The Rooftop Gardening Source

Urban agriculturalists Keith Agoada (Sky Vegetables and Rooftop Gardening Source), Dr. Mike Nichols, Anthony Foo, Ms. Morag Gamble, and Geoff Wilson will be presenting at the this half day conference. Find out more at the Green Roofs Australia Website

The Rooftop Gardening Source will provide you with more information about the speakers and the urban agriculture conference in the coming days.

This garden, which began in 2006 is located on the rooftop of a YWCA in downtown Vancouver. The garden is operated by volunteers and the produce is taken to a community kitchen called the Crabtree Corner in East Vancouver. The rooftop was initially used to grow ornamentals as an experiment. Due to the success of the system the group decided to grow vegetables, intensively.  In fact, last summer (2007) the group managed to harvest more than 450 kilograms of food.  The highly nutritious, organic produce is a great addition to the poor diets to a handful of women and children in Vancouver’s east side.

http://www.ywcavan.org/content/Rooftop_Food_Garden/605

Dissapointed with the local produce offerings, cooking enthusiast, Peter Bergold took the farm to his townhouse rooftop. Peter grows peppers, tomatoes, a variety of herbs, beans, lettuce, spinach and kale. What is truly fantastic is that Peter’s growing season lasts from April to Thanksgiving; almost nine months!

Peter has encountered two major problems with his rooftop garden, both of which he has been able to overcome. The first, was troubles with watering the plants. To solve this he began using Self Watering Planters. Peter’s second problem was squirrels. The squirrels seemed to know just when the tomatoes were ripe. They would jump from local tree branches on to his rooftop and swipe them. To solve this, he pruned the trees. The squirrels are no longer a problem.

We encourage you to find out more about Peter’s garden by clicking on the link below.

http://www.gardeners.com/Success%20Story

An urban farmer from Park Slope, New York (Jeff Hens) wanted to grow vegetables on his roof. While many individuals use round containers and pots to do so, Jeff felt this wasn’t sufficient from an environmental standpoint. He wanted to create a system which retained the benefits of a standard green roof. Thus, he used the special Green Grid containers and created a rooftop vegetable “carpet.” Jeff has had great success thus far with his gardening system. You can find out more by clicking the link below.

http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/gardening

By Sanjay Bumbroo

Mr Jasbir Singh Atwal, a resident of Kangra Colony, has developed a novel method of growing vegetables on the terrace of his four-storey house to cope with the skyrocketing prices of vegetables.

He does not make use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides. He uses manure or organic fertilizers. He said that as he did not have space in and around his house, he decided to grow the vegetables in flowerpots and placed them on the terrace of his house.

Mr Atwal mostly grows green vegetables like bitter gourd, spinach, saag and coriander, and lemon. He said his family had been relishing the fresh and healthy food for the last four months. He added that even the guests coming to his house were astonished to see his endeavour.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20061109/aplus1.htm#15

Once upon a time (1918), the front lawn of the White House was used for agriculture and people grew their food close to the point of consumption. Since then, the US has adopted an industrialized system which is reliant on dangerous, centralized, mono culture farms, and 1500 miles of transportation from field to plate.

It seems as though farming in the United States is in the process of going full circle. As the popularity of urban food production heats up creative ideas are sprouting up everywhere. One man, Daniel Bowman Simon, 28, of Brooklyn, has come up with a brilliant idea to bring attention to local farming from none other than the 44th President. His idea is to create an organic farm on the white house lawn!

We encourage you to support this cause and sign the petition.

Want to find out more? Check out TheWhoFarm Website

Shirley Robinson is an inspirational woman. She provides holistic health care tips and lessons from her website. One of her ways to create a healthy mind, body and soul is to farm vegetables on her roof. Back in 1987 Shirley was awarded the National Gardening Association’s Special Merit Award for her rooftop container garden. She has been featured in a handful of magazines and newspapers for her work. On her Los Angeles apartment roof, Shirley manages to grow a half ton (1,500 lbs) of organic fruits and vegetables every year.

Learn more about this amazing garden at her website Shirley’s Wellness Cafe

On May 28th I was on NPR´s On Point with Tom Ashbrook to discuss the food industry with featured guest, Paul Roberts. While at the studio, the nice people at NPR gave me a copy of his new book, The End of Food. And let me tell you, it was worth every penny!!

All joking aside, I have read the book and it truly was a mind altering experience. Roberts provides detailed insight into the agriculture industry from the perspectives of anthropology, economics, biology, psychology, marketing, history, politics and business. He really covers every angle of the industry, which helps the reader understand exactly why we are in this current food crisis.

If you want to understand how important it is that we start farming vegetables on rooftops, then I urge you to read his new book The End of Food

http://www.amazon.com/End-Food-Paul-Roberts/dp/0618606238

A recent trend in Chicago has been rooftop vegetable gardening. In the city, the land on the ground is not always available, so people have taken the farms to the roof. In the first of a series of posts on Chicago rooftop veggie gardens, we bring to you Russ’ rooftop.  He has planted four varieties of tomatoes, broccoli, zucchini, cucumbers, two varieties of eggplant, strawberries, two varieties of lettuce, 4 varieties of peppers, onions, and herbs.

All are planted in “sub-irrigated containers” and have done very well on the roof.  The plan is to rotate “crops” to have a continual supply of fresh vegetables throughout the spring, summer, and fall seasons and to work with other individuals and community programs to share the knowledge and practices of urban roof top vegetable gardening.

View more photos at Russ´Flickr Page

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Are you a rooftop farming guru interested in spreading the love of growing veggies on the roof? Well now is your chance! We don’t care what your technique is, we just want to hear from you.

Email Keith@skyvegetables.com