Growing tomatoes in LA

I started a vegetable garden in the middle of LA. I live in a 3-story town home apartment in the LA jungle with my husband. We have no dirt, no land, nothing I can grow plants in to call my own. But we do have a rooftop deck.

Inspired by all the fresh vegetables I see at the farmer's market I decided it was time to try my hand at growing my own vegetables. I procured a variety of pots from discount shops, thrift stores and craft stores along with a mix of ceramic and iron stands to set them on. One trip to the garden store and I found a 30 pound bag of potting soil, a couple of healthy-looking starter plants, a hose, a shovel, and a few packages of seeds. After lugging everything up 3 flights of stairs I was ready to get my hands dirty and start planting.

I had done minimal research and figured I would start with plants that like sun. The deck gets close to 8 hours of direct sunlight everyday so I knew I needed plants that liked sun and plants that were fairly hardy, even drought-resistant. The deck also gets minimal shade; where we live in LA there are not a lot of trees and even fewer that are 3-stories tall. I had settled on bringing home tomatoes, sweet peppers, chives, mint, geraniums, daisies, cut-and-come-again lettuce, and 2 really cool looking succulents called, Space rocks (adromischus maculatus) and aeonium zwartzkop. The succulents are both drought resistant and are fascinating to watch grow. (I will attach pictures of these in a future post.)

I am now 1 week into my grand experiment: Can I actually grow a garden on my rooftop deck in the middle of LA?

The verdict so far is: it is working! I have attached a picture of one of the tomato plants - it looks like I am going to need to get tomato cages or bamboo spirals pretty soon because these little guys are actually growing! I am so excited to see the little green tomatoes that are already poking out. According to the planting instructions that came with the tomato starters I should have ripe and ready-to-eat tomatoes in 60-70 days!