Fall Fun on the Roof

Autumn winds have blown into DC and we’ve been getting the Georgetown Rooftop Food Project ready for cool weather. Aside from gorgeous views like this one:

there are the regular fall garden tasks to check off the list. First things first—getting a new round of cold-hardy crops planted. On October 1 we sowed seeds for Encore lettuce mix, Ovation greens mix, Minutina, Mei Qing pac choi, Mokum carrots, Merlin beets, Hakurei turnips, and three kinds of radishes (Miyashige, Red Meat, and Easter Egg). Now, a few weeks later, we have cute ruffly rows of baby greens and root crops.

Another fall job is saving seeds to squirrel away for next year’s plantings. Sunflower seeds are easy—you just pry seeds out of the dried up flower head and pick off the husks.

Tomato seeds take a few more steps. After scooping the seeds into a bowl, you have to let them ferment for a few days until moldy, then rinse several times in clean water, which washes away the poorer quality seeds and leaves the viable ones. Good step by step instructions for saving tomato seeds can be found here.

With tomato production winding down and first frost on the way, it’s time to clear spent vines and sow cover crops! It’s fun to cast handfuls of winter rye, hairy vetch, and spurs oats seeds across the cleaned up beds. These cold-hardy cover crops will protect the soil from wind and rain and help build nutrient levels for next season. This site gives some good pointers on maintaining soil fertility in raised beds.

And to help with autumn clean up, we assembled two new compost bins so we can turn our garden “waste” into a nutrient goldmine right on the roof!