Metropolitan Gardening

  A lec Baxt discusses soil amendments for growing vegetables in the rooftop environment. Particularly we explore his experimental use of "Bio-Char" which may be a ground breaking idea for mixing with roof light to potentially create a nutritious and fertile growing medium. Alec is the Founding Farmer of Farming up.org in Brooklyn, NYC There is another longer video of this interview forthcoming that delves deeper into the details of the subject.

T he Bowery Mission has began a Rooftop Farming Project to augment their kitchen's vegetable source. This garden was just planted this last few weeks and uses a light weight soil with mulch in plastic beds with gravel. The goals of the roof top farm are to provide mission residents an opportunity to develop care for the plants and an understanding  of the responsibility that it takes to grow food. Self sufficiency and and sustainability are the vision. In the coming weeks we hope to get more information on the materials and development of the garden. Our visit included a tour of the Bowery Mission facilities and a history of the venerable and respected institution. The staff was kind and had opened it's doors to participate in the street fair for the Festival of Ideas for the New City .

Eagle Street Rooftop Farm | A Rooftop Farm in Greenpoint Brooklyn Because of a continuing adoration for rooftop farming the topic inevitably gets airtime- recently an engineer friend brought up the weight of snow to  in a discussion about rooftop farming, green building and the ever increasing burden of code. Additionally the weight of the produce, planting tools ect might be considered - anyone have links to structural engineering and rooftop gardening?

Bowery Mission Rooftop Farm R ooftop farming is simply the most brave use of the endless square footage of vacant space created by cities. From the sprawling acreage of the Brooklyn Grange to the experimental tomatoes of Alec Baxt to the tiny rooftop demo garden on a shed roof  to the Bowery Mission Rooftop Farm Metropolitan Gardening is making a tour for you to examine leading personalities, locations and technique in urban farming and rooftop gardens.