Category — Roof Garden

Assessing composted conifer bark as a growing media for tomato production and reducing waste disposal costs at Stockbridge.

A facility for LED lighting for investigating potential yield gains from vertical farming

Horticulture Week
03 June 2011

Centre’s tenth anniversary event issues rallying call to build on research into food production in face of Government cuts.

Stockbridge Technology Centre (STC) is working with industry partners to develop an applied research and development facility for LED lighting in the UK for investigating potential yield gains from vertical farming.

The facility will compare conventional production systems with tiered glasshouse production using LEDs as well as tiered production using an insulated warehouse to assess the economics of an “urban farming” scenario.

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A year-long research project that will measure the stormwater management potential of two urban farms.

Seeing Green: The Value of Urban Farms

Project by Tyler Caruso and Erik Facteau

Seeing Green: The Value of Urban Agriculture is a year-long research project that will measure the stormwater management potential of two urban farms; Brooklyn Grange (a rooftop farm) & Added Value (raised beds) in NYC.

Our aim is to create a model for future research that can be replicated anywhere, to help validate and support urban farms. We think policies should be based on scientific study and we want our work to encourage the adoption of supportive incentives and non-restrictive regulations for urban farming.

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BrightFarms Systems, which was founded to advise rooftop growers, built a greenhouse atop a school on West 93rd Street in Manhattan. Photo by Guy Calaf for The New York Times.

New York has 14,000 acres of unused rooftop space

By Glen Rifkin
New York Times
May 18, 2011

Excerpt:

After four years of developing the business, building the greenhouse and refining growing techniques, Lufa Farms has started delivering baskets of produce to local subscribers: $22 for a six-pound basket and $30 for a basket weighing about nine pounds.

With more than 400 customers signed up and more joining daily, Mr. Lynn, a 60-year-old technology entrepreneur who founded, ListenUP! Canada, a hearing aid chain, says Lufa Farms can enroll a thousand customers, break even this year and reap a 15 percent profit in the future.

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Park board chair Aaron Jasper stands on the roof of the West End Community Centre. Credit: Doug Shanks photo

Park Board chair will be advocating for roof-top gardens to be considered in the design of future community centres.

By Jessica Barrett
WestEnder
05/18/2011

Excerpt:

The aging roof of the West End Community Centre could bridge the divide between urban agriculture enthusiasts and area residents reluctant to give up valuable park space to community gardens, says park board chair Aaron Jasper.

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Balcony Farms Sprout In City

By Neeno Pandora
The Urban Times
May 9 201

Excerpt:

Scares about food safety and the high cost of organics in Shanghai are prompting some city residents to grow their own veggies that are clean, safe, cheap and fresh. Yao Minji visits balcony farmers.

Kevin Liu will have stir-fried green onions with scrambled eggs for dinner tonight, since the leeks he planted last spring on his windowsill are ready to be harvested.

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“Envisioning one option for truly sustainable agriculture.”

“Polydome is a revolutionary approach to commercial agriculture that offers the possibility of net-zero-impact greenhouse food production. It produces high yields of over 50 different crops, while also sustainably incorporating chicken, bees, and fish. The increased variety and productivity of the system means that even a small Polydome greenhouse can provide a diverse food supply for a large population. Using Polydome, even New York City could provide the majority of its own food supply using available roof space.

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Vuelve Carolina in Valencia, Spain.

Vertical mini allotments: What grows up

By Harriot Lane Fox
The Telegraph
05 May 2011

Excerpts:

What could be more metro-horticultural than ushering your dinner guests out onto the balcony and inviting them to pick their perfect salad?

That’s almost what the Michelin-starred chef-patron of Vuelve Carolina in Valencia, Spain, is doing with this chic new restaurant. He has taken the green wall — an eco-cool way to soften new shopping centres, offices and Olympic villages, including London’s — and made it edible. Diners now enjoy garnishes grown right in front of them.

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BYBØNDER. »Vi bliver mere og mere stressede, og vi dør af luftforurening. Jeg fatter simpelthen ikke, hvorfor vi partout skal have et højere tempo ind i byen«, siger den urbane landmand Anders Christoffer Andersen. – Foto: Mathias Christensen.

An urban farming initiative in Nørrebro

By Afton Halloran
Urban Agriculture Denmark
May 5, 2011

Excerpt:

The efforts of the unsung heros of the decentralized urban agriculture movement in Copenhagen are now starting to be recognized outside of their usual circles. For example, on April 29th, 2011 Politiken published a feature article on DYRK, an urban farming initiative in Nørrebro, titled “Urbane landmænd planter grønne chok i København”

Located on the roof of Blågård School DYRK has made a 250 square meter garden. And the group also has a variety of mobile raised beds that associations, institutions, cafes and cultural centers in the area can borrow.

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Kurt Lynn, Mohamed Hage, and Yahya Badran of Lufa Farms. Photo by Craig Silverman.

“There’s a lot the city can do to make this process much simpler.”

By Brennan Neill
Open File
2011-04-28

Excerpt:

After two months of round-the-clock care, the first batch of vegetables at Lufa Farms is ready to be harvested. The eggplants and tomatoes that have been growing since February will soon be picked by a small staff of roughly ten people. Meanwhile, the cucumbers and bell peppers just a few rows over will continue to ripen in Lufa’s massive rooftop greenhouse, which sits on top of a two storey commercial building in Ahuntsic-Cartierville.

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Farms for Growing Cities

By Linsey Davis
ABC News
April 27, 2011

Dickson Despommier discusses how to move food production to urban areas.

Apr. 21, 2011. New York photojournalist Rick Hall shows us how the bricks of Bushwick laid the ground for a garden sensation.

Roberta’s in Brooklyn

From a review:

Think I’ve found the definitive meal of this trip in obscure, industrial Bushwick. Amid shuttered warehouses, graffiti and empty streets, in an old garage with a cinder block facade rehabbed into a pizzeria, bakery, beer garden (edible) and borough’s slacker-organic-locavore HQ.

Chef brought the first taste from kitchen just as we got our bevies-poached egg w/ trout roe & breadcrumbs-smoky, creamy, salty, wow. Next up, braised mackerel w/ lemon jelly on levain bread. Hoyy … now this is how you do amuse!

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The salads at one Brooklyn restaurant bring a new meaning to locally grown.
See video here.

Edible: Park Slope Restaurant Brings New Meaning To Locally Grown

By: Rachel Wharton
Edible Manahttan
12/03/2010

Excerpt:

“[We grow] probably about two-dozen different types of greens. They all have a distinct flavor,” says Jacques Gautier of Palo Santo Restaurant. “You can see we have purslane. This is actually fennel, micro fennel, so we planted the fennel seeds and just let them grow about this big. Radish greens. Chrysanthemum greens. A few different types of mustard greens. This is red mustard green, green mustard greens. This is an interesting one – this is called oracle green.

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Gertjan Meeuws, left, and John van Gemert, right, of PlantLab, a private research company, during an interview with The Associated Press in a lab where he is growing herbs and vegetables under LED lights in Den Bosch, central Netherlands. AP Photo.

Advocates say new approach to farming could be an answer to the world’s food problems

By Arthur Max
Associated Press
4/11/2011

Excerpt:

Meeuws and three other Dutch bioengineers have taken the concept of a greenhouse a step further, growing vegetables, herbs and house plants in enclosed and regulated environments where even natural light is excluded.

In their research station, strawberries, yellow peppers, basil and banana plants take on an eerie pink glow under red and blue bulbs of Light-Emitting Diodes, or LEDs. Water trickles into the pans when needed and all excess is recycled, and the temperature is kept constant. Lights go on and off, simulating day and night, but according to the rhythm of the plant — which may be better at shorter cycles than 24 hours — rather than the rotation of the Earth.

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The 3,000 square meter greenhouse atop the roof of Lufa Farms.

Lufa Farms is already set to open another greenhouse on a city rooftop, five times larger than the original.

Excerpt:

By Geraldine Woessner (AFP)
RTE News
April 6, 2011

MONTREAL — A Montreal company is eagerly awaiting a crop of tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs grown in a vast greenhouse perched on top of an office building, and billed as the world’s first rooftop garden farm.

“Our vision is a city of rooftop farms,” says the Lufa Farms website of the gardens nestled above the Canadian metropolis, as it mourns the loss of good farm land due to commercial development and urban sprawl.

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Nature – Agriculture – City

Via Evolo – Architecture Magazine
March 30, 2011

Finalist, 2011 Skyscraper Competition
Michael Leef, Tahel Shaar
Israel

Excerpt:

The Towers: This system grows vertically, to create new housing towers in a new way.

The towers that we designed have a vertical and continuous system of agricultural fields on the southern facade. They provide the central cores of each of the three buildings that rise above. These cores are where systems such as water and filtering run through.

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A CNN video report

March 24, 2011

Vertical farming is a revolutionary idea that would enable cities to feed themselves.
Note (Mike): See a 15,000 sq. ft. rooftop greenhouse under construction in New York City by Gotham Greens. Viraj Puri describes the project.

Telus building new $750-million headquarters

The landmark development reinforces TELUS’ commitment to the City of Vancouver, and will make a significant contribution to the city’s goal of becoming the greenest city in the world. Once complete, TELUS’ new headquarters will be unique in North America, featuring 10,000 square feet of green roofs providing organic produce for local restaurants, two elevated roof forests, British Columbia artwork, LED lighting on the western façade projecting programmable coloured images on to fritted glass, and media walls where cultural events such as symphony concerts can be broadcast to the public.

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Food from the Sky has planted a vegetable garden on a shop roof in north London – and its founder wants other shops around the country to do the same

By Laura Barnett
The Guardian
9 March 2011

Excerpt:

Of all the things you might reasonably expect to be doing on a blustery March day, standing on the roof of a supermarket and dragging a rake through a bag of decaying vegetables is probably not one of them. I am on top of Thornton’s Budgens supermarket in Crouch End, north London, which volunteers have transformed from a flat expanse of concrete into a flourishing potted garden and vegetable patch.

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Thirty basil plants are growing inside the restaurant in the ZENGROW wall garden. Customers can pick fresh basil directly from the wall to spice up their food.

30 places for small pots and different salad and herb varieties

Press release
Viherasema Ltd.
March 5th 2011

Viherasema Ltd. is a company based in Finland dedicated in pushing forward the concept of urban farming.

The company launched its latest innovation called the ZENGROW wall garden which supports the urban gardening movement in the center of Helsinki, Finland. The ZENGROW wall garden is inside a new trendy city center restaurant called Bravuria. The wall garden uses clean hydroponic greenhouse techniques.

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Numerous private and public gardens in the sky

Golden Dream Bay, a residential and retail complex in Qinhuangdao, China, a city of 2.8 million located 300 km east of Beijing. Building upon Moshe Safdie’s groundbreaking Habitat, the project offers a radical solution for quality, affordable housing in a heavily populated urban area.

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