Oh my goodness! You've done such a wonderful job! I can't believe how crazy those morning glories went in your alley! I love love love it. It's hard to imagine that just a season ago there was just a brick wall! You should give yourself a big pat on the back. Great pictures! Thank you for sharing!
Amanda 'romando'

That's beautiful! Lots of hard work, too! What do you do with your containers over the winter?? I've noticed that plastic has a tendency to shatter or crack if I just store them in my garage for the cold months.
Karin LM

Thanks. Every year I expand the garden with either a new trellis system and/or new big planters. This year I concentrated on rebuilding the alley trellis system with bigger planters to support more plants. All those new planters have that new (to me) pine bark/peat/perlite soil mix. The vines had to grow 18' to get to the top but I miscalculated and they have already have gotten there and now are attacking the neighborhood's phone lines and there's still another 3 good growing weeks.

As for the plastic pots, I leave them out over the winter with the soil. I have nowhere to store the soil even if I wanted to empty and store them. The next year I'll empty the pots and use the old soil in my soil mix which was 40% old soil, 40% pine bark, 10% peat, and 10% perlite.

Most of the plastic pots are 5 gallon buckets which I gradually collect all year by trolling the alleys. A very small percentage of pots I use were purchased. Even the wooden planters I made from discarded wood found by dumpster diving. The winters don't seem to degrade the plastic except the color in the tomato tubs has faded (which is probably a good thing).

great pictures !!! I just thought this year to try thr trellises with morning glories-we have a back deck that overlooks an alley. My husband would like me to plant containers along the long portion of it to help hide the view of the alley and the houses behind us. I was thinking of getting morning glories for next year- your photos confirmed my thought....thanks again....

Thanks so much for sharing your pics. I know you have spent alot of time out there and alot of hard work. Your Morning Glories are beautiful. I did not have good luck with them this year(my 1st yr). You have alot to be proud of.

Beautiful! I, too, have a very urban garden in Chicago, so I was especially interested in seeing your pics. The morning glories are amazing!

I hesitate to add my pics because I haven't been able to update (the site doesn't work for me anymore!), but I have morning glories growing like crazy from my lower deck to my upper deck and beyond now.

Anyway, I loved your pics. how long have you been gardening in Chicago? This is my first season and I am in love.

Here is a link that might be useful: My garden

Beautiful, and impressive. Do you grow moon flowers as well? They're just as easy as morning glories, huge white flowers that open in the evening, and the fragrance is intoxicating. I start the seeds in Jan. in a warm room (boiler room is perfect) so by May 1, our frost date, I am putting out pretty big plants. Seedlings I have gotten at our local farmer's market have also grown to my upstairs neighbor's windows and accross their sprinkler pipes. I have also taken Al's generous advise and built a wonderful growing medium for my roof garden. Thanks for the pics.

This is the fifth summer for the garden on top of the garage roof which I call the veranda. Last year I expanded onto the roof of the main building which is also flat. Before that I just grew a garden in the parkway but after the parkway got overgrown with trees and rose of sharons I needed to expand and started container gardening.

Morning glories are a very agressive vine and after the forth year they have gotten into all my soil and grow like a weed now. I still buy Heavenly Blue seeds because the volunteers are usually purple or pink.

Yes, I did get Moon flowers this year to my surprise and did start them from seeds but not in January LOL. This year I'm growing four different vines: Morning Glories, Cardinal Climbers, Moon Flowers, and Hyancith Bean. After planting the Moon Flowers seedlings I left for vacation for 3 weeks and couldn't tell the Moon Flowers from the Morning Glories but last week I saw Moon Flower blooms so they survived!

containergirl, I liked your garden. I was trying to figure out which neighborhood you lived in from some of the buildings in the background and I'm guessing either Rogers Park or Hyde Park. Although I'm not a petunia person, I like how you got them to hang so I'm thinking of trying that next year.

amyben, do you have pics of your rooftop garden? I didn't know that Brooklyn was Zone 7.

BTW: Since my morning glories got too big, taking over smothering other plants, next year I'm going to grow every vine from this site and try to organize it better.

http://www.gardenguides.com/seedcatalog/theme/climbingvines.htm

Mea, I am in East Lakeview. Where are you - I was trying to figure out the same from your pics - I'm guessing northwest of where I live. How's North Center for a guess?

Mea, do you grow any container fruits? I am wanting to try out some: Meyer lemons, figs, blueberries etc. and am wondering if you've had any success with that. I want plants that can stay on the deck all winter, and also ones that I can bring into my living room. I'm thinking I can't do the ones that need a dark, chilled room, since the garage is so far away...

I too was surprised (and jealous) when I found out that NYC was zone 7!

LOL. I had East Lakeview as my third choice. I lived there for 6 years before I moved here in the early 90s and it did seem somewhat familiar but so much has changed over there. I'm in Bucktown down the street from Holstein Park where the Bucktown Arts Fest was held last week. The only fruits I'm growing are strawberries and a honeydew melon (if that's considered a fruit) as an experiment. I haven't had much luck with overwintering since we get deep freezes for extended periods but some of my strawberries in small containers survived left outside last winter. They're now in a 20 gallon tub which I'm not moving anywhere but I'm hoping they survive for next year outside.

My favorite plants that I've had for years are Asperagus fern and Plumosa fern. They get big and can cascade over a wall or deck outside and they survive well inside over the winter with indirect light (what little we get).

I still don't understand how NYC can be zone 7 since I thought they also get periods of subzero weather and I think they get a lot more snow than Chicago.

mea2214 - NYC is on the Atlantic Ocean which is a bigger temperature moderator (obviously) than Lake Michigan. The city itself is also a bigger heatsink, being the largest city in the U.S. Per NOAA, NYC (Central Park location) has 10" less snow on average than Chicago (28.4" vs 38.5") in winter and that reporting location actually has the highest average of the 3 (the others being LaGuardia & JFK, that have a lesser average) for the city. This past winter, it was big news when the Central Park location recorded ~27" of snow, being that represented almost the entire season's total based on the average season, just out of one storm.

The way USDA had done the Zone designations, they take the 1 lowest of low temperatures for each year over a range and then average them. So even if NYC had 1 or 2 years where there were below 0° Fs (and the lowest temp of the year is then used), but then the range of data collection was for 15 years, the overall average would still be above 0° F.

You are a very creative gardener.

Gave me some new ideas.

I'm new to this site, Wish I had found it sooner.

Well next year:)

Hi,

Yes, Chicago gardeners, Bklyn. is zone 7. But the rest of N.Y. is 6 or lower. Friends upstate are in 5 and sometimes 4. According to the maps I've seen only Long Island, of which Bklyn. is physically a part, is zone 7, which would mean Manhattan- right accross the Williamsburg bridge- is 6. I can tell you that if temperatures continue climbing we'll be in zone 8 soon. As it is, I have planted bulbs in a wind-protected backyard after Christmas in soft ground. It's alarming. I don't think Central Park or Prospect Park lakes freeze anymore. Mea, no pics yet as I'm still building containers and a deck. I made containers out of styrofoam (2") and painted them pale green. I did this to insulate against intense heat and cold wind. They look cool- like concrete- but next year I'll wrap them with wood when I finish the rest of the deck. I used to have both a backyard and front window boxes. I also grew cardinal climber- the one with the deeply cut leaf. My neighbor grew ipomea quamoclit, same bang-red flower but with a more light, ferny leaf. Very pretty. And I started hyacinth bean indoors this year and gave huge seedlings to my neighbors. It's one of my favorite vines, and so easy to germinate and grow. You might like Mina Lobata- beautiful fleur-de-lis shaped leaves with long bracts of cream to bright orange flowers, gorgeous.
Amy

Mea, Great looking plants and I admire your ingenuity in recycling containers. One burning question: how do you water? You mentioned a 3 week vacation...did you have someone water in your absence?

Containergirl...beautiful gardens...I enjoyed seeing the views from inside too as that's how I have to enjoy my garden in the heat of summer. Nora is a cutie...you'll have to assign her pots for her favorites I'll bet very soon. josh

Hey - I noticed you had a honeydew melon plant in a 5 gallon bucket. How did this do? How many melons did you get? Do you think they wanted more space?

