600 lbs of chemical nutrients. I can’t wait to see what effect that has on the number of pounds we harvest!

In preparation for planting the garden, on Tuesday, May 8, Danielle and I spent an intense three hours rototilling the garden on the first 80+ degree day of the summer. The rototilling aerates the soil and mixes in the lime, the rock phosphorus, the compost, and any other organic matter left over from last season. For those of you who have used a rototiller before, you may be thinking: how does one get such a large machine onto the roof? Well, let me tell you, it’s a pretty tight fit in the elevator and you do feel a little silly in the parking garage.

And now comes the fun part. We will be planting the garden on May 22 and 24 and are hoping to get volunteers from the Boston Medical Center community to join us. We’ll be planting from 3:30 to 6:30 pm each day and would love to see anyone who lives or works in the area. If you’d like to give a hand for the full three hours or just half an hour, please stop by or let us know in advance by calling (617) 442-1322 and asking for Danielle or Rowan.