Site visits to Eagle Street Rooftop farm, the first and only commercial rooftop farm in NYC, the Science Barge in Yonkers, Fresh Kills in Staten Island, and NYC Botanical Garden in the Bronx.
The Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, the Science Barge, and the NYC Botantical Garden, to some extent were covered this post on Building Integrated Agriculture. Also, they are all based somewhat in public education, not purely business.
The Science Barge is a floating hydroponic greenhouse, which contains a constructed wetlands remediation system, and showcase for alternative energy production. It was made possible by a series of grants and is strictly for educational purposes only. Viraj Puri's Gotham Greens Rooftop Hydroponic Greenhouse company, and Zak Adams' Brightfarms Systems' building integrated agriculture consultancy both grew out of this project. I find the educational model a bit less less interesting because it's detached from the real world and less risky, but here are a few pics.
The Science Barge was also mentioned by the WaterPod People as a source of inspiration, and obviously so. It remains a great point of reference for anyone interested in these sorts of technologies.
Eagle Street Rooftop Farm was the closest thing to a commercial enterprise of the week. It was run by an super knowledgeable young farmer from Chicago, Annie Novak, but still seemed to rely quite a bit on the novelty of rooftop farming. It runs a bunch of educational tours and events, and mostly supplies vegetables largely to boutique and niche chefs, such as Brooklyn Brine CO., the pickle company. She did say they have a CSA, but it wasn't clear how many vegetables the customers got out of it.
What was interesting though, was the deal behind it. Basically, a set design and production company, Broadway Stages, owns the building, and was interested in installing a green roof. They got linked up with Annie Novak, for farms the roof for free (she make keeps any profit off the vegetables), and roofing contractors ended up doing the install for less than the cost of a conventional green roof, because, according to annie a good 1/3 of the cost is in soft costs and paper work...
(above) Annie was really into soil quality and kept everything closely monitored, which is very important in rooftop farming since there's just a small quantity of soil and a closed system. Nutrients don't naturally get replenished so crop placement, rotation and composting are all super important.
Also, (left), staggering plants of different size and maturation can help save space as well as moderate soil nutrients.
This chicken tractor is part of the effort to keep the soil from being depleted (and thus replaced).
Compost stations.
Rooftop nursery.
Fresh Kills deserves its own post....