Great job Mea. I'm really glad for you. You deserve a big pat on the back for all your efforts! Soo cool too, to see you (CG, AB & others too) so enthusiastic! :o)

Al

josh, I water the old fashioned way -- by hand using a watering wand. It's not so bad in the Spring after everything is planted but by late June when the plants get big it becomes a huge PITA. My sister watered the three weeks when I was gone and she wasn't a happy camper and was glad to rid herself of that task. By the end of August it took me an average of 90 minutes to completely water the garden each day and I estimated that on average I used 150 gallons per day. On heavy watering days I used 200 gallons and on light watering days I'd use 100 gallons. By late August I'd spend a minimum of one hour and a max of two hours with most days in between that. Now that we're in late September we're getting more rain and it has cooled so I'm not watering that much any more. This year was a lot worse for water because I'm using that pine bark mix in most of the containers and they drain very quickly requiring more water. The upside is that the plants did well and I had for the first time a tomato crop with decent yields and nice looking tomatoes. I still made mistakes via not fertilizing right and hope to do even better next year.

I don't know why it took me so long to realize this but next year I'm installing a drip irrigation system. I've been doing google and found a couple of sites that seem to be decent. It does seem kind of complicated but there's all winter to figure this out. :-)

heebiejeebie, the honeydew melons are in a tall wastepaper basket that I gleaned from the alley and made into a container. I estimate it's more like 10 to 15 gallons of container space but its narrow and tall. The honeydew melons were an experiment for me. I wanted to see how they would grow in a container that was narrow but deep. I put two plants in there and so far they've yielded 8 melons and the plants had tons of flowers and looked really healthy. I wasn't expecting much out of this but I think that having deep containers for the roots to grow down might have been better than a wider, shallower, larger volume container. It might have something to do with the Perched Water Table (or something like that) per Al's dissertation in that other thread. I like these deep narrow containers since they take up less space and allow the vines to cascade down the sides. I won't know until I dig them out if they became root bound but I suspect they did. The plants still look healthy and there are two honeydews still growing late September here in Chicago. People around here are always throwing out those tall plastic wastebaskets and I already have two more stored for next year. I'm thinking of trying cucumbers or cantelopes in those containers next year and see how those do.

how did they taste compared? sweet?
I grew melons and they were so bland!

Hi Mea,

Your plants (and pics) are absolutely gorgeous!!! Your efforts and results are very inspirational, to say the least... Congratulations!

Anchita

What an amazing journey. Thanks for documenting the progress of your garden and for letting us come along.

mea........really nice!
What do you use for soil? And for your tomatoes, what sized tubs are those? Really nice!

heebiejeebie, the honeydew melons I grew were bland as well and I didn't eat any of them. Someone gave me some seeds that he got from a grocery store melon. I started the seeds indoors as a lark and was surprised at how fast they sprouted and how healthy they looked. I didn't want to grow these but since I had this extra container laying around that I didn't know what to use for I plopped the two seedlings in there. I heard that using seed from produce is not a good idea and now I know why. Next year I'll try seeds from a regular seed supplier and see what happens.

catherinet, the soil I used this year was a modified version of Al's formula in that container soil thread that was posted here. I found pine bark fines at a nursery around here and bought about 40 bags over the Spring. My soil from previous years was bad in that I just used plain garden soil and compost which I since learned was not helpful for root growth. Things still grew in that muck, like hot peppers, sunflowers, various herbs, etc. but more sensitive plants like tomatoes and even morning glories had problems. So I came here to figure out what I did wrong.

Since there was so much soil on the roofs and it was kind of a PITA to haul that up there I chose to recycle much of it. I went with a mixture of 40% pine bark, 40% old soil, 10% peat moss, and 10% perlite. Then I mixed in 3/4 cups of slow release fertilizer per cubic foot per instructions posted here last Spring. Sticking my finger in this new (to me) soil I could feel there were a lot more air pockets than the soil I used in the past. Unlike in previous years, I did notice I had to fertilize a lot more and used over twice as much fertilizer this year and probably should have used more. Since winter is closing in I emptied a couple of spent basil plants and noticed that their roots took over the entire container (4 gallon buckets) and popped out as a single unit -- something that never happened in previous years with the old soil.

The tomatoes grew in those 20 gallon utility tubs that Menards (and various grovery stores sometimes) carries. Last year they had a sale for $3 each and I loaded up on them. :-) As an experiment I did grow one tomato plant in a 5 gallon bucket since I've seen other people do that here. Although the 5 gallon bucket tomato grew nicely and produced good tomatoes, it didn't produce nearly what the plants in the 20 gallon tubs did.

Thanks Mea.....lots of great information!
Don't you just love being able to come here and learn things, without spending years and years, learning it the hard way?! Your garden is beautiful!

Don't you just love being able to come here and learn things, without spending years and years, learning it the hard way?!

That's what I love about this site!

Darlette